As a college writer you probably wrestle with the question, What should I write? You may feel you have nothing to say or nothing worth saying. Maybe your difficulty lies in understanding the requirements of your writing situation, finding a topic, or uncovering information about it. Perhaps you, like many other college writers, have convinced yourself that professional writers have some special way of discovering ideas for writing. But they have no magic. In reality, what they have is experience and confidence, the products of lots of practice writing.

In The Bedford Guide for College Writers, we want you to become a better writer by actually writing. To help you do so, we’ll give you a lot of practice as well as useful advice to help you build your skills and confidence. Because writing and learning to write are many-faceted tasks, each part of A Writer’s Guide is devoted to a different aspect of writing. Together, these four parts contribute to a seamless whole, much like the writing process itself.

Part One, “A College Writer’s Processes.” This part introduces writing, reading, and thinking critically — essential processes for meeting college expectations.

Part Two, “A Writer’s Situations.” The nine chapters in Part Two form the core of The Bedford Guide. Each presents a writing situation and then guides you as you write a paper in response. You’ll develop skills in recalling, observing, interviewing, comparing and contrasting, explaining causes and effects, taking a stand, proposing a solution, evaluating and reviewing, and supporting a position with sources.

Part Three, “Other Writing Situations.” This part leads you through five special situations that most students encounter at some point — writing about literature or visuals and writing online, under pressure, or at work.

Part Four, “A Writer’s Strategies.” Part Four opens with one student’s strategies, showing how a paper evolves from idea to final form. The rest is packed with tips and activities that you can use to generate ideas, plan, draft, develop, revise, edit, and carry to the future what you have learned as a writer.