pre-writing techniques

              Ok so this may come as a surprise to you but I am 78.3% positive that I have never used any of the pre-writing techniques explained in Writing Simplified.  Sure I used them when I was taught about them in school, but that was only to prove that I understood the concept of the techniques.  The idea of listing just seems like a waste of time to me.  I have a fairly good vocabulary but for some reason if I am asked to start spouting off anything more than normal words I draw a blank.  Brainstorming does not work for me as I do not feel comfortable voicing my opinion to others unless I have thought about it a lot and am confident in the thought.  I cannot think of a reasonable argument against looping, it just seems nonsensical to me.  The same goes for mapping, branching, and clustering.

The reason I’m only 78.3% positive, is that my writing style may be similar to freewriting.  Freewriting, of the stream of consciousness variety, is a continuous writing stint which is then analyzed and the best idea or sentence is then picked out and elaborated on.  My writing style is different in the sense that I am continuously analyzing and planning what I am going to write next as I am writing.  I just write and then I am done.  I go back and do an editing check and occasionally change the structure of a sentence but besides that what I write the first time is generally very close to the final product. There is no picking of a sentence and elaborating on it and there is no need to brainstorm for an idea as most of the time we are given a topic or general idea and I formulate the gist of the idea in my head prior to writing and then finalize while writing.  That is why I do not think that I use a type of pre-writing described in WS.