Successful Pre-Writing

     In the past, the types of pre-writing that have provided me with the most success have been brainstorming, listing, freewriting/looping, mapping, and clustering/branching. When I brainstorm I like to write my idea down in a visible place for everyone to see and then have them write their ideas on their own paper. I think that having a main topic or idea visible to draw inspiration from is an easy way to keep the brainstorming focused. Although, in my experience, I still get a lot of unusable or unrelated ideas when brainstorming, so I use it less often than other pre-writing techniques. While listing, mapping, or clustering/branching I like to start with my main idea and write down anything and everything that I think is relevent. I'll even write down things that are vaguely relevent because I never know where my paper will take me and it may be the idea, or at least the trigger word, I need to pull things together in the end. Those techniques are my favorite to use and I keep my list, map, or otherwise right next to me while I write. When I freewrite I will often "loop" back and pull a sentence or two out to start a new idea or paragraph before continuing to write, which helps me quickly write a long rough draft without much effort. I like to think of it as a self-feeding system. I just stand back and let the words flow and then look back for a second or two to grab and expand on an idea I've already written. So, basically, I use a combination of freewriting and looping at the same time to help get ideas flowing and expand on old ones.