Prewriting

I find that prewriting can be really useful in writing essays. It's a lot easier for me to freewrite and go from there to jot down ideas than to sit down and really think of what to write. There have been times where I do start off an essay just freewriting and I edit it and voila, an A ;) well, only if I'm lucky. I think my ideas flow a lot easier when I freewrite. I have also used lists where I write what I'm going to talk about in the introduction, first, second, third paragraph and then figure out my conclusion. Prewriting is a great tool to help you figure out if you have enough information for what you want to write about and also to organize your ideas. I did a lot of journaling during my middle school and high school days and I feel that it really helped me organize my thoughts and put things into perspective.

Before I sit down to write my first paper, I know that I will be doing a lot of brainstorming, freewriting and outlining to figure out what I want to write about. It will really narrow down my list of "what should I write about?"