This lesson develops skills in the first six steps of this basic writing practice. For skills in writing the full draft and revising an essay, consider visiting Boot Camp 2 and Boot Camp 4.
In practice, writing is messy. We will follow these steps to study a basic writing practice in this lesson, but, in fact, you are likely to move back and forth between these steps all the time until the essay is finished.
For example, we might spend a lot of time thinking about and gathering information, and then begin to organize and draft the essay, only to realize we need more planning and research. That new research may then alter our thesis, or make us re-think our original plans for the essay.
Also, revision and editing rarely happens at the end of the essay alone, but instead happens all the way through the writing process.