Boice's Balance and Negative Thoughts

I really actually admire the idea of spending equal time preparing for a project as writing it. I think this is a difficult skill to master, but one that comes more easily the longer you have been in school. I can think back to how I would write large paper at the end of the semester my freshman year of college and it was quite unbalanced, by Boice's definition of the term. I like the idea of prewriting, or just gathering information as a  lengthy part of writing, because too often I think it can be rushed or even overlooked. The fact that this can translate to how teachers prepare for classes is interesting to me, though I can't speak to its validity since i have not yet taught. But I think it's important to keep this sense of balance between preparation and actual teaching or writing that Boice talks about.

I found the chapter on negative thoughts and how they affect thinking particularly interesting. It makes sense, as stress has been seen to have all kinds of effects on the human body and brain. I actually tried one of Boice's exercises in which he invites his readers to notice their thinking when writing. I found that I was often too submerged in the topic I was writing about to notice my positive or negative thoughts. In hindsight, I think I was writing pretty positively, though I don't know if it helped my writing at all. At any rate, the assertion that negative thinking has negative effects on writing makes sense, though I'm not yet sure how I could apply this to teaching.