CollegeWriting.Org

Vision plays a key role in the writing process.  To be effective, writers need a preliminary vision of where they want to go, a sense of what they hope to achieve.  Vision can refer to many mental activities--from focusing on the needs of your audience to reading, e.g.,--but there are two primary, fundamental activities that energize the early stages of the writing process:

• Playing the Believing Game
• Questioning your "Felt Sense"

As discussed in detailed in Vision, Playing the Believing Game refers to the importance of trusting yourself and your writing process, of setting aside doubt and giving yourself room to work through a number of drafts till you expresses your intentions. As much as you can, give yourself positive messages when first starting to write a document.

Sometimes when you're writing you'll know exactly what you want to say and do.  But there are other times when you are less sure, when you just know when you get it wrong.  At times when the writing task is more exploratory and speculative, Sondra Perl, a compositionist, suggests we need to follow our "felt sense"-- our nonverbal feel of what we hope to say.

Admittedly, this advice this advice--to play the believing game and trust your felt sense--may sound ridiculously "touchy feely."  Fortunately, from studying the composing strategies of successful academic writers (as well as blocked writers), we can offer additional advice to help you navigate the early stages of writing process.  To help you improve as a writer, I strongly encourage you to learn more about the effective habits of successful academic writers by scanning the following documents:

Understanding Writing: Complete more effective documents in less time by understanding the working habits and attitudes of successful writers. When you understand and can employ the strategies of successful writers, you can be more creative, manage your time wisely, collaborate more successfully, and communicate ideas with precision and clarity.

Thinking Rhetorically: Write more effective documents by considering the audience, purpose, context, and media for your document. Adjust your voice, tone, and persona to accommodate your communication situation.

Managing: Avoid procrastination and gain control over your writing, particularly how you manage your time while developing documents.

Inventing: Use a variety of invention strategies to stimulate your creative abilities.

Collaborating: Learn important collaborative and team-building skills. Provide useful critiques of your peers' documents. To facilitate document review, use new collaborative tools, such as your word processor's Track Changes and Commenting features.

While the early stages of the writing process need to be guided by believing and by one's felt sense, eventually you will need to engage your more critical faculties.  For help with revising and editing, I encourage you to see the ReVision section of CollegeWriting.org.