LSC: Writing

At the MWCC Learning Success Center, we believe that everybody is a writer and all writers have more to learn. We understand writing, reading, and language as social, cultural, and material processes:

• Writing is a social practice and activity (A thing we do),
• Writing is a product or thing (A thing we create),
• Writing enacts identities and ideologies (A thing we are or believe),
• Writing is subject of study (A thing we use to learn and understand the world).

In other words, writing is a process that includes how you produce a text—from invention, to drafting, revision, and editing—as well as your writing context, experiences, and background. The writing process contains four major components that may occur in any order, repeat, or overlap:

• Reading and Re-Reading are recurring stages at which writers comprehend relevant materials, such as books, articles, visual and/or aural media, etc., in order to shape and re-shape their writing.  
• Invention, or “Brainstorming,” is the stage at which writers generate ideas, thoughts, and responses—often without structural constraints. Activities can include free- or collaborative writing, thinking, and discussion or conversation.
• Drafting is the stage at which writers re-formulate ideas, thoughts, and responses into a possible organization or structure. Activities can include creating categories of ideas and/or an outline. of ideas, or an outline.
• Revision is the stage at which writers consider “global” writing concerns—such as development—and re-write work based upon the rhetorical context at-hand (i.e. purpose, audience, and author). Revision exercises can include peer-response, a reverse outline, and more.
• Editing is the stage at which writers consider to “local” writing concerns—such as grammar and usage—in order to make the work accessible, understood, and readable to its audience

Below are interactive resources that can be used to practice the writing process. To learn more about the four writing concepts above, also see our recommended reading (pdf.) below, “Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing
Studies” (Adler-Kassner and Wardle 2015).