10 Writing Habits

After reading the ten expert habits, I quickly realized that I am not an expert writer. I have found that the best way for me to write a paper is to think about the topic for a few days and brainstorm. After I have some ideas I sit down, and write all of my ideas down, usually in order of how I want the paper to flow but much of the time some of my ideas need to be cut and pasted in a better spot, or sometimes just deleted. After all of my ideas are down and I feel comfortable with some of the structure, then I put together opening paragraphs, thesis statements, and conclusions. A couple of things I could probably do that would improve my papers is to reduce my expectations for early drafts. This would allow me to just put more ideas down on paper without worrying about grammar, punctuation, or any of those small things that just seem to trip me up in a first draft. Another technique that would help me would be to print out drafts along the way. I do struggle with not being able to see the 'whole picture' and making major edits to papers. Printing it would help so I can make notes on the paper for changes that need to be made, and also make it easier to organize ideas.