一旦你决定努力提高你的写作水平，你就需要准确地思考你将要做什么。换言之，你需要考虑如何处理写作过程中涉及的各个步骤：从发现主题的想法，通过连续的草稿，到最后的修改和校对。

例子

让我们看看三名学生如何描述他们在撰写论文时通常遵循的步骤：

Before doing anything, I make sure I've got a quiet room and a clear head. When I feel ready to work, I sit in front of my laptop and begin tapping out whatever comes to mind. Then, after taking a short walk, I read over what I've written and pick out the things that strike me as worth keeping--key ideas and interesting details. After this, I usually go on to compose a rough draft pretty quickly. Then (maybe in a day or two, if I've gotten an early start) I read the draft and add explanations and ideas and make some grammatical changes. Then I write it over again, making more changes as I go. Sometimes I complete the whole process in an hour or two. Sometimes it takes a week or more. I like to do my first draft on paper--that is, after I've daydreamed for an hour or two, raided the refrigerator, and made a fresh pot of coffee. I specialize in procrastination. After running out of ways to distract myself, I start to scribble down everything I can think of. And I mean scribble--write fast, make a mess. When I figure out what I've scrawled, I try to fix it up into an orderly, halfway-decent essay. Then I put it aside (after making another trip to the refrigerator) and start all over again. When I'm done, I compare both papers and combine them by taking some things out and putting other things in. Then I read my draft out loud. If it sounds okay, I go to the computer and type it up. In trying to put together a paper, I go through four phases. First, there's the idea phase, where I get this bright idea. Then there is the productive phase, where I'm really smoking, and I start thinking about the Pulitzer Prize. After that, of course, comes the block phase, and all those prize-winning dreams turn into nightmares of this big, six-foot guy jammed into a first-grader's desk and being made to print the alphabet over and over again. Eventually (hours, sometimes days later), I hit the deadline phase: I realize that this sucker has got to be written, and so I start burning it out again. This phase often doesn't start until ten minutes before a paper is due, which doesn't leave a lot of time to proofread--a phase I never seem to get around to.

正如这些例子所示，没有一种写作方法是所有作家在任何情况下都遵循的。

四步

我们每个人都必须找到在任何特定场合都最有效的方法。然而，我们可以确定大多数成功作家以某种方式遵循的几个基本步骤：

1. 发现（也被称为发明）：找到一个话题并提出一些关于它的话。一些可以帮助你开始的发现策略是自由写作、探究、列出和头脑风暴。
2. 起草：把想法粗略地写下来。初稿通常杂乱无章，重复性很强，而且充满了错误——这很好。初稿的目的是捕捉想法和支持性细节，而不是在第一次尝试时写出完美的段落或文章。
3. 修改：修改和重写草稿，使之更好。在这一步中，你试图通过重新排列观点和重塑句子来预测读者的需求，以建立更清晰的联系。
4. 编辑和校对：仔细检查一篇论文，看它没有语法、拼写或标点错误。

这四个阶段重叠，有时你可能需要备份并重复一个阶段，但这并不意味着你必须同时关注所有四个阶段。事实上，一次尝试做太多很可能会造成挫折，而不是让写作更快更容易。

写作建议：描述你的写作过程

在一两段中，描述你自己的写作过程——你通常在撰写论文时遵循的步骤。你是如何开始的？你写了几篇草稿还是一篇？如果你复习，你会寻找什么样的东西，你会做出什么样的改变？你是如何编辑和校对的？你最常发现什么类型的错误？坚持这个描述，大约一个月后再看一次，看看你在写作方式上做了哪些改变。