Eww Pre-writing

When the topic of pre-writing was first mentioned it immediately conjured up the image of me sitting at my desk in 3^rd grade penciling out the useless, at least useless to me, word webs or clustering/branching as it is referred to in our Writing Simplified book. This exercise is the only one I have ever been formally taught and it always worked for me about as well as the bank bailout fixed this nation’s economy. It’s because of this experience that the idea of pre-writing has always left a sour taste in my mouth.
            However after reading the section I realized there are two major forms of pre-writing that I have been using all these years, never really having thought of them as pre-writing exercises. The first and most used form of pre-writing, at least most used by me, is free writing. I will often just ran wild with a topic writing down whatever comes to mind on it then, later, combing through and finding the points of which I feel should be examined and developed. I then take those points and end up smack dab in the middle of the second pre-writing exercise that I use, mapping.
            I organize my chosen points into a coherent structure and map out, sometimes in a very rough form, what my overall paper structure will look and feel like. It is at this point where I will decide and develop such things as the tone, thesis, and topic sentences. After that a rough draft is relatively easy to write up and get feedback on. All of this should culminate into a well developed, well writen and well thought out final paper.