This article offers a first-person account of an academic writing workshop from the perspective of a participant. What is significant is that the workshop combines traditional and creative writing approaches to the teaching of academic writing. This provides new insights into a process of academic writing that can have a significant effect on the…

Recommends a series of questions, activities, and guidelines to make free writing more productive and generative. (MS)

Presents a procedural model for use as a prewriting strategy to help students "decenter" or distance themselves from their writing and avoid the generalities that characterize egocentric writing. The model provides opposing viewpoints in a student's analysis of problems or issues. (HTH)

Discusses the pedagogical consequences that follow from distinguishing invention from prewriting. Contrasts the importance of stasis in invention, and the resulting importance of writing with an audience in mind, with prewriting techniques that merely direct students toward exploring a topic without reference to an audience. (RL)

Writers who double back to alter diction and syntax change their understanding of what it is they are saying, thereby clarifying their understanding and enhancing the discovery of new ideas. Revision, when taken this way, is often a form of invention. The difficulty in teaching revision is that writing has mistakenly been regarded as a linear…

Argues that, in understanding creativity and the process of composing, it is helpful to think in terms of the metaphysical concept and while polar opposites appear to be contradictory, they are part of the same whole. Suggests some polarities that help in understanding the creative process in writing. (TJ)

Offers seven planning and prewriting tips for the writing of award-winning proposals. (SR)

Discusses the prewriting process in terms of forces that affect prewriting, prewriting as rehearsal, and eight signals that tell writers that a piece of writing is near. (DD)

Describes method in which students write a draft requiring some writing skill before learning about that skill. Concludes that predrafting (1) enforces first-drafting; (2) shows students their natural writing abilities; (3) emphasizes discovery of substance first, rules and form second; (4) promotes an active student role; (5) arranges learning in…

Lists eight ways to develop a topic for a composition. (DF)

Describes a prewriting technique in which technical writing students are given a tool or mechanism with which they are unfamiliar and told to figure out what the object is from a series of clues. (HTH)

Uses a broad definition of technical writing (practical writing) as a backdrop for two freshman composition courses. Introduces a student planning sheet for "thinking in"--examining the audience and purpose of a writing assignment. (RL)

Urges basic writing instructors to teach prewriting and rewriting as seriously as they teach writing. Decribes the implementation of this approach which forces students to proceed through all three stages of writing in a structured classroom setting for each composition assignment. Provides an example showing a students' writing improvement. (AYC)

Argues that prewriting is the most important skill to emphasize and practice extensively in basic writing classes. Describes basic writers as almost universally neglecting prewriting activities. Suggests some guidelines for teaching prewriting effectively. (HB)

This paper discusses the use of film in teaching the composing process to students. Beginning with a description of the composing process in general, it continues with a discussion of problem-solving, composing, and film, using "The Shopping Bag Lady" as an illustrative film. This is followed by a consideration of how to use film to generate form…