why do i have so much trouble writing essays

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Why Students Struggle With Essay Writing

Published by Alaxendra Bets at August 19th, 2021 , Revised On August 23, 2023

Writing comes naturally for some of us. Students with good essay writing skills have words flow into sentences , sentences, paragraphs , and paragraphs into an essay or dissertation . However, for many students, writing is tedious work they want to avoid.

If you are struggling with essay or dissertation writing , rest assured you are not the only student facing this problem. But it’s important to understand the reasons for your essay, coursework, exams, or dissertation writing failures to put your academic life back on track.

Here, we discuss and attempt to figure out the causes as to why are so many students struggling with essay writing.

In the unfortunate event that you have already failed coursework, dissertation, essay, or exam, we have compiled comprehensive guidelines on what you could do to improve your situation.

Reasons Why Students Struggle with Essay Writing

Before we shed light on the obscure causes of students finding it hard to deal with essay and coursework writing , let us look into the more apparent causes. Research studies have confirmed that writing and reading are reciprocal processes. Apart from providing professional writing guidelines to students, we also provide professional writing services , i.e. essay services , coursework writing services and dissertation writing services .

If you read regularly enough, your writing will improve by leaps and bounds. Likewise, your writing improves your reading significantly. Many students apprehend the importance of this relationship as they read complicated transcripts and texts to improve their writing abilities.

But not all students can comprehend this relationship between reading and writing, and eventually, writing becomes a continuous struggle for them. Debbie Lee, in her article published on Educator Community (2017), states that;

“To write, we use many parts of our brain at the same time as well as the kinesthetic process of writing. For many students, especially those with language or fine motor skill delays, the task of writing is challenging.”

Poor Mechanical & Content Skills

In the same article, Debbie argued that students with poor processing and poor content and mechanical skills often struggle with essay writing. The most notable processing skills that many students would often lack include fluent development of ideas, language formulation and ideation, and active working memory.

Content and mechanical skills that are essential for any student to be good at writing are as follows;

Expressing ideas
Organising ideas
Punctuation
Capitalisation
Basic Spelling & Vocabulary
Automatic Letter Formation
Clarity of Expression
Use of appropriate grammar in essay
Different styles of essay writing
Flexibility in the writing process
Understanding the viewpoint from the text in books
Lack of enthusiasm and passion

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When you consider all of the above underlying skills that students should master to become proficient writers, you can understand how frustrating it can be. Perhaps, it also explains why most students prefer not to write their papers and get experienced writers to write .

No Right Answers When You Are Inexperienced

Unable to find what the right answer to a particular problem question is? Many students end up scratching their heads around the basic question they must answer as part of their essay or dissertation assignment.

While every other skill student learns the right way to do it, it can be hard to figure out the correct way to write an essay because most of us approach writing naturally and emotionally.

But let it be clearly stated here that the right or correct way of writing an essay does exist if your supervisor or tutor is not teaching the essay writing structures for different types of essays , dissertations, and research papers, you are not getting the help you deserve, and the confidence needed to jump into an assignment writing task.

To produce a high-quality essay paper, you need to learn to be good at brainstorming, writing the essay outline, and developing the rough draft and the final copy because that is how you will improve your writing skills.

ResearchProspect provides the tools, and they help students need to have their essays written to the highest possible academic standard.

Fear of Failure

Have so many questions in mind before writing even a word of your assignment? What is the question I need to address ? What is the objective of this assignment? Which academic sources should I use as reference material? What should be the structure of the essay ? What abilities and skills will I be graded on? What writing style must I follow?

These questions and many more could swarm around in your mind. Don’t worry, Don’t Panic. Don’t Be Overwhelmed! It’s normal to have so many questions. It’s completely normal to fear failure, especially if you haven’t had much writing experience in your previous academic years.

If you haven’t been taught about the writing and structuring processes (yes, a range of writing structures and styles exist), it can be pretty hard to get going. The fear of failure will stay with students if they do not provide help on creative writing rules and the different types of essay writing structures .

For example, this is an article on how you structure a dissertation paper.

Also read: Sociology Essay Writing Service .

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Helping Students Who Struggle with Essay Writing

The world we are living in is changing rapidly. With texts, tweets, posts, snaps, and Insta around us, it’s no wonder students don’t want to get in struggle with writing. This is particularly frustrating for teachers and students alike, as students scrap to express their thoughts and views clearly in the traditional fashion their schools expect them to.

But the world of academia has remained pretty much unchanged over centuries, with universities expecting students to become good researchers and capable writers . We will never replace essays , assignments, research , dissertation , and analysis with tweets, Instagram posts, and Facebook stories in universities.

Your teachers will not be delighted with you if you eagerly indulge in social media postings but struggle with basic essay writing tasks. A study conducted by ResearchProspect concluded that as many as 3 of every 5 students lack proficiency in writing – a number that cannot be ignored.

Our Essay Writers

ResearchProspect writers know the writing rules and are proficient in all types of writing structures and styles.

Our essay writers understand that essays aren’t going anywhere, and so they have mastered the art of presenting their expression, arguments, and analysis through their writing. They love sentence diagrams and grammar drills because it is their job to do so.

Have a last-minute essay to finish? Don’t panic! Please fill out our online order form and get your essay paper delivered to your email address promptly. Any subject, any deadline, any complexity – we promise 100% plagiarism free and 100% confidential service.

The essay writing tips in this blog post aim to help readers establish why they struggle to write a first-class essay or dissertation paper that meets academic expectations. The post directly aims to help students experiencing writing difficulties in achieving the grade they desire despite their writing limitations.

View some essay writing samples here!

Learn how to write an essay with a bang!

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ResearchProspect is the UK registered essay writing website helping students across the globe since 2011. Our writers hold master’s to Ph.D. degrees from reputed educational institutes. No matter how urgent or complex your requirements are, our services have helped thousands of students over the years at a time when they needed them the most. So stop struggling with essay writing and get essay writing help from our professional essay writers . View our essay services here or view our full range of services here.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many students struggle with essay writing.

Many students face challenges with essay writing due to various factors such as lack of effective strategies, time management issues, language barriers, and unfamiliarity with academic conventions. Support and guidance can help mitigate these struggles.

Writing Anxiety

What this handout is about.

This handout discusses the situational nature of writer’s block and other writing anxiety and suggests things you can try to feel more confident and optimistic about yourself as a writer.

What are writing anxiety and writer’s block?

“Writing anxiety” and “writer’s block” are informal terms for a wide variety of apprehensive and pessimistic feelings about writing. These feelings may not be pervasive in a person’s writing life. For example, you might feel perfectly fine writing a biology lab report but apprehensive about writing a paper on a novel. You may confidently tackle a paper about the sociology of gender but delete and start over twenty times when composing an email to a cute classmate to suggest a coffee date. In other words, writing anxiety and writers’ block are situational (Hjortshoj 7). These terms do NOT describe psychological attributes. People aren’t born anxious writers; rather, they become anxious or blocked through negative or difficult experiences with writing.

When do these negative feelings arise?

Although there is a great deal of variation among individuals, there are also some common experiences that writers in general find stressful.

For example, you may struggle when you are:

adjusting to a new form of writing—for example, first year college writing, papers in a new field of study, or longer forms than you are used to (a long research paper, a senior thesis, a master’s thesis, a dissertation) (Hjortshoj 56-76).
writing for a reader or readers who have been overly critical or demanding in the past.
remembering negative criticism received in the past—even if the reader who criticized your work won’t be reading your writing this time.
working with limited time or with a lot of unstructured time.
responding to an assignment that seems unrelated to academic or life goals.
dealing with troubling events outside of school.

What are some strategies for handling these feelings?

Get support.

Choose a writing buddy, someone you trust to encourage you in your writing life. Your writing buddy might be a friend or family member, a classmate, a teacher, a colleague, or a Writing Center tutor. Talk to your writing buddy about your ideas, your writing process, your worries, and your successes. Share pieces of your writing. Make checking in with your writing buddy a regular part of your schedule. When you share pieces of writing with your buddy, use our handout on asking for feedback .

In his book Understanding Writing Blocks, Keith Hjortshoj describes how isolation can harm writers, particularly students who are working on long projects not connected with coursework (134-135). He suggests that in addition to connecting with supportive individuals, such students can benefit from forming or joining a writing group, which functions in much the same way as a writing buddy. A group can provide readers, deadlines, support, praise, and constructive criticism. For help starting one, see our handout about writing groups .

Identify your strengths

Often, writers who are experiencing block or anxiety have a worse opinion of their own writing than anyone else! Make a list of the things you do well. You might ask a friend or colleague to help you generate such a list. Here are some possibilities to get you started:

I explain things well to people.
I get people’s interest.
I have strong opinions.
I listen well.
I am critical of what I read.
I see connections.

Choose at least one strength as your starting point. Instead of saying “I can’t write,” say “I am a writer who can …”

Recognize that writing is a complex process

Writing is an attempt to fix meaning on the page, but you know, and your readers know, that there is always more to be said on a topic. The best writers can do is to contribute what they know and feel about a topic at a particular point in time.

Writers often seek “flow,” which usually entails some sort of breakthrough followed by a beautifully coherent outpouring of knowledge. Flow is both a possibility—most people experience it at some point in their writing lives—and a myth. Inevitably, if you write over a long period of time and for many different situations, you will encounter obstacles. As Hjortshoj explains, obstacles are particularly common during times of transition—transitions to new writing roles or to new kinds of writing.

Think of yourself as an apprentice.

If block or apprehension is new for you, take time to understand the situations you are writing in. In particular, try to figure out what has changed in your writing life. Here are some possibilities:

You are writing in a new format.
You are writing longer papers than before.
You are writing for new audiences.
You are writing about new subject matter.
You are turning in writing from different stages of the writing process—for example, planning stages or early drafts.

It makes sense to have trouble when dealing with a situation for the first time. It’s also likely that when you confront these new situations, you will learn and grow. Writing in new situations can be rewarding. Not every format or audience will be right for you, but you won’t know which ones might be right until you try them. Think of new writing situations as apprenticeships. When you’re doing a new kind of writing, learn as much as you can about it, gain as many skills in that area as you can, and when you finish the apprenticeship, decide which of the skills you learned will serve you well later on. You might be surprised.

