Sean's Writing Process

I think there may exist some ambiguity regarding the definition of the term "compose" with respect to writing. My immediate reaction to the word is to assume the mental creation of a piece of writing. After all, it would be difficult to argue that the ideas for a paper can come from anywhere but within the writer's head.

Still, this is not the only way one might compose a paper. Compose may also mean the aggregation of ideas for a paper, or even the physical and structural creation of a piece of writing itself. Granted this more robust understanding of the question, what is my writing process?

Well, that's not an easy question to answer. A relatively large (unfortunately) portion of the writing I do is prompt based. That is, it is writing for which the topic is strictly defined. For this type of paper, I usually decide on a structure that fits my response, and then sit down and write the thing. These are never very exciting papers to work on.

More interesting to me are research assignments and open-ended topic prompts. For these papers, my structure (and infrequently my thesis) is often largely defined by the research I've done. These papers are more prone to being written, re-written, and dramatically altered before I am satisfied.

When the paper is distinctly my own, every detail of the composition becomes important. By contrast, a strictly prompt-based paper takes an air of autonomy that I rarely feel deserves too much attention.

Perhaps because I grew up at the right time, almost all of my physical composing is restricted to electronic media. That said, I know many people who need to plan on paper before they begin to compose. I do find that tactile media can be useful on rare occasion, but for the most part I stick with a computer - my ideal writing environment.