My writing process is really not a practical one. I tend to think a lot, for many days, about the topic at hand and mentally start gathering main points that I will address in the paper. I usually research online for articles that support my ideas and also look for alternative points that may counter my arguments. Every time, I think back to my middle school years when my teachers would explain how the introduction to a paper needs to have all the points that will be discussed throughout the paper. At that time I start writing about the main points without much thought to the structure of the paper. I do this to have all my points down and later go back and develop them into paragraphs or even pages filled with facts, comments and details about what I´m trying to get across. Outlining my entire paper has never worked for me since many times I decide to alter the main discussion points for my paper.
One important thing about my writing process is that I cannot write in parts. I have to sit and fully write the paper otherwise, many of my ideas and points are rapidly gone. I have the bad habit of writing supporting sentences or facts to strengthen a main topic of the paper but when I reach the main topic I forget what I want to say so I have to reread everything in order to recapture the idea. Another bad habit but that works for me, is pressure. When I have a deadline close, I concentrate more on the paper and tend to get things done faster. A perfect example happened last semester. I had gotten to class and became aware that the midterm due date had been moved to that same day and had not been informed. Like I had mention at the begging of this post, I think about the topic for many days so on this occasion I pretty much knew what I wanted to write and thankfully I was able to answer the midterm question in less than three hours and wrote a total of nine pages.
When I write, I see it more like an experiment because I start with a hypothesis and sometimes the points that are made throughout the paper do not support my thesis. For that same reason, I leave my introduction and conclusion to the end. That way I can rephrase my introduction to make it coherent with the entire paper. Myconclusions tend to be strong since by the time I finish writing, I´m so pumped that I recapitulate everything with more enthusiasm and even enjoy twisting some of the final thoughts to leave the readers questioning more about the topic.