Below are some suggestions for how to learn about new kinds of writing:

Ask a lot of questions of people who are more experienced with this kind of writing. Here are some of the questions you might ask: What’s the purpose of this kind of writing? Who’s the audience? What are the most important elements to include? What’s not as important? How do you get started? How do you know when what you’ve written is good enough? How did you learn to write this way?
Ask a lot of questions of the person who assigned you a piece of writing. If you have a paper, the best place to start is with the written assignment itself. For help with this, see our handout on understanding assignments .
Look for examples of this kind of writing. (You can ask your instructor for a recommended example). Look, especially, for variation. There are often many different ways to write within a particular form. Look for ways that feel familiar to you, approaches that you like. You might want to look for published models or, if this seems too intimidating, look at your classmates’ writing. In either case, ask yourself questions about what these writers are doing, and take notes. How does the writer begin and end? In what order does the writer tell things? How and when does the writer convey her or his main point? How does the writer bring in other people’s ideas? What is the writer’s purpose? How is that purpose achieved?
Read our handouts about how to write in specific fields or how to handle specific writing assignments.
Listen critically to your readers. Before you dismiss or wholeheartedly accept what they say, try to understand them. If a reader has given you written comments, ask yourself questions to figure out the reader’s experience of your paper: What is this reader looking for? What am I doing that satisfies this reader? In what ways is this reader still unsatisfied? If you can’t answer these questions from the reader’s comments, then talk to the reader, or ask someone else to help you interpret the comments.
Most importantly, don’t try to do everything at once. Start with reasonable expectations. You can’t write like an expert your first time out. Nobody does! Use the criticism you get.

Once you understand what readers want, you are in a better position to decide what to do with their criticisms. There are two extreme possibilities—dismissing the criticisms and accepting them all—but there is also a lot of middle ground. Figure out which criticisms are consistent with your own purposes, and do the hard work of engaging with them. Again, don’t expect an overnight turn-around; recognize that changing writing habits is a process and that papers are steps in the process.

Chances are that at some point in your writing life you will encounter readers who seem to dislike, disagree with, or miss the point of your work. Figuring out what to do with criticism from such readers is an important part of a writer’s growth.

Try new tactics when you get stuck

Often, writing blocks occur at particular stages of the writing process. The writing process is cyclical and variable. For different writers, the process may include reading, brainstorming, drafting, getting feedback, revising, and editing. These stages do not always happen in this order, and once a writer has been through a particular stage, chances are she or he hasn’t seen the last of that stage. For example, brainstorming may occur all along the way.

Figure out what your writing process looks like and whether there’s a particular stage where you tend to get stuck. Perhaps you love researching and taking notes on what you read, and you have a hard time moving from that work to getting started on your own first draft. Or once you have a draft, it seems set in stone and even though readers are asking you questions and making suggestions, you don’t know how to go back in and change it. Or just the opposite may be true; you revise and revise and don’t want to let the paper go.

Wherever you have trouble, take a longer look at what you do and what you might try. Sometimes what you do is working for you; it’s just a slow and difficult process. Other times, what you do may not be working; these are the times when you can look around for other approaches to try:

Talk to your writing buddy and to other colleagues about what they do at the particular stage that gets you stuck.
Read about possible new approaches in our handouts on brainstorming and revising .
Try thinking of yourself as an apprentice to a stage of the writing process and give different strategies a shot.
Cut your paper into pieces and tape them to the wall, use eight different colors of highlighters, draw a picture of your paper, read your paper out loud in the voice of your favorite movie star….

Okay, we’re kind of kidding with some of those last few suggestions, but there is no limit to what you can try (for some fun writing strategies, check out our online animated demos ). When it comes to conquering a block, give yourself permission to fall flat on your face. Trying and failing will you help you arrive at the thing that works for you.

Celebrate your successes

Start storing up positive experiences with writing. Whatever obstacles you’ve faced, celebrate the occasions when you overcome them. This could be something as simple as getting started, sharing your work with someone besides a teacher, revising a paper for the first time, trying out a new brainstorming strategy, or turning in a paper that has been particularly challenging for you. You define what a success is for you. Keep a log or journal of your writing successes and breakthroughs, how you did it, how you felt. This log can serve as a boost later in your writing life when you face new challenges.

Wait a minute, didn’t we already say that? Yes. It’s worth repeating. Most people find relief for various kinds of anxieties by getting support from others. Sometimes the best person to help you through a spell of worry is someone who’s done that for you before—a family member, a friend, a mentor. Maybe you don’t even need to talk with this person about writing; maybe you just need to be reminded to believe in yourself, that you can do it.

If you don’t know anyone on campus yet whom you have this kind of relationship with, reach out to someone who seems like they could be a good listener and supportive. There are a number of professional resources for you on campus, people you can talk through your ideas or your worries with. A great place to start is the UNC Writing Center. If you know you have a problem with writing anxiety, make an appointment well before the paper is due. You can come to the Writing Center with a draft or even before you’ve started writing. You can also approach your instructor with questions about your writing assignment. If you’re an undergraduate, your academic advisor and your residence hall advisor are other possible resources. Counselors at Counseling and Wellness Services are also available to talk with you about anxieties and concerns that extend beyond writing.

Apprehension about writing is a common condition on college campuses. Because writing is the most common means of sharing our knowledge, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we write. This handout has given some suggestions for how to relieve that pressure. Talk with others; realize we’re all learning; take an occasional risk; turn to the people who believe in you. Counter negative experiences by actively creating positive ones.

Even after you have tried all of these strategies and read every Writing Center handout, invariably you will still have negative experiences in your writing life. When you get a paper back with a bad grade on it or when you get a rejection letter from a journal, fend off the negative aspects of that experience. Try not to let them sink in; try not to let your disappointment fester. Instead, jump right back in to some area of the writing process: choose one suggestion the evaluator has made and work on it, or read and discuss the paper with a friend or colleague, or do some writing or revising—on this or any paper—as quickly as possible.

Failures of various kinds are an inevitable part of the writing process. Without them, it would be difficult if not impossible to grow as a writer. Learning often occurs in the wake of a startling event, something that stirs you up, something that makes you wonder. Use your failures to keep moving.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Hjortshoj, Keith. 2001. Understanding Writing Blocks . New York: Oxford University Press.

This is a particularly excellent resource for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Hjortshoj writes about his experiences working with university students experiencing block. He explains the transitional nature of most writing blocks and the importance of finding support from others when working on long projects.

Rose, Mike. 1985. When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block and Other Composing-Process Problems . New York: Guilford.

This collection of empirical studies is written primarily for writing teachers, researchers, and tutors. Studies focus on writers of various ages, including young children, high school students, and college students.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Dealing with Obstacles and Developing Good Habits

Overcoming Writing Anxiety and Writer’s Block

two soldiers in twilight scaling a giant ladder on an obstacle course

You may be thinking, “All this advice is good, but sometimes I just get stuck! What I normally do just isn’t working!” That’s a familiar feeling for all writers. Sometimes the writing just seems to flow as if by magic, but then the flow stops cold. Your brain seems to have run out of things to say. If you just wait for the magic to come back, you might wait a long time. What professional writers know is that writing takes consistent effort. Writing comes out of a regular practice—a habit. Professional writers also know that not everything they write ends up in the final draft. Sometimes we have to write what Anne Lamott calls a “shitty rough draft.” One of my favorite writing professors, Duncan Carter, used to say that he was a terrible writer but a great reviser, and that’s what helped him write when inspiration wasn’t available. So how do writers get going when they feel stuck or uninspired? They develop a set of habits and have more than one way to write to get the words flowing again.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

You might associate the idea of writing anxiety or writer’s block with procrastination, and procrastination certainly can be either a cause or an effect of writing anxiety. You can learn more about procrastination later in this section of the text. But writing anxiety or writer’s block is more of a condition. We might even venture to call it an ailment. Uh oh. Do you have it? To aid you in self-diagnosis here, let’s take some time to figure out what it is. Then, if you find that you’re afflicted, we’ll help you to determine the best course of treatment.

What is Writing Anxiety and How Do You Know if You Have It?

Do you worry excessively about writing assignments? Do they make you feel uneasy or agitated? Do you have negative feelings about certain types of writing? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might suffer from writing anxiety. Writing anxiety simply means that a writer is experiencing negative feelings about a given writing task. The last of the questions above points out something important about this condition that has been afflicting writers everywhere for centuries: writing anxiety is often more about the audience and/or purpose for a given writing task than it is about the mere act of writing itself.

Let’s consider this situational nature of writing anxiety for a moment. Say you just bought a new pair of headphones. You brought them home, removed all the packaging, plugged them into your MP3 player, and they’re amazing! So you decide to visit the company website, and you write a stellar review of the product, giving it a five-star rating and including descriptive details about the headphones’ comfortable fit, excellent sound quality, ability to cancel outside noise, and reasonable price.

Now, let’s say that the next day in biology class your instructor covers the topic of biomes, and you learn about animal habitats and biodiversity and the interrelation and interdependence of species within biomes. You find it fascinating and can’t wait to learn more. But then something terrible happens. Your instructor assigns a term project on the subject. As your instructor begins to describe the length and other specifications for the report, complete with formatting guidelines, citation requirements, and a bibliography at the end, your palms start to sweat, your stomach feels uneasy, and you begin to have trouble focusing on anything else your instructor has to say. You’re experiencing writing anxiety.

Writing anxiety is the condition of feeling uneasy about writing. Writer’s block is what you experience when you can’t manage to put words on the page. But your condition isn’t about the act of writing. Just yesterday you wrote a great review for those cool new headphones. So why do you suddenly feel paralyzed by the thought of writing the biology essay? Let’s consider some possible causes.

What Causes Writing Anxiety?

