Students who are not writing, or not writing well, may have a second chance to do so if they are able to receive the counsel of published writers to write before writing. These students should be told of the importance of prewriting. Most writers need time to wait for ideas to formulate. In this preparatory stage, writers feel four pressures that move them forward: increasing information, increasing concern, a waiting audience, and an approaching deadline. The writer spends much of this preparatory time in rehearsal. During the rehearsal process the experienced writer perceives signals which tell him or her how to control a subject to produce a working first draft. There seem to be eight principal signals to which writers respond: genre, point of view, voice, news, line, image, pattern, and problem. This prewriting process is largely invisible; it takes place within the writer's head or on scraps of paper that are rarely published. It must be understood however that such a process indeed takes place, that it is significant, and that it can be made clear to the student. (JF)