This is “Why Commit to the Writing Process?”, section 1.5 from the book Creating Literary Analysis (v. 1.0). For details on it (including licensing), click here.
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1.5 Why Commit to the Writing Process?
In short, you should commit to the writing process because it’s the best known method for helping unconfident writers become confident writers. If there’s one thing that over fifty years of writing research has shown, it’s that students improve their writing skills through practice, practice, and more practice. The more you write in college, the more comfortable you will be with the conventions of academic and professional prose. When you commit to the process of writing, you will begin to understand that writing isn’t a rarefied talent available to a privileged few. You’ll begin to see that writing is a skill and can be developed through practice. What’s more, the writing process does not include the terrifying idea that you produce perfect prose on demand. Instead, you will learn to produce the best prose you can now and to improve it as you develop your ideas. This frees you up to concentrate on developing your skills of argument—skills that will be useful in whatever professional field you eventually work—rather than living in terror that you will make a mistake.