The causes of writing anxiety are many. Here are just a few:

Inexperience with the type of writing task
Previous negative experiences with writing (e.g. someone, maybe a teacher, has given you negative feedback or said negative things about your writing)
Negative feelings bout writing (e.g. “I’m not a good writer”; “I hate writing.”)
Immediate deadline
Distant deadline
Lack of interest in the topic
Personal problems or life events

Level of experience may explain why you felt comfortable writing the headphone review while you break out in a sweat at the thought of the biology paper. If you’ve never written anything similar to a specific assignment, maybe you’re unsure about whether or not you can meet the assignment requirements or the teacher’s expectations. Or maybe the last time you turned in a written report for school you received negative feedback or a bad grade from the teacher. Maybe you procrastinated most of the term and now the paper is due next week and you feel overwhelmed. Or maybe it’s the second week of the term and the finals week deadline seems so far away that you’re not motivated to write.

Knowing the cause of your writing anxiety can help you move beyond it and get writing, even if you can’t completely eliminate the problem. If the topic doesn’t interest you or if you’re having problems at home, those probably aren’t issues that will just disappear, but if you try some of the following strategies, I think you’ll find that you can at least move forward with even the most anxiety-inducing of writing assignments.

Strategies for Overcoming or Managing Writing Anxiety

There are a number of strategies upon which you can draw to help you move past the feeling of being lost or stuck. Consider if some of the following tactics can help you to get writing again.

Just Start Writing

It might sound like it’s oversimplifying the matter, but it’s true. Half the battle is to just start writing. Try some strategies like freewriting or dialectic notetaking. (For more on freewriting, see “ Strategies for Getting Started ” in the “Prewriting” section of this text, and for more on dialectic notetaking , refer to the section on “Writing about Texts”). You should also believe in the importance of writing badly. Bruce Ballenger, a well-known writer and professor of English at Boise State explains why writing badly is an important part of the writing process:

Giving myself permission to write badly makes it much more likely that I will write what I don’t expect to write, and from those surprises will come some of my best writing. Writing badly is also a convenient alternative to staring off into space and waiting for inspiration.

a large block of unsculpted pottery clay

Sometimes the biggest problem writers have with getting started is that they feel like the writing needs to be good, or well organized, or they feel like they need to start at the beginning. None of that is true. All you need to do is start.

Have you ever seen a potter make a clay pot? Before a potter can start shaping or throwing a pot, they have to bring the big wet blob of clay and slap it down on the table. It’s heavy and wet and messy, but it’s the essential raw material. No clay? No pot. “Bad writing” is a lot like that. You have to dump all the words and ideas onto the table. Just get them out. Only then do you have the raw material you need to start shaping the words into something beautiful and lasting. You can wait until the revision stages to worry about shaping your writing to be its best. For now, just get the ideas on the table.

Create Smaller Tasks and Short-Term Goals

One of the biggest barriers to writing can be that the task just seems too large, and perhaps the due date is weeks away. Each of these conditions can contribute to feelings of being overwhelmed or to the tendency to procrastinate. But the remedy is simple and will help you keep writing something each week toward your deadline and toward the finished product: divide larger writing tasks into smaller, more manageable tasks and set intermediate deadlines.

The process that the authors used for writing this text provides a good example. As authors, we had to divide the text into sections, but we also had to plan the process for a first draft, peer reviews, and revisions, along with adding images, links, and other resources, not to mention the final publication of the text online. Had we not divided up the larger tasks into smaller ones and set short-term goals and deadlines, the process of writing the text would have been overwhelming. We didn’t meet every single intermediate deadline right on time, but they helped move us along and helped us to meet the most important deadline—the final one—with a complete text that was ready to publish on schedule.

Imagine that you have a term paper that’s assigned during Week 1 of a eleven-week term, and it’s due during finals week. Make a list of all the tasks you can think of that need to be completed, from beginning to end, to accomplish all that the assignment requires. List the tasks, and assign yourself due dates for each task. Consider taking it a step further and create a task table that allows you to include a column for additional notes. Here’s an example:

Collaborate

Get support from a friend, family member, or classmate. Talk to your friends or family, or to a tutor in your college writing center, about your ideas for your essay. Sometimes talking about your ideas is the best way to flesh them out and get more ideas flowing. Write down notes during or just after your conversation. Classmates are a great resource because they’re studying the same subjects as you, and they’re working on the same assignments. Talk to them often, and form study groups. Ask people to look at your ideas or writing and to give you feedback. Set goals and hold each other accountable for meeting deadlines (a little friendly competition can be motivating!).

Talk to other potential readers. Ask them what they would expect from this type of writing. Meet with a tutor in your campus writing center. Be sure to come to the appointment prepared with a printed copy of the assignment and a short list of what you want to work on, along with a printed copy of your essay.

For more about getting help from a tutor see “Why Meet with a Writing Tutor?” and “Preparing to Meet with a Tutor” in the “ Giving and Receiving Feedback ” section of this text.

Embrace Reality

Don’t imagine the situation of your writing assignment to be any better or worse than it really is. There are some important truths for you to recognize:

Focus on what you do best rather than fretting about your perceived weaknesses.
Acknowledge that writing can be difficult and that all you need to do is do your best.
Recognize what might be new or unfamiliar about the type of writing that you’re doing.
Understand that confusion and frustration is a natural part of experiencing new things, and it’s okay; it’s part of the learning process.
Remember that you’re a student and that you’re supposed to be experiencing things that are new and unfamiliar (new formats, new audiences, new subject matter, new processes, new approaches, etc.).
Repeat the mantra, “It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be DONE.”

Seek Out Experts

If you can, find more experienced writers (especially related to the type of writing that you’re doing) and ask them questions. Sometimes, this might just mean a friend or family member who’s already taken a couple years of college courses. Maybe it’s a fellow student who has already taken the class you’re taking now. Also, the tutors in your college writing center can be a big help at any stage in the writing process. Give them a call and make an appointment. And don’t forget the expert you see all the time throughout any class that you take: your instructor. Ask your instructor for suggestions. That’s what she’s there for.

Another way to learn from the experience of others is to look at examples of other pieces of writing of the type that you’re working on. How is this piece organized? Does it make use of source material? What sort of tone does it use? If you don’t know where to find examples, ask your instructor. If he doesn’t have them at the ready, he’ll likely be able to give you some suggestions about where to find some.

The Word on College Reading and Writing Copyright © by Carol Burnell, Jaime Wood, Monique Babin, Susan Pesznecker, and Nicole Rosevear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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A description of common causes of writer’s block and advice for overcoming these blocks.

Written by Kylie Regan.

Most writers experience writer’s block at some point in their life, at various stages of the writing process. Often a solution can be found by speaking with your instructor (if you are a student) or a writing tutor. But there are ways to combat writer’s block on your own, too! When you’re having trouble figuring out what to write next, consider these common types of writer’s block and try the strategies that sound most promising.

If you're having trouble finding a starting place for the assignment...

Brainstorm topics that are interesting to you. Use the invention strategies suggested by a tutor or teacher to generate questions or thoughts that serve as useful starting places.
Write down all the primary ideas you'd like to express and then fill in each with the smaller ideas that make up each primary idea. This can easily be converted into an outline .
If your paper involves conducting research, you can look for places where you disagree with another thinker’s claim or feel more work needs to be done. Identifying gaps or conflicts in the existing conversation around a topic is often a great starting place.

Example: You’ve been asked to analyze a television commercial. You remember three commercials that you found interesting and re-watch them, taking notes on details that stand out to you. You freewrite for five minutes on each of the three commercials, and discover that you have much more to say about one than the others. You focus on that one, expanding your freewrite into the an outline for the entire essay.

If you have a topic and an outline, but can’t think of an interesting beginning…

After the paper is completely drafted, you can get all the sections in the correct order and read it start-to-finish to ensure that transitions are smooth.

Example: You have to complete a lab report and hate writing the “Introduction” section. In order to complete the project on time, you overcome your anxiety about writing that section by first writing the “Materials,” “Method,” and “Results” sections. You write the “Introduction” last, reorder, and revise holistically.

If you’ve chosen or been assigned a topic that bores you…

If you’ve chosen a common topic just because you thought it would be easy to write on, reconsider: it’s easiest to write about something in which you have a personal interest.
If you can’t change the major scope or goal of the assignment, try to understand why you’re being asked to write it. What knowledge will you gain from completing the assignment? What skills will you be able to practice? Who would benefit from reading my finished product, and how would that positively change that community?

Example: You work for your campus newspaper and have been assigned to write an article on an upcoming career fair. Although at first your editor asks you to simply inform students of what companies will be represented at the event, you find that you’re much more interested in profiling a certain company that’s new to the fair. You talk to your editor and get permission to write the article that engages you more.

Example: The same scenario as above, but your editor tells you that you have to write the original, more general article. Although it’s boring to you, you reflect that you’ll gain practice presenting a mass of information in concise language, certainly a useful skill for a journalist. Additionally, there are thousands of students on campus who would benefit from the information your article will cover. This motivates you to write the article.

If you don’t understand the assignment…

The better you can articulate the source of confusion, the more help others can give you.

Example: Your composition instructor has asked you to write a Digital Literacy Narrative. The assignment sheet provides a definition of “digital literacy,” and you have some class notes that further clarify the concept. But after reviewing these materials, you’re still not certain if your instructor would allow you to write about how you learned to use different coffee-making technologies, as they aren’t traditionally considered digital devices. You go to your instructor’s office hours to ask if this topic would be acceptable, taking your annotated assignment sheet and class notes with you.

If you’re worried that you’ll write the wrong thing…

Remember that the first draft is not the final draft. If you’re not sure that an argument will pan out, just start writing it and see where it takes you. You can always delete paragraphs that don’t work out later, but the best insights often come from pushing yourself into uncertain territory—if you never feel unsure about your claims, you’re probably just reproducing existing findings!
If you’re worried that a small detail is incorrect, that’s okay in the draft phase. Rather than spending a lot of time checking every small detail as you go, just leave a note to yourself to check your sources later. Or, leave the troublesome paragraph for later and work on a section that you’re more confident writing about.

