The Writing Process: Step #4

"Whew!" I smile to myself and take a huge sigh of relief as I look down at my checklist, realizing that the final draft is the only step I have left to do in this particular writing assignment. What seemed so overwhelming in the beginning looks like a piece of cake now! The last step in my writing process is writing the final draft. If I have completed steps one, two, and three thoroughly, this part should be the easiest and least time-consuming out of the four.

When beginning to make changes from my rough draft to transform it into my final draft, I sit in front of my computer with the rough draft on the screen and the marked up hard copy of my rough draft at my side. I use the paper copy as a reference when typing the information I edited. This makes it easy for me to see the before and after stages of my paper. When I am making the changes in order to create my final draft, I make the spelling and grammar corrections first because those are the least difficult. Then, I go back and fix my errors in content. Once I have made all the changes, I read over my paper out loud to myself as well as in my head. If I don't catch any errors after reading it both of those times, I happily hit the "save" button on Microsoft Word, and print out my paper.

The whole process normally takes me at least a week to complete, which is why I like to start my assignments early. However, sometimes procrastination gets the best of me, and I'm left with only a couple of days to complete an assignment. In those cases, I'm forced to combine the steps together. For instance, I often don't take the time to prewrite; I just begin writing the rough draft.  Often, my revisions are only edits in structure, and not content. I have to rush through the assignment. All in all, start your papers early, and you won't regret it in the end.