Fourteenth Lesson

Organizing and shaping your writing

Getting the assignment into shape

We are assuming that you have already done a lot of work for your assignment. 

• You have worked on the title and have begun to get a sense of where you will be going, and of your argument. you have gathered together a good deal of information from books, lectures and other relevant sources. 

• You have done various kinds of preparatory writing. 

• You may have made some kind of plan and have done pieces of various kinds of writing towards the assignment. 

• But now, probably with the deadline looming, you wonder how you are going to get it into shape as a finished product to hand in to your tutor. 

It is true that this can be a very difficult point for the writer. It is an important to realize that planning and shaping your writing happen at different phases in the writing process and in different ways. 

• You continually move back and forth between planning and thinking, as you think new thoughts and write down 'old' ones. 

• As you think and gather information you are also planning and writing bits as you go. 

• Sometimes, you may find that you have gone in a slightly different direction from the one you had planned so that now you need to revisit material you have already looked at, or even find some new information. 

• At some point you simple need to make the best of what you have got and just finish this particular piece of work.