A study was conducted to determine the efficacy of two prewriting strategies--outlines and rough, rather than polished, first drafts--in lessening the writer's workload. Eighteen college students were assigned a persuasive business letter writing task in control, outline, rough first draft, and polished first draft conditions. The letters were judged on language usage, coherency, idea development, effectiveness, and mechanics. Any benefits from the outlines and rough drafts presumably would be evident in the letters. Subjects were also trained in directed introspection, in which they identified their thoughts during writing as best fitting one of four categories: planning, translating, reviewing, or other. The results of the letter writing task analysis and the introspection training indicated that use of written outlines increased the time spent translating ideas into text and improved the quality of letter, but failed to effect overall writing efficiency. The use of rough versus polished drafts affected when the students revised their work, but had no effect on quality or efficiency. A subsequent survey of science and engineering faculty supported these laboratory results. Academic writers who reported frequent use of outlines during prewriting also tended to use polished drafts. However, their use of a polished draft strategy had no consequences for their productivity. (Author/HTH)