Example: You’re writing a paper on King Henry VIII and can’t remember off the top of your head whether he beheaded two or three of his wives. The answer to this question wouldn’t change your major argument either way, so you decide it’s not important to look up right now. You write “two,” highlight it, and leave a note to yourself to check this minor supporting fact against your research notes later.

If you’re worried that your sentences aren’t polished enough…

Remember, again, that the first draft is not the final draft. The sooner you get some words on the page, the more time you’ll have to edit your prose for clarity and style later. Complete an entire draft before you start editing on the sentence level.
If you find yourself consistently obsessing over individual sentences as you go, try dimming or covering your laptop or computer monitor’s screen so that you can’t see what you’re typing. You can also try writing in a notebook and typing up your work later.
Consciously stop any non-productive comments running through your head by replacing them with productive ones. Rather than labeling yourself a “bad writer,” think about what parts of the writing process you excel at (idea generation, conclusions, sentence style, etc.) and plan to allot more time for the steps that take you longer.

Example: You’re writing a paper on the effects of all-nighters on college student’s health. You can’t think of the word “deleterious.” After a few seconds of futilely scanning your brain for it, you write “super harmful,” knowing that you can find the more professional word later.

If you’re so stressed out that you can’t seem to put a word on the page…

Take a short break! If you’re close to a deadline and worried about losing track of time, then set a timer for ten or fifteen minutes and use that short window to relax before getting back to work. Stretch, move away from your desk, and don’t neglect your sleeping and eating schedule. It’s much harder to write if you’re sleep-deprived or dehydrated.
If you have several days left before your deadline, break the assignment into manageable parts. Set measurable writing goals for yourself, like writing without interruption for thirty minutes every day, or writing a certain number of words by a given deadline.
Finally, ask for help! Writing is most stressful when you’re doing it by yourself for a long period of time. Asking a tutor or a friend to talk through your ideas can help you get some perspective on the assignment, and remind you that it’s nothing to be anxious about.

Example: You have a week before an important job application is due and you’re anxious that the search committee will dislike your cover letter before you’ve even written it. Since you still have plenty of time before the deadline, you plan to work on it for just thirty minutes every day. You talk to a friend who helps you make a list of reasons why you’re qualified for this job, and you stick to your writing schedule.

If you’re easily distracted when you open your computer to write…

Try temporarily disabling your internet access. Take your laptop to a space that doesn’t have internet access. Draft by hand in a notebook and type up your work later. Or, simply turn your computer’s wifi detector off, or put your document into full-screen or “Focus” mode: these obstacles are easy to overcome, but the time it takes to make the few extra clicks to open an internet browser is sometimes enough to stop yourself.
You can also try setting a timer forcing yourself to do nothing but write for a short period of time. Even a ten-minute focused writing session can help you break through initial writer’s block and build momentum on your project.

Example: You start to work on your paper, and after writing one sentence feel the impulse to watch just one YouTube video. However, as you have wisely decided to take your computer to the house of a friend who doesn’t have internet, your browser gives you a frowny face and an error message. You return to your paper and keep writing.

Sophie Caldecott

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Reflections

7 Common Writing Struggles and How to Overcome Them

06.11.2018 • Category: Creative Writing

Common writing struggles, how to make time for writing

1. The Writing Habit: “What would you say is the number one biggest struggle you find your clients face with their writing projects, and do you have any quick advice as a starting point for working through it?”

There is no course, diploma, or stamp of approval that will make sharing your work feel easy.

2. The Writing Habit: “How, in reality, do you get from ideas, characters, even scene ideas, to an actual book taking physical shape? I often feel I have so many ideas for books, but I don’t know how to take steps toward writing chapter or organising my thoughts in any real way.”

You have to start writing and figure out what kind of writer you are; it’s not something that can be learned in advance of writing the book. You learn how to do this by taking the leap and putting words on the page day after day.

3. The Writing Habit: “Can you tell us a bit about the process of publication? How should I go about getting in touch with publishers/what should I do once I’ve written something?”

If you want to publish traditionally, it’s unlikely you would go straight to a publisher. The first step would be getting an agent. Terra Chalberg of Chalberg & Sussman discussed that process in episode #25 . There is also a case for independent publishing as well, and the amazing Joanna Penn discusses how she makes a sustainable living from writing as an independent author in episode #84 .”

4. The Writing Habit: “The biggest struggle for me is to write beautiful and natural-sounding conversations. Do you have any advice for writing dialogue well?”

Caroline: “Love this question! A tip from me: I try dictating dialogue-heavy scenes and then having them transcribed with Dragon Naturally speaking software. I find the dialogue comes much more naturally when I have to speak it out loud as I write. In addition, I spoke with Wesley Brown in episode #57 , who compared the process of writing dialogue with jazz music. This conversation changed how I thought about dialogue completely.”

5. The Writing Habit: “I’d love to hear about how writing on a personal blog has played into the development of a writer’s work. I am beginning a blog and would like to see how they used this platform as a way to develop their career or their writing in general. How did they gear it toward writing?”

As a general rule, I would say blogging has the most impact on nonfiction writing and platform building, but plenty of fiction authors do it as well. For her fiction, Joanna Penn (writing as JF Penn) has a separate blog with photos and stories about the research trips she takes for her thriller novels and people love it.

If you want to blog, it can be incorporated. But, if you are dreading doing it, then I would stick to writing your book and stay with a platform you enjoy; I love podcasting as my way to share content, so I do that much more often than I blog. I write an article a few times a year that I feel is truly useful, and spend the rest of my writing time on books I’m working on.”

6. The Writing Habit: “How do you make time for writing? I have small kids, and it’s always a huge struggle.”

In addition, try not to make it about a polarity of neglecting your writing or neglecting your family. It doesn’t have to come down to that. Look at other things that can be handled differently. Can another member of the family make dinner a couple of days a week, even if it’s just frozen pizza? Can you hire a local teenager for a few hours one afternoon or evening a week to watch the kids? Do you have friends with little kids and you can all swap watching each others kids to free up a couple of evenings a month? Often the guilt moms feel about putting anything above their children makes them feel its not acceptable to take more time for writing. My friend Milda Harris is a total inspiration to me, with young twins and a thriving writing career. She’s another great episode to listen to about this issue .”

7. The Writing Habit: “I have a fear of exposing myself too much, which is rooted in a fear of vulnerability, and a fear of failing or of others thinking my writing isn’t good. Do you have any advice?”

You decide whether or not it’s good and whether or not you get to keep writing. Choose in favour of growth for you.

1. You can’t fix a blank page

“In my conversation with V.E. Schwab (episode #38) , she makes a very strong case for accepting that in your first draft, your idea and what it looks like on the page will be the farthest apart, and in revision you can get it closer to what you imagined. But, if you never write the first crappy draft, there’s no way to get closer and closer and reach your final book.”

2. Great careers don’t need to start in the early 20s

“ Kit De Waal (episode #96) didn’t start writing until her 40s and published for the first time in her 50s. Writing is her second career, and she has created a movement and a tremendous following in the UK, which is spreading to the US—very inspiring for any writer over 25 who feels like they’ve missed the boat.”

3. Overnight success is a myth, and you wouldn’t want it anyway

“ Jojo Moyes (episode #90) is the author of the international bestseller, Me Before You, which was later made into a film. Moyes wrote 3 novels that didn’t sell, and a total of 8 novels before she had a hit. Does she regret it? Not at all. The time spent writing as a less famous author made her a better writer and prepared her for the pressure that a mega hit created.”

I hope you found this advice as helpful and inspiring as I did. You can find out more about Caroline at her website , and if you haven’t already signed up to my monthly newsletter and online community for busy people who want to make more time for their creative writing, you can join us, here —it’s free, and every month I share advice like this from other writers, along with a writing prompt and tools to help you develop the writing habit of your dreams. Happy writing, friends!

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3 comments 7 Common Writing Struggles and How to Overcome Them

Such a rich, dense interview and a mew podcast too! Thank you for all this inspirarion. Merenia x

Commenting again, without the typos! Thanks to you and Caroline for a rich, dense interview. And a new podcast discovery. So much inspiration. Merenia ?

Ah, thank you so much for the lovely feedback, Merenia! I’m glad you found it helpful, and I’m sure you’ll love her podcast.

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Essay Writing Tips: 10 Steps to Writing a Great Essay (And Have Fun Doing It!)

by Joe Bunting | 117 comments

Do you dread essay writing? Are you looking for some essay tips that will help you write an amazing essay—and have fun doing it?

Lots of students, young and old, dread essay writing. It's a daunting assignment, one that takes research, time, and concentration.

It's also an assignment that you can break up into simple steps that make writing an essay manageable and, yes, even enjoyable.

These ten essay tips completely changed my writing process—and I hope that they can do the same for you.

Essay Writing Can Be Fun

Honestly, throughout most of high school and college, I was a mediocre essay writer.

Every once in a while, I would write a really good essay, but mostly I skated by with B's and A-minuses.

I know personally how boring writing an essay can be, and also, how hard it can be to write a good one.

However, toward the end of my time as a student, I made a breakthrough. I figured out how to not only write a great essay, I learned how to have fun while doing it .

And since then, I've become a professional writer and have written more than a dozen books. I'm not saying that these essay writing tips are going to magically turn you into a writer, but at least they can help you enjoy the process more.

I'm excited to share these ten essay writing tips with you today! But first, we need to talk about why writing an essay is so hard.

Why Writing an Essay Is So Hard

When it comes to essay writing, a lot of students find a reason to put it off. And when they tackle it, they find it difficult to string sentences together that sound like a decent stance on the assigned subject.

Here are a few reasons why essay writing is hard:

You'd rather be scrolling through Facebook
You're trying to write something your teacher or professor will like
You're trying to get an A instead of writing something that's actually good
You want to do the least amount of work possible

The biggest reason writing an essay is so hard is because we mostly focus on those external rewards like getting a passing grade, winning our teacher's approval, or just avoiding accusations of plagiarism.

The problem is that when you focus on external approval it not only makes writing much less fun, it also makes it significantly harder.

Because when you focus on external approval, you shut down your subconscious, and the subconscious is the source of your creativity.

