Despite all of the increasing technological advances, writing is still a main form of communication. Beginning in grammar school and continuing through high school and college, thousands of students spend hours preparing essays for class. The majority of students usually begin drafting those essays merely by staring at a blank sheet of paper and contemplating what to write. However, writing essays can be simplified by using four types of prewriting: free writing, clustering, specifying, and outlining.
             The first type of prewriting is free writing. It is used to help writers select a topic to write about. The key to free writing is to disregard correct spelling and punctuation, and just write down everything that comes to mind. To begin free writing, simply choose a subject and start writing about it. Take nature, for example. The word "nature" evokes many diverse images. Ranging from outside surroundings, personal relationships with nature, the beach, a beautiful sunset, a peaceful waterfall, or even the many environmental concerns that we are faced with today. Environmental concerns could stem out an excellent idea that could lead to a topic such as the need to recycle. Images of nature can inspire creativity, which leads to a variety of different topics.
             The next type of prewriting is clustering. Once a topic has been selected, clustering helps to accumulate the essential support for the paper. Clustering begins with a sheet of paper that has only one topic written and circled in the center. Anything that relates to the topic is then written down with a line branching off from the original topic. This process is continued until enough information is brainstormed. If the original topic is movies, the support branches would include different types of movies such as comedy, drama, romance, action, and horror. Then a list of different movies that fall into each one of these categories extends ou
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