[Marty] My name is Marty … and I’m a pre-wirter.

[Group] Hi, Marty!

[Marty] I guess I’ve been a pre-writer for some time now, I just didn’t know it. At least not until Jeff held the mirror of truth up to my face. Even though I think I already know what I’m doing, I plan to work on my pre-writing, and to try and get better. But I know that’s only going to happen one day at a time.

Okay, enough of that. Seriously though, like a lot of you, I’ve been prewriting for almost as long as I’ve been writing. What’s been so helpful in class has been learning that this is actually something that there are all sorts of new and different ways to do, and that you can work to get better at it. I always saw my pre-writing as a quick-and-dirty futz to get something, anything on paper so that I could start actually “writing”. Now, though, I see it as something more, as an actual part of the writing process. In fact, in some ways the best part.

I’ve especially enjoyed pre-writing in the context of our assignment. Since the assignment is to pre-write on a topic of my choosing, for a paper that I’ll “never write”, I’ve been able to recurse back from the pre-writing process and revised/refine/redraft my topic several times. It’s interesting to see how pre-writing can inform re-ideation in that kind of workflow. I now look forward to my next opportunity to ply a little pre-writing with complete control over both the subject matter and deliverable, such as presentation or paper.