Writing Like a Graduate Student: Trust the Process

Your writing focus depends on where you are in the process.

The Importance of Process

As anyone who knows me can attest, I am not a heavy user of expletives. So the fact that I have for years loved, recommended, and even repeated aloud the title of Anne Lamott’s essay, “Shitty First Drafts,” is a testament to the content of the piece, rather than the attention-grabbing title. Lamott’s point is that no one writes anything perfectly (or even acceptably) the first time. In her view, what is important is to get something down, not worrying about what anyone will think of it. Then fix it up on the subsequent drafts.

Lamott is talking about professional writing, but her argument is valid for any kind of writing. And it directly relates to the point I want to make in this post, which is that writing is a process, not an act. It is possible that nowhere is this truer than in a large academic project like a thesis, capstone, or dissertation.

Understanding that writing is a process can bring more order and precision into your writing. At the same time, this understanding can also give you freedom to relax and create. The key is to understand where you are in the process and, even more important, to allow your writing to be a process. That is, be patient with yourself and with your project.

The Writing Process

When I say that writing is a process, I don’t mean that it is like following a recipe, where once you have added the eggs, you’re all done with that part and can move on to the sugar or whatever. Instead, writing is what might be called an iterative process, which, in this non-technical sense, just means you are probably going to have to engage various steps more than once. In general, the larger and more complex your project, the more often you may need to repeat the parts of the process.

So, what are the parts of the writing process? You can think about it in different ways, but I think it’s most helpful to divide the process into three parts: prewriting, drafting, and revising. Sometimes you’ll see a five-step process, including research towards the beginning and publishing towards the end. For now, though, we’ll focus on the three central steps. In future posts, I’ll discuss each of those parts, detailing specific activities to help you with your writing process. Next time: Prewriting, a step it’s tempting to skip, but one that is vital for a smooth process and a quality product.

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