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Analyzing Peter Elbow's Essay On Free Writing Ideas

Decent Essays

Peter Elbow’s article talks about the necessity to write with care. In order to write well,

you need to write with an effort to do well. It’s common for people to doubt themselves and not

do so well, so everything you do in a paper should be planned. Others just free write and plan

everything as they go. Many also just plan everything in their minds, formulate ideas and

sentences in their head only to forget what they had brained stormed. Personally, I wouldn’t

agree with that, I would eventually get everything bundled up with no order or structure.

If I’m given a topic, a topic that I can write continuously with no research, then I may

have a better chance at freewriting. If I know little about the topic, then I have to do my own

research and formulate ideas that I will include on my paper. Once I have a few ideas, then I will …show more content…

With this research, I then make the

structure of my writing as well as formulating a thesis that directly reflects my research.

All of that takes time, and very little freewriting. Freewriting on research papers is very

unlikely as well because you may risk the chance of plagiarism. If I read an opinionated section

of an article then begin to free write, I’m afraid I may accidently apply that opinion word for

word and call it my own. That would be plagiarizing. Instead, I would rather have a structure

where all pertinent information is extracted and created into a rough outline. I then analyze the

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information and include that into my paper. My analyzations would be my own words but at

least all of the work that was not mine, is already in the paper and cited.

On the other hand, freewriting when I know the information on hand is a lot simpler. The

easiest form of free writing, to me, is if it is an opinionated paper or a creative writing. Neither

one of those writings require sources from others, therefore there are no worries of

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