The Fog of Prewriting and Writing - Boice pp 52-59

Prewriting. I think I've used this rule in practice only once in my life as a writer of academic papers. It was my senior year in high school. My dual-enrollment English class was assigned a research paper of such-and-such length about some sort of topic of our choosing. After settling on the impact of Chinese currency on the American economy (or something to that length), I made it a point to research the heck out of this topic, simply because I was clueless about it all!

That paper was nominated for some sort of reward. I was extremely proud of it because I never (and still don't quite) consider myself a writer. The process and product were both a reward in themselves. It did take time and patience.

One thing I didn't do in the pre-writing stage at that time was collaborate. Making that connection seems like a very positive and somewhat easy step to take in working towards composition.

I've never really learned how to take notes. Sure, I've experiemented with what types of dashes or bullets are most pleasing to look at (I've settled on triangles for larger points, in case you were wondering,) but even after reading how to take notes in this section of the Boice chapter, I adore double-entry note taking. I can say firsthand how it inspires creative or curious thought while practicing summarizing and deciding what is important to include or not.