The subconscious is the source of your creativity.

What this means practically is that when you're trying to write that perfect, A-plus-worthy sentence, you're turning off most of your best resources and writing skills.

So stop. Stop trying to write a good essay (or even a “good-enough” essay). Instead, write an interesting essay, write an essay you think is fascinating. And when you're finished, go back and edit it until it's “good” according to your teacher's standards.

Yes, you need to follow the guidelines in your assignment. If your teacher tells you to write a five-paragraph essay, then write a five-paragraph essay! If your teacher asks for a specific type of essay, like an analysis, argument, or research essay, then make sure you write that type of essay!

However, within those guidelines, find room to express something that is uniquely you .

I can't guarantee you'll get a higher grade (although, you almost certainly will), but I can absolutely promise you'll have a lot more fun writing.

The Step-by-Step Process to Writing a Great Essay: Your 10 Essay Writing Tips

Ready to get writing? You can read my ten best tips for having fun while writing an essay that earns you the top grade, or check out this presentation designed by our friends at Canva Presentations .

1. Remember your essay is just a story.

Every story is about conflict and change, and the truth is that essays are about conflict and change, too! The difference is that in an essay, the conflict is between different ideas , and the change is in the way we should perceive those ideas.

That means that the best essays are about surprise: “You probably think it's one way, but in reality, you should think of it this other way.” See tip #3 for more on this.

How do you know what story you're telling? The prompt should tell you.

Any list of essay prompts includes various topics and tasks associated with them. Within those topics are characters (historical, fictional, or topical) faced with difficult choices. Your job is to work with those choices, usually by analyzing them, arguing about them, researching them, or describing them in detail.

2. Before you start writing, ask yourself, “How can I have the most fun writing this?”

It's normal to feel unmotivated when writing an academic essay. I'm a writer, and honestly, I feel unmotivated to write all the time. But I have a super-ninja, judo-mind trick I like to use to help motivate myself.

Here's the secret trick: One of the interesting things about your subconscious is that it will answer any question you ask yourself. So whenever you feel unmotivated to write your essay, ask yourself the following question:

“How much fun can I have writing this?”

Your subconscious will immediately start thinking of strategies to make the writing process more fun.

The best time to have your fun is the first draft. Since you're just brainstorming within the topic, and exploring the possible ways of approaching it, the first draft is the perfect place to get creative and even a little scandalous. Here are some wild suggestions to make your next essay a load of fun:

Research the most surprising or outrageous fact about the topic and use it as your hook.
Use a thesaurus to research the topic's key words. Get crazy with your vocabulary as you write, working in each key word synonym as much as possible.
Play devil's advocate and take the opposing or immoral side of the issue. See where the discussion takes you as you write.

3. As you research, ask yourself, “What surprises me about this subject?”

The temptation, when you're writing an essay, is to write what you think your teacher or professor wants to read.

Don't do this .

Instead, ask yourself, “What do I find interesting about this subject? What surprises me?”

If you can't think of anything that surprises you, anything you find interesting, then you're not searching well enough, because history, science, and literature are all brimming over with surprises. When you look at how great ideas actually happen, the story is always, “We used to think the world was this way. We found out we were completely wrong, and that the world is actually quite different from what we thought.”

These pieces of surprising information often make for the best topic sentences as well. Use them to outline your essay and build your body paragraphs off of each unique fact or idea. These will function as excellent hooks for your reader as you transition from one topic to the next.

(By the way, what sources should you use for research? Check out tip #10 below.)

4. Overwhelmed? Write five original sentences.

The standard three-point essay is really made up of just five original sentences surrounded by supporting paragraphs that back up those five sentences. If you're feeling overwhelmed, just write five sentences covering your most basic main points.

Here's what they might look like for this article:

Introductory Paragraph: While most students consider writing an essay a boring task, with the right mindset, it can actually be an enjoyable experience.
Body #1: Most students think writing an essay is tedious because they focus on external rewards.
Body #2: Students should instead focus on internal fulfillment when writing an essay.
Body #3: Not only will focusing on internal fulfillment allow students to have more fun, it will also result in better essays.
Conclusion: Writing an essay doesn't have to be simply a way to earn a good grade. Instead, it can be a means of finding fulfillment.

After you write your five sentences, it's easy to fill in the paragraphs for each one.

Now, you give it a shot!

5. Be “source heavy.”

In college, I discovered a trick that helped me go from a B-average student to an A-student, but before I explain how it works, let me warn you. This technique is powerful , but it might not work for all teachers or professors. Use with caution.

As I was writing a paper for a literature class, I realized that the articles and books I was reading said what I was trying to say much better than I ever could. So what did I do? I quoted them liberally throughout my paper. When I wasn't quoting, I re-phrased what they said in my own words, giving proper credit, of course. I found that not only did this formula create a well-written essay, it took about half the time to write.

It's good to keep in mind that using anyone else's words, even when morphed into your own phrasing, requires citation. While the definition of plagiarism is shifting with the rise of online collaboration and cooperative learning environments, always err on the side of excessive citation to be safe.

When I used this technique, my professors sometimes mentioned that my papers were very “source” heavy. However, at the same time, they always gave me A's.

To keep yourself safe, I recommend using a 60/40 approach with your body paragraphs: Make sure 60% of the words are your own analysis and argumentation, while 40% can be quoted (or text you paraphrase) from your sources.

Like the five sentence trick, this technique makes the writing process simpler. Instead of putting the main focus on writing well, it instead forces you to research well, which some students find easier.

6. Write the body first, the introduction second, and the conclusion last.

Introductions are often the hardest part to write because you're trying to summarize your entire essay before you've even written it yet. Instead, try writing your introduction last, giving yourself the body of the paper to figure out the main point of your essay.

This is especially important with an essay topic you are not personally interested in. I definitely recommend this in classes you either don't excel in or care much for. Take plenty of time to draft and revise your body paragraphs before attempting to craft a meaningful introductory paragraph.

Otherwise your opening may sound awkward, wooden, and bland.

7. Most essays answer the question, “What?” Good essays answer the “Why?” The best essays answer the “How?”

If you get stuck trying to make your argument, or you're struggling to reach the required word count, try focusing on the question, “How?”

For example:

How did J.D. Salinger convey the theme of inauthenticity in The Catcher In the Rye ?
How did Napoleon restore stability in France after the French Revolution?
How does the research prove girls really do rule and boys really do drool?

If you focus on how, you'll always have enough to write about.

8. Don't be afraid to jump around.

Essay writing can be a dance. You don't have to stay in one place and write from beginning to end.

For the same reasons listed in point #6, give yourself the freedom to write as if you're circling around your topic rather than making a single, straightforward argument. Then, when you edit and proofread, you can make sure everything lines up correctly.

In fact, now is the perfect time to mention that proofreading your essay isn't just about spelling and commas.

It's about making sure your analysis or argument flows smoothly from one idea to another. (Okay, technically this comprises editing, but most students writing a high school or college essay don't take the time to complete every step of the writing process. Let's be honest.)

So as you clean up your mechanics and sentence structure, make sure your ideas flow smoothly, logically, and naturally from one to the next as you finish proofreading.

9. Here are some words and phrases you don't want to use.

You (You'll notice I use a lot of you's, which is great for a blog post. However, in an academic essay, it's better to omit the second-person.)
To Be verbs (is, are, was, were, am)

Don't have time to edit? Here's a lightning-quick editing technique .

A note about “I”: Some teachers say you shouldn't use “I” statements in your writing, but the truth is that professional, academic papers often use phrases like “I believe” and “in my opinion,” especially in their introductions.

10. It's okay to use Wikipedia, if…

Wikipedia is one of the top five websites in the world for a reason: it can be a great tool for research. However, most teachers and professors don't consider Wikipedia a valid source for use in essays.

Don't totally discount it, though! Here are two ways you can use Wikipedia in your essay writing:

Background research. If you don't know enough about your topic, Wikipedia can be a great resource to quickly learn everything you need to know to get started.
Find sources . Check the reference section of Wikipedia's articles on your topic. While you may not be able to cite Wikipedia itself, you can often find those original sources and cite them . You can locate the links to primary and secondary sources at the bottom of any Wikipedia page under the headings “Further Reading” and “References.”

You Can Enjoy Essay Writing

The thing I regret most about high school and college is that I treated it like something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do.

The truth is, education is an opportunity many people in the world don't have access to.

It's a gift, not just something that makes your life more difficult. I don't want you to make the mistake of just “getting by” through school, waiting desperately for summer breaks and, eventually, graduation.

How would your life be better if you actively enjoyed writing an essay? What would school look like if you wanted to suck it dry of all the gifts it has to give you?

All I'm saying is, don't miss out!

Looking for More Essay Writing Tips?

Looking for more essay tips to strengthen your essay writing? Try some of these resources:

7 Tips on Writing an Effective Essay
Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement

How about you? Do you have any tips for writing an essay? Let us know in the comments .

Need more grammar help? My favorite tool that helps find grammar problems and even generates reports to help improve my writing is ProWritingAid . Works with Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, and web browsers. Also, be sure to use my coupon code to get 20 percent off: WritePractice20

Coupon Code:WritePractice20 »

Ready to try out these ten essay tips to make your essay assignment fun? Spend fifteen minutes using tip #4 and write five original sentences that could be turned into an essay.

When you're finished, share your five sentences in the comments section. And don't forget to give feedback to your fellow writers!

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Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

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Essay Writing Guide

Essay Writing Problems

Essay Writing Problems - 5 Most Paralyzing Problems

#1 Lack of Confidence

The inability to believe in one’s capabilities and skills is one of the most common problems in essay writing that students have to face.

Students who think they are not good at writing will have trouble starting their papers. They doubt their capability to complete it as well. And with this self-doubt, they may never even try to start working on their paper.

As a result, these students end up not submitting an assignment or simply handing in a poorly-written one, fully accepting and expecting that they will get a low or failing grade.

How to Overcome This

There are various ways students can improve their writing skills. There are online courses they can take and they also have the option to take up traditional classes offered by local schools or tutorial centers.

