My Revision Process

It is not an exaggeration when I say that it is extremely difficult for me to draft anywhere but a coffee shop, particularly Starbucks. I went to high school in a big city, meaning ample Starbucks, Coffee Trees, and various independent coffee shops were within ten minute walking distance of both of my parents' houses as well as my school. My house and my school were both very distracting places to work, surrounded by DVRs with all of my favorite shows recorded, my cat, and my bed at my house, and my friends and comfy lounge chairs at school, thus it was important to find somewhere semi quiet (I can't work in complete silence) to do all of my drafting and writing.

Essentially, my process is to sit down near an outlet (even remotely low battery on my laptop makes me anxious), order a venti soy coffee frappuccino light with a pump of sugar free hazelnut, and write what I call a "skeleton," which is essentially the barest bones of an essay - what my thesis is, and all the main points I'm using to support it with a tiny explanation for each. Next, I develop it into a real outline, adding specific details and organizing into an appropriate structure. Finally, I fill in all the blanks with connecting sentences, pointing to specific evidence, marking where I will put the quotes, and writing a real intro and conclusion. The last thing I do is add in the quotes, along with their explanations and analysis.

This process may explain why my so-called "first drafts" often resemble almost exactly my final drafts, though the final draft will hopefully be more polished in terms of organization, maturity, and sentence level errors. Rough drafts and final drafts often look similar in my work because the rough drafts require so many steps and are such a process to me, that by the time I write an actual readable essay for the first time, it has already been completely developed, as my coffee fueled process generally takes about an hour of work over three days, as I dislike working on the same piece of writing for more than about an hour at a time, especially as I run low on frappuccino (no matter how huge they are).