Prewriting: Journal Writing

Minilesson 3

Beginning to Write: Caring About Your Topic

Whether you are writing an essay for English class or a report for social studies, your belief in the importance of your topic and confidence in your own ideas will be major factors in your success as a writer. Sometimes writing an essay can seem to have little or no relevance beyond getting a passing grade. In this class, however, you should consider every assignment as an opportunity to do the following:

·         Discover that you have ideas worth expressing.

·         Explore topics that you care about.

·         Incorporate the ideas of others into your own work.

Prewriting Techniques: The First Step in the Writing Process

Prewriting is the earliest stage of the writing process. It uses techniques such as brainstorming, clustering, and outlining to transform thoughts into words.

Very few writers ever sit down and start writing immediately. To produce effective work, most writers begin by using a variety of strategies called “prewriting techniques.” These techniques help writers generate ideas and gather material about topics that are of interest to them or that they are required to write about for their work. Prewriting techniques are a way to explore and give some order to what otherwise might be a confusing hodgepodge of different thoughts on a topic. These prewriting techniques reassure every writer who looks at a blank page and panics because he knows that it has to be filled with his words. If the writer uses prewriting techniques, he will have the needed material and be able to plan how to develop that material.

Here are some questions that you can ask yourself as you write:

·         What is the major idea?

·         What will be the order of those ideas?

·         What specific details will be used?

Journal Writing

Journal writing is the written record of a person’s observations, thoughts, reactions, or opinions. Kept daily, the journal draws on everyday experiences.

I have kept and written in many different journals. One of the best tools for being creative is writing daily in your journal. I call these my “Daily Pages.” I write every morning for fifteen or more minutes on anything. Daily pages are handwritten journal entries. Here are two quotations to help explain why I think daily writing is important:

“Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.” ~Ingrid Bengis

“You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.” ~Anne Wilson Schaef

You are not required to keep a journal in writing workshop, but as a writer, I highly recommend that you get in the habit of writing daily pages. You can use your time in this class to write in your journal.