When Writing

When beginning an essay, I just try to ramble on as much as I can by throwing out general ideas and statements.  After I feel as if I've written a sufficient amount, I begin to narrow down the topics I want to discuss. After reading John Trimble's section of getting launched, his idea is 'start small' really works for me. I'm able to take a couple  of small ideas that I've written down and expand on them. I realized that the problem I have with writing is becoming too general or branching off too much. I sometimes get off topic, because I try to cover too many things.     When I pre-write, I will try to attack the topic from as many points of view as possible. I like to look at the full  spectrum of every subject I write about. This seems to be a very effective way to acquire information about the  subject matter and it does a good job of keeping the writer's bias out to a minimum. I enjoy this strategy of writing  and it's very comfortable for me. It's also quite effective.