Brainstorming is the word I first heard for prewriting all the way back in middle school. "Jot down ideas." One teacher said. Another teacher...told us to create brainstorm "webs" where you start with one idea in the middle and then branch of with different little bubbles...I never did that. I would begin my papers and just write and revise (or sometimes never revise) all throughout middle school and most of high school. Late in high school I took the advice of one particular professor and started with an outline. The outline could help with the flow of the whole paper, I was told. Several of my professors critiqued the placement of my paragraphs or sections of the piece. They'd suggest this paragraph go more towards the beginning, or after a preceding section. So I started using outlines for some of my papers, especially when I experienced difficulty beginning the piece. The most useful prewriting exercise I practice today is to "free write," or simply start writing ideas and continue scribbling without worrying about structure, spelling, grammar, or whatever. This helps me get my ideas down and stretch my writing muscles - so to speak. More recently for college papers I have used a combination of free-writing and outlining to begin an essay and it has worked out pretty well for me.
Encomium of Helen
The one section I didn't really understand was #10.
"Divine sweetness transmitted through words is inductive of pleasure, reductive of pain. Thus, by entering into the opinion of the soul the force of incantation is wont to beguile and persuade and alter it by witchcraft, and the two arts of witchcraft and magic are errors of the soul and deceivers of opinion."
