Many people disagree about when planning ends and drafting begins. For some people, sitting down and cranking out paragraphs and ideas on paper or the computer is crucial for planning what they have to say, but other people transfer the ideas shaped and organized in the planning stage to prose during the drafting stage. Ultimately the goal of the drafting stage is to complete a draft of your writing project that includes an introduction, a body, and conclusion. Our methods for getting to that end can often determine our success and satisfaction with writing.
Some people believe that revising involves a recursive honing of ideas and parts of the paper; that is, the writing process becomes a continual time-loop of invention and refinement. Another group of writers and writing instructors advocate an understanding of revision as a process through which one becomes aware of one's strengths and weaknesses and develops strategies for honing those strengths and eliminating the weaknesses. Others argue that editing and revising are intertwined in a mission to improve a writer's message on several levels, be that conceptual, organizational or mechanical.