You are already a writer with long experience. In school you have taken notes, written book reports and term papers, answered exam questions, perhaps kept a journal. In the community or on the job you’ve composed letters and e-mails. You’ve sent text messages or tweets to friends, made lists, maybe even written songs or poetry. All this experience is about to pay off as you tackle college writing, learning by doing.

In this book our purpose is to help you to write better, deeper, clearer, and more satisfying papers than you have ever written before and to learn to do so by actually writing. Throughout the book we’ll give you a lot of practice — in writing processes, patterns, and strategies — to build confidence. And we’ll pose various writing situations and say, “Go for it!”