My writing begins with a lot of thought and a lot of erasing entirely before something concrete hits the page. Typically when writing essays I would begin in the middle of the essay, work through the body, write the conclusion and then finally complete the introduction. My thought process is “How am I supposed to know what I am introducing before I write it, and what points will I know to bring up before I know how I conclude the essay?” But with all my writing I experience plenty of doubt and revision before I’ve written something I’m happy with. Sometimes this means that I will get frustrated and call the piece of writing complete even though I’m unhappy or sometimes I’ll just leave the piece and never complete it. I like to have my writing reviewed, partially because I will without a doubt have errors that others will see before I do after staring at the same words for so long, but also because I crave validation, and even if I’ve written something I know to be well-written, I want to hear it from someone else. My writing is erratic, and involves a lot of backtracking and searching through dictionary.com and thesaurus.com to find the perfect word(s). I read through my entire piece of writing in my head and less often aloud. I don’t usually write fist drafts and then edit, instead I build the entire thing from the ground up like a building, looking for any gaps or weaknesses in the foundation. And like trying to find that simile, it often takes a while. My writing process shows how much of a perfectionist I am, but I like to think that I communicate well, and with an intelligent vocabulary.  “How do you write?”, I write like me.