Additionally, students should practice writing daily even if they make mistakes. As long as these mistakes are corrected, they will become better writers in the future.

Lastly, students who don’t know how to start an essay can always ask for assistance from their teachers, peers, and other people who are more knowledgeable and experienced in writing.

#2 Insufficient Knowledge

Many students will also have difficulties writing an essay about a topic taken up in school. The main reason is that they don’t have enough knowledge about the subject matter.

This difficulty can be caused by the student failing to take notes in class or not attending classes at all. He or she may not even understand the topic completely. This will cause anyone to have poor knowledge of any topic.

This is a problem that students can easily trounce. Students simply need to put in some extra time to study whatever notes they have. They can also do extra research to understand the topic.

Students can also ask their teacher to explain the topic to them again if they are having a hard time understanding it.

#3 Lack of Writing Skills

Although some students are confident about writing and have enough ideas to write their papers, if they lack language proficiency, they won’t submit an impressive essay.

Using the wrong words, misleading language, misplacing words, phrases, and punctuation will result in a poor paper. Some students may even resort to using technical words and jargon with the hope of impressing their teacher. Of course, this technique usually backfires.

Students should learn to use simple words and construct short, concise sentences to get a good mark on their papers. Students also need to read more since this is a good exercise for becoming a better writer.

They can also get help from the best assignment experts if they need help with polishing their papers. These writers will ensure students turn in good essays, reflective of their knowledge and abilities.

#4 Plagiarism

When all else fails, plagiarism is something that many students end up doing just so they can submit a paper. This is also their last resort if they are rushing to complete their essay at the last minute.

Teachers today check each paper for plagiarized content. Students who submit essays that contain copied paragraphs from published material will find themselves in a lot of trouble.

Students need to learn how to paraphrase the content they use for their essays. They should know when and how to use references as well.

Finally, they should make it a habit to run their essays through online plagiarism tools to ensure that they submit an original paper.

#5 Getting Stuck

Lastly, students are given a topic that has been discussed numerous times already. This can get the student stuck and unable to write anything about it. They think that there is nothing left to explore and they can’t have their own say on such topics.

Because of this, they are unable to start writing their paper, much less finish it.

Conducting more research will help students find an angle they will be interested in exploring, analyzing, and discussing. Students can also ask their peers, parents, and other people about the topic.

#6 Time Management

Time management is another main problem that students face. Some students think they can get away with working at the last minute. They might be in a big hurry or simply don't know what needs to be done yet. Because of this, they will submit bad-quality work.

How to Overcome This:

If you plan ahead, you can avoid having to spend a lot of time editing your paper.

Planning ahead will help you do better research, so your analysis of the issue is stronger. This will also help you set the paper aside and come back to it later with a fresh perspective, which means you can revise it more effectively.

#7 Awkward Structure

The structure of your sentences should be clear and understandable to allow the reader to follow what you are saying. Each sentence needs a meaningful connection with the topic so they can understand it fully without confusion, ultimately making them enjoy reading more.

Structure is key to making an essay readable. You should know the proper essay structure. Every sentence should be related and meaningful for your target audience.

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I Can’t Write Essays: Tips to Overcome Struggle Writing Essays

overcome Struggle Writing Essays

Picture this; you want to write an essay, and you switch your computer and hold your pen and paper. But wait a minute, you freeze in your tracks, you don’t know how and where to begin. Does this sound like you? If so, say, ‘I can’t write my essay’, then you are struggling writing essays, and you need to solve the situation fast.

Don’t worry yourself; it’s a struggle that many students face trying to write an essay. At Grade Bees, we have practical solutions for students with the problems of writing essays. Apart from offering you essay writing help , we have this guide to help you do it yourself.

Here are a number of tips and guides on how to overcome the common difficulties and struggles that students have when writing essays. You will learn how to write essays like a pro and sometimes force yourself into it.

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Problems Why you Can’t Write your Essay

If you are struggling to write an essay, chances are you are not having a problem with all aspects of essay writing but just a few of them. You cannot have issues with all the areas.

Most probably, you are struggling with either the structuring or the idea parts of the academic writing process. Below are some of the areas that students struggle with.

Fear of Failing the Essay

Success and failure are twins; missing that mark in your essay should not depress you and cause psychological tension. All you have to do is to relax, concentrate, put pen to paper, and focus on your writing.

Poor Punctuation of the Essay

Stuffing your essay with unnecessary commas, full stops in a sentence, and other grammatical errors, makes your article look unorganized.

Many students compromise the content and quality of their essays by making this mistake.

Being Unaware of your Targeted Audience

When writing your essay, focus on your target audience. Missing to understand your audience will give you more problems than you can imagine. You will not be able to achieve the quality you intend while writing your essay.

Unorganized Essay structure

Essay writing follows a specific structure, ranging from sentence structure, introduction, body of the essay, and the conclusion. Do you want your audience to read and understand your essay? Then follow the laid down structure when writing. You can check our guide on how to write good paragraphs and learn how to organize points for short essays.

Problems students have with writing their essays

Knowing the problems students face when writing an essay, why is it so hard to write an essay?

1. Many Students Fail to Read Widely

Reading opens your mind, and a lot of information is gathered on a variety of topics when it comes to essay writing. It is no surprise that Stephen King was quoted saying that,

“You have to read widely, constantly refining your own work as you do so. It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written, but I know it’s true.” Stephen King

It’s the only way one can be able to sharpen the writing skills intended.

2. Lack of Focus

As much as you have read widely and want to show your professionalism when it comes to writing, you cannot write everything that comes into your mind. Focusing on the essay assigned is your ultimate goal.

3. Lack of Concentration when writing the essay

Many students are struggling to write essays because they handle several issues while writing. Being busy on the phone, listening to music, attending to a friend, and other distractions make writing difficult.

But here’s something exciting. Did you know you can force yourself to write an essay? Allow me to share these tips with you.

Also Read : Is Academic Ghostwriting Illegal? The Truth from the Myths

How to Write an Essay Like a Pro

Well, I’ll walk you through the whole process. Remember, each essay has its purpose, but they have a standard structure.

1. Decide on your Essay Topic

What do you intend to write? How well do you understand your topic? Can you write without getting stuck? Therefore, choose an item that you can quickly and comfortably handle.

2. Write Down your Thesis

Communicate to your readers what you intend to put forward, your points, and what you plan to argue about in your essay.

3. Outline your Essay

Always ensure you have an outline of your ideas. Put everything on paper, even if it means having diagrams to help you write efficiently, then do so. An overview of your work will help you remember everything when you get down to writing.

4. Have your Essay Structure

As mentioned earlier, essays have a standard structure, but it is crucial to put your structure down to make it easier to follow while writing. Usually, the structure of your essay should entail the following:

An introduction, which makes your readers more encouraged and interested in reading your essay.
The body of an essay; the shape of your piece should have main points and sub-points. This helps your readers follow a specific flow while reading your essay.
Essay conclusion; always keep your readers glued to your essay by summing up all the points in your end. Give your essay a perfect closure.

What to do when Struggling to Write an Essay

Having known all the above information, and you still find yourself struggling? Here is what you should do:

Always read and read a lot. You won’t improve unless you are reading what others have written. Don’t forget; the best writers are good readers.
Share your work with other writers who have gone through the same. They will be able to correct your work and also offer encouragement.
Practice a lot. You have heard people say practice makes perfect, and yes, this is the ideal time to apply that. Write as many essays as you can.

How to force yourself to write an essay

Keep a tight timetable and schedule your writing time and ensure you stick to it.
Have a place set aside for writing. Establish your workstation or even an office where you can concentrate on your essay.
Shut out the world from your working environment. If it means not having your phone around your place of work or even not having the internet, then so be it.
Limit your movement during writing. In most cases, when you fear you are struggling writing essays, make sure that you remain seated and write.

Also Read : Are Essay Titles italicized: How to Italicize Words in essays

How do you Begin Writing an Essay?

Beginning an essay shouldn’t be a daunting task; you can always start by:

Having a perfect introduction that captures readers’ attention. It builds the reader’s trust in your work, which translates into quality.
That first paragraph that welcomes your reader is all you have to give a sneak preview of your essay.
Draft a strong thesis statement. Communicate openly about what you are putting forward in your essay. Your thesis statement is your selling point and should convince your readers of what you are writing.
Never undermine the power of those catchy strong opening statements and sentences. These statements build the reader’s confidence in your work and you. Use these sentences as a hook that holds your readers to your work.
Know about your topic of choice. How do you prove that you know about the topic? Support your work by quoting the points of reference and supporting your ideas.

Tips if you don’t know how to Write an Essay

Decide on your essay topic. It’s a huddle that many faces when writing the essay, making an informed judgment on the item you are comfortable with, propels you quickly when you start writing.
Have a proper understanding of your topic. Do proper research and try to know everything on the item you want to write on.
Proper knowledge will enable you to have authority and enjoy your work.

Tips how to make your essay writing exercise easy and fast

Parts of an Essay and their Meaning

Have an outline of your essay. As mentioned earlier, an essay follows a specific structure. Therefore, putting down the framework basing on the fabric will make your work easier. Put the following structure in mind:
Have an introduction paragraph. Invite your readers with a persuasive introduction that will automatically keep them glued to your work.
Have the body of your essay. Your essay body should have information on the topic, research about the problem, and also give statistics, if any.
Have a conclusion on your subject. Like the introduction, the end provides a summary of your essay and must be given a perfect touch as the introduction.
Write a thesis statement. Tell your readers why you are writing your essay. Stating your topic and proving your argument is what you include in your thesis. For instance, when writing an essay on animal testing thesis , you will need to take a stand on the ethics of animal testing.
Get down to work and start writing. Remember to follow the outline structure that you have drafted.

Also Read : The 5 Best Essay Writing Services as per Reddit reviews

Where to get help Writing an Essay

But again, if you are struggling to write essays, then look for help. Some sites are resourceful when it comes to essay writing. Here at Grade Bees, we have proven essay writing services that will help you earn that grade if you cannot write your essays for one reason or another. Take advantage of the resources in such sites.

