Transcript Lesson 10 Essentials Video: Planning

MATT: The difference in the approach from high school to college is for one, I'm not cranking papers out the night before. I'm definitely putting a lot more time into my writing. So I'm not handing in first-draft stuff. It's definitely a process.

YADIRYS: It's a really long process. You have to first come up with your own idea of what you're going to write a paper about. You have to find information that goes along with your idea. And then you have to sit down and write the whole thing out.

And later on, you have to keep changing things. And maybe what you started off with wasn't what you ended up with. So your idea might totally transform itself throughout the process, but it's worth it in the end.

NICK: I was really proud of the process. That was the first experience I had had writing before I knew what I was going to write exactly. In high school, I always knew what I was going to write before I wrote it. In college, I just kind of jumped in and had this assignment, and it was really uncomfortable. And I kind of overcame that.

TIMOTHY: Having not written a lot prior to taking a composition class, it's daunting to think of all these things I need to do. So put them in order. What do I need to do first and last? And even make sub-notes of each one and find out what's going to make this easy for me.

AIME'E: It actually starts really organized and then gets messy and then gets back into the organization. It's like I start with a plan, a beautiful plan, and then I go crazy and find all this inspiration. And then I've got to get back to the subject at hand.

CARA: Sometimes, it is really difficult to devote the time to getting it done right, especially when you have work and school and you have so many other things that you have to be doing.

DANIEL: Make a schedule—a personal schedule, not the college schedule, a personal schedule of your life, of what you're going to do every day.

KARINA: I give myself little, I guess, these 500-word increments. Write the first 500 words and see how that goes, even if I just write 250 words the first day.

BRAD: I think a lot of time, it's glorified as there's an author who has this idea. And it manifests itself to him or to her, for that matter, and writes it down, doesn't have to edit it, and turns it in. And it's published. But always keep that in mind.

GINA: Break the process down to its most basic level and get them to understand that everybody comes at writing a little bit differently. And what works for me won't necessarily work for everybody. Everybody's writing process is unique.