Order an Excellent Essay today!

Let us help you get that A in your next assignment. Place your order today, and you will enjoy the benefits.

With over 10 years in academia and academic assistance, Alicia Smart is the epitome of excellence in the writing industry. She is our managing editor and is in charge of the writing operations at Grade Bees.

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7 Steps to Stop Overthinking Your Writing

Writers are often known as thinkers. Indeed, we’re often proud of the connotation. We spend a lot of time in our heads. We love to read. We research like we love it (because we do). And we know a lot (though usually not quite as much as we think we do).

However, thinking and writing—especially creative writing such as storytelling—can sometimes seem strangely out of balance. As much as writers may identify as thinkers, we usually prefer the actual act of writing to be less about thinking and more about flowing .

What we’re talking about is “thinking” in the sense of active and logical thinking. Naturally, we are thinking when the words are flowing, but in those moments it often seems less that we are thinking the thoughts and more that the thoughts are thinking us . When we take too much control, it ceases to work that way.

And that’s a problem—because the more a writer learns about how to write and how stories work, the more conscious our thinking becomes. Sometimes this reaches the crisis where writing becomes a lot of work simply because we are doing all the work. We’re the ones doing all the thinking, rather than just being the conduit and letting the thoughts think us.

Susan Geiger recently messaged me on Patreon about this all-too-common conundrum:

I have a problem, a serious one: I am too serious. I love writing and stories in general. However, I have thought so much about plot development, character arcs, theme, story structure, etc., that I’m a bit uptight when I write. I have effectively zapped the joy out of it. I am so tense when I write and put so much pressure on myself that my serious attitude has leaked into the writing itself, leaving the story utterly humorless. If you have any advice on how to relax and lighten up in writing again, I would greatly appreciate it.

Not long after, I received a similar email from David Fraser:

Have noticed my tendency to over-complicate. Overthink. Maybe you would consider writing a post…

I figured I better write the post! If nothing else, maybe I’ll learn a thing or two myself. 😉

7 Important Transformations to Stop Overthinking Your Writing

I love thinking. I love it just as much in its own right as writing. But it does have a tendency to run away with itself and become overthinking. One my favorite ditties, gleaned from a Facebook meme years ago:

If you’re happy and you know it, overthink.

If you’re happy and you know it, then your brain will surely blow it—overthink!

Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration (Amazon affiliate link)

We can easily find many tips and tricks for seeking inspiration and powering through writer’s block . Most, however, are quick prescriptions aimed to overcome the symptoms rather than the ailment itself. In reality, the problems of overthinking your writing are both the result of and a contribution to the larger challenge of living a creative life —particularly in what is an adamantly head-oriented culture.

I have given much thought to this over the years (the irony of which is not lost…). As I’ve written about elsewhere, I know I have a lot of journey left on this road . But in response to Susan and David’s query, here are some things I’m learning about how you can stop overthinking your writing.

1. Slay the Perfectionist

The logical brain wants things to be… logical. Logic, taken it its furthest extent, demands perfection. But perfection is only theoretical and therefore logically unobtainable. Still, we strive. Indeed, perfectionism is ingrained in the writing culture , stemming understandably from the desire to get a story “right” so it can be successfully published.

There is a balance here to be sure. We need our rational brains turned on in order to write, and certainly we need them in order to learn how to write well (see #5 below). But somehow the parasitic perfectionistic part of ourselves always figures out a way to burrow so deeply into our “logic” that we have a hard time thinking rationally without also striving for perfection.

The perfectionist—the inner critic—is in fact a great enemy of the creative storyteller. After all, stories themselves are tales of our imperfections . Our words and our pages are where we capture all the messiness of our lives. Only in embracing that messiness can we be truly creative.

2. Resurrect the Child

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been saying “stories are my language.” But that’s not strictly true. Stories were the language of my child self. But, no, even that is not quite true. Stories were the lived experience of my child life. I didn’t tell stories. I lived them. I was always inside a story.

I only started writing because at some point in my early teens, I wanted to record some of my favorites so I wouldn’t forget them. The irony is I have forgotten my stories—my true stories—precisely because I started writing them down and then became obsessed (albeit joyfully obsessed) with understanding the principles of storytelling and writing .

The child self doesn’t care about rules, doesn’t care about impressing others, certainly doesn’t care about being a commercial success. In stark contrast to the perfectionist’s mentality of scarcity, the child creates from an endless well of personal abundance.

Creating back then wasn’t about “making writing a job” or laboring at sentence structure or striving for original ideas . Creating in childhood was about having fun. When you start overthinking your writing, the fun slips away. And when the fun comes back? The overthinking stops.

3. Reprogram the Ego

I think the ego gets a bad rap. We need it. It’s our interface with the world. It helps us survive, helps us communicate with others, helps us fit in or stand out, helps us get stuff done . But I daresay all of us have gotten some bad code in there somewhere. And the ego is single-minded. It’s going to run that code all day every day and twice on Sundays—if we let it.

I like to envision my ego as the little cleaner robot “Mo” in Pixar’s Wall-E . Like Mo, it valiantly and obsessively pursues the job it’s been given—and gets very frustrated when it’s knocked off course. But at some point its very durability causes it to become outmoded. That’s when I have to stop letting it run on autopilot, take it into the shop, and update its programs beyond 1.0.

In this Age of the Internet, writers have been given the incredible opportunity to become successful entrepreneurs. But when we plug this opportunity (along with our perfectionism) into the ego, it has a tendency to whir right into workaholicism and/or paralysis . Once again, this is often driven by a scarcity/fear mentality.

Ego work is deep work, but learning to find and reprogram outdated or corrupted code can free us up from the fear that often prompts overthinking.

4. Enthrone Your Artist

When I first started writing down my childhood stories, the page was simply an extension of the stage upon which I played out my stories 24/7. But at some point, as my life became less and less embodied and more and more exclusively mental, I started playing less and thinking more. The more I enthroned my Thinker in all other areas of my life, the harder it became to switch modes when writing time rolled around.

Lately, I have realized that to be able to bring that true flow of creativity to my time at the page, I must live in that flow. Indeed, however much I may identify as a writer and think of stories as my creative outlet, my creativity does not have to solely express through my writing.

My writing is not my art. My life is my art.

Every moment is an opportunity for creativity—if we let it flow. We must retrain ourselves—to get out of our heads, to get into our bodies, to experience our five senses, to push past the anxiety into joy. Our creativity contributes to every moment.

Jane Friedman had a great point in her e-letter a few months ago about how even making your bed is an act of creativity—because we do it to make our lives more beautiful. And yet how many of us really think of it that way? We tend to associate making the bed with chores or adulting or avoiding criticism. But is that really why we do it? It certainly doesn’t have to be why we do it.

5. Honor Your Logician

None of this is to suggest our rational, thinking, logical brains aren’t important—especially in our writing. Writing well is as much a craft as an art. Indeed, the craft of writing is a delight in itself. Most of us come to appreciate the glories of the theories and techniques we study. Indeed, part of the reason we end up overthinking may well be (*raises hand*) because we love thinking about writing . Certainly our inner logician has the ability to offer untold help in improving our communication skills on the page.

We must honor our inner logicians. But it’s best if we can also learn to keep them in the classroom. They are there to teach us, to bring consciousness to our rough skills. But by their very nature, they are thinkers not doers . The doing belongs to a different part of us. We must take the lessons our logicians teach us within our mental classrooms and then leave the classrooms to go play in the real world, to get our hands dirty, to see what we can create.

Just because we honor and love our logicians does not mean they get to follow us around, offering commentary on everything we do.

6. Reclaim Your Hunter

As I’ve struggled mightily these last few years with being, as Susan said at the beginning of the post, too serious in my writing, I’ve realized only recently that it’s because I’ve run out of material. My child self was a hunter and seeker of stories. She went on adventures every day and came back with more ideas than she could ever write. For a long time, my adult self has been living on the waning remnants of that childhood wealth.

I know enough about stories to think of good plots, characters, etc. But I miss the riches of natural inspiration. I don’t want to think up stories. I want to discover them. I want adventures like I used to have.

And yet the adventures that used to be so easy can somehow begin to seem perilous as time goes on—or at least like a lot of work. Indeed, I think that may be the crux of the dilemma: we think creativity should always be as effortless as it was in the beginning. Because it came so easily when we were young or just starting out with our writing, we don’t realize that creativity only emerges when we achieve and maintain certain balances in our lives. Balance requires discipline. And the further out of balance we are—the more our thinking brains have tyrannized over our creative selves—the more discipline it takes to recreate the circumstances we may once have taken for granted.

7. Listen to Your Heart

The head and the heart don’t always communicate with each other. The head talks such a good spiel that sometimes the heart gets convinced to take a backseat in spite of itself. This can look like many things—from writing to the market instead of the stories we’re truly passionate about, to simply doubting our favorite scenes in light of “proper” technique.

But the heart won’t be denied forever. If it doesn’t get to write what it wants, what it loves, how it wants to write, then it will leave you and your head to your own devices—and sooner or later that turns out to not be nearly as much fun.

Now, of course, the heart doesn’t always lead us to fun and joy. Sometimes what the heart most wants us to write about are stories that are far more difficult than those the head so rationally proposes. But the thing the heart brings that the head (bless it) does not is our life’s blood —purpose, meaning, passion. The head can have its say later during revisions. But when we sit down to write, it’s the heart we should be checking in with: “I’m ready. Are you?”

In summary: What I’m learning is that combating overthinking is less about turning the brain off and more about turning everything else on . It’s about leaving the desk, leaving the computer, leaving the Internet (God help us). It’s about seeing, hearing, touching, tasting—with both our outer and inner senses. It’s about remembering how to live every bit as fully as we used to, so we can dream every bit as fully as we used to.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinions! Do you ever struggle to stop overthinking your writing? Why do you think this is? Tell me in the comments!

Click the “Play” button to Listen to Audio Version (or subscribe to the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast in Apple Podcast or Amazon Music ).

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K.M. Weiland is the award-winning and internationally-published author of the acclaimed writing guides Outlining Your Novel , Structuring Your Novel , and Creating Character Arcs . A native of western Nebraska, she writes historical and fantasy novels and mentors authors on her award-winning website Helping Writers Become Authors.

Timely as ever 😉 You always seem to post about what I’m struggling with. Of course, now I’m going to go on an internet deep-dive to research how to reprogram my ego… lol

I daresay overthinking is an easy bullseye when addressing writers. 😉 Have fun with your research!

I agree with JLTaylor! Excellent timing, KM!

Thank you for this! I am a dreadful over thinker, and I really appreciate the reminder, this morning, to get out of my head. I’ve been tying myself in knots today about everything I want to get done this week before Thanksgiving (my arbitrary, self-imposed deadline) as well as writing. It is nice to think that digging up the last of the potatoes and scrubbing the kitchen floor can be considered art, and maybe even valuable research. (After all, story people eat potatoes sometimes too…)

Great post, Katie. I think the “aha” revelation is about not deactivating our rationality but activating the other attributes that make us human.

I used to design and start up mineral processing plants. It embodies many of the rational skills a writer employs – production goal & quality targets (premise), strategy (outlining), key unit operations (big moments/plot points), process control plan (character development), etc. And then troubleshooting (editing) when all components don’t mesh as planned. And more troubleshooting. And more. Then it finally all comes together and fills a need (payoff).

I never designed a perfect plant, although each functioned more elegantly, with fewer hiccups, than the one which preceded it. Except, to your point, writing is harder. Much harder. Because a mineral processing plant doesn’t have to connect to a consumer’s brain and provide a vicarious, emotional experience like the stories we long to tell. It requires mind melding and empathy, combined with logic. No pump in any plant I helped build could outperform the heart in volume pumped per unit weight.

I think many of us read your blog and share our thoughts because our quest to write *successfully* feels Tolkienesque. To not write is to die.

@Louis: “Our quest to write *successfully* feels Tolkienesque. To not write is to die.”

Oh wow. So true.

Honestly, the image that comes to mind in regard to digging up potatoes and scrubbing the floor is quite a lovely one. 🙂

I agree! As did mineral processing plants “functioning elegantly.”

Guilty as charged. My lifetime career as an engineer predisposes me to overthinking. I try hard to be a mix first of a planner, and then a pantzer. My latest book has degenerated into excessive planning. This post gives me a kick in the pants butt to loosen up. Thanks.

By the way, your profile shows you in Scottsbluff. I am a few miles west in Denver, Colorado. Hello neighbor.

I hear you. As I contemplate where I want to go with my fiction in the coming New Year, I am wondering if perhaps what I really *need* to do is not writing itself but a focus on refilling my inspiration well. On the one hand, that feels right and fun. On the other hand, the idea of not actively pursuing productivity is massively triggering! I suppose that probably means I should do it. 😉

A fellow writer in my writing group is a lawyer, and he often includes far too meticulous detail, leaving little for readers to create on their own. Then he invariably redeems himself with a closing paragraph or sentence that impels readers to continue – not necessarily a cliff-hanger, but still a distinct driving force. I can ignore the overwriting when I have such a model of closing to emulate.

I really enjoy meditation because it gives you an opportunity to become more aware of your thinking and come to terms with it. I used to overthink things, but do that much less now. Besides writing, it also helps with music. Not to mention life in general.

Writing and “life in general” are so tied up together, I find. 🙂

I love this post, but the main thing that gets in the way of my flow is thinking about the real world. I try to write every day, but some days the pandemic and other current events follow me into my writing world. I feel so much anxiety that I almost feel paralyzed.

I hear you. To the degree you’re able, I highly recommend limiting media consumption. The more rigorously I’ve done this in my life, the commensurately happier I am.

True dat on the media. I’ve eliminated TV from my apartment. All I have is ROKU and my DVD’s. I DO NOT miss the TV at all. I have had TV for close to a year now.

Same here. I only plug in the antennae for the Super Bowl. :p

I read news every morning. 🙁 I’m actually feeling much better today, but I think I’m going to try to have some news-free days. I have this weird social justice thing where I feel like I have to bear witness to horrible things, but I definitely need to back off.

Funny, I have been thinking about this theme all day (and all week). I have always been far too serious and this shows in the first novel I am writing. In fact I got this feedback and I was devastated – it’s so true, of me and my novel!!! So I have invented ‘Pixie’. Pixie lives inside me as a ‘guide’ or even a ‘sub-personality’. She is teaching me how to live more creatively and with greater spontaneity. I rewrote my first chapter, following a bit advice from Pixie, and the energy that came through was amazing. By the way, I may sound mad but I am boringly sane 🙂

Love it! Just the fact that you named your Muse (and named her something so whimsical) is a delightful return to playful creativity.

Love it! Not boring at all and quite sane. Hello, Pixie! What a great story about your effective muse.

This post came at the right moment for me. I hit a bump in my WIP and I’ve been re-reading how-to books, making diagrams and puzzling over my outlines, but not writing. I need to unwind and now I know why.

Yup, I’ve been there a lot this past year.

Oh, wow! I sometimes fall into this, and then realize I need to step back and let the Muse iron out the wrinkles (letting the thoughts think me, as you aptly put it). it doesn’t happen often, but I know we are all subject to it at one time or another. This post is a keeper, and I’ll be sharing it with my writing group.

In addition, I think you are telling us that when dancing with our writing, to let our hearts lead, not our heads.

Exactly. Although the head needs to be an active dancer too. 🙂

When I’m overthinking I find that my work often becomes clever, too clever. To ground it, I get outside and revisit the places I’ve elected to write about in my stories. If that requires a road trip, so much the better! Thanks for your post.

This is a good way to put it–and remedy it.

It’s about balance.

I use my right brain to develop the story. I use my left brain to map it out (i.e., outline). I use my right brain to flesh out the outline. I use my left brain to review and edit my musings. Back and forth until I feel I’m done with it. At least that is how I think it is supposed to be…

However, that being said, after reading all your blogs and buying your books (and others), I can say that I feel, as they say, I am over-egging the pudding. It’s good to have the understanding of the mechanics, but after a time I need to step back and look at the broader picture.

I’m at a point where I am not sure if what I have been doing is good or bad and I need someone with a skilled set of eyes to review my efforts to see if I am on the right path or have I veered over the edge.

That internal nagging voice sows nothing but doubt.

“I use my right brain to develop the story. I use my left brain to map it out (i.e., outline). I use my right brain to flesh out the outline. I use my left brain to review and edit my musings. Back and forth until I feel I’m done with it. At least that is how I think it is supposed to be…”

This is exactly how I’ve always viewed it.

Beta readers are great for offering that needed objectivity. Sometimes the nagging doubt isn’t accurate. It’s helpful if you can identify exactly *what* you’re doubting. If it’s something you can fix, then you can fix it. But if it *is* just a doubt, then realizing that can help you move on.

Thanks, I agree with beta readers helping with the writing.

My doubt has less to do with prose and more to do with theme and structure. Many because my protagonist is no so much “living the lie”, but dragged into the stories conflict from the beginning. The complexity of her part in the plot (and its sequel) make it difficult to follow “the lie versus the need” arc—I think.

Could be she’s on a Flat Arc. Or it could be that it’s not a Hero’s Journey. I’m going to be talking about alternative archetypal arcs in a series next year.

Ah, ha! A flat arc. Maybe I’m trying to put a left foot into a right shoe.

I look forward to that series.

Here’s the link to the Flat Arc series if you’re interested in that right now: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/flat-character-arc-1/

Yay! I love hearing about alternate story arcs! I am all geeky that way. I have a brother who is a music major, and watching him geek out over music theory makes me wonder if that’s what I look like on the outside….

Probably. 😉

“That internal nagging voice sows nothing but doubt.”

This. Exactly this.

I know my story by heart, but when I sit down to write, I doubt that I can ever do it justice anywhere outside my head. Then I panic and don’t write. Or I avoid writing altogether. Overthinking just makes this problem worse.

I need to get out of my own way and just write.

You will never do justice to a story you fail to write.

Just do it. It won’t matter if it is not great. If it isn’t, do it again. It will be better.

The more you write (and read), the better you get. Micheal Angelo’s first work of art wasn’t likely much. If he stopped there, the world would be deprived of something special. If you stop, so will you.

I like this statement best: The head can have its say later during revisions. But when we sit down to write, it’s the heart we should be checking in with: Ken

Honestly, I should probably paste that above my computer as a reminder to myself. :p

Exactly. True, but hard to do. 🙂

Yesssssss!!!!! It’s nice to know I am in such great company. Love to study, research and read about storycrafting, but it is definitely hard to turn off that critic when you want the creativity to flow.

Great post, as usual! Kris

It’d be nice if the different parts of ourselves had a handy on/off switch, wouldn’t it? :p

AMEN. If you find the switch, I’m sure we’ll be reading about it in a future article. 🙂

I can so identify with listening to the critical voices in my life (especially my own :)). I long to go back to my days of improv in college. We had such a blast. Sure, we had seeds of ideas from current events and audience members but the fun came from storytelling in the moment.

So, today my word picture is that writing is like fudge not concrete. Concrete requires all the forms and shapes to be in place before you pour the wet material into place. You scrape around the edges a bit to clean it up but then you let it sit there, trusting that the forms give you the desired final result.

Ah, but fudge! Have you ever been to one of those fancy fudge shops where you can watch them making the stuff right there in front of you? They cook the butter and milk and sugar and flavors in a giant copper pot, stirring and stirring until the whole place smells of chocolate or cinnamon or peanut butter. When it reaches the proper consistency, they pour the thick liquid out onto a huge marble-top table that slowly leeches away the heat from the sauce. They walk around the table with big, wide paddles, keeping the fudge from oozing over the edge, folding it back in on itself as it thickens and begins to take its final form.

All through the process of cooling and shaping you could take a taste of the fudge and get that delightful sweet sensation on your tongue. But at the end, the rich brick, thick enough to hold its shape, can be sliced and squared and enjoyed in small chunks because the flavor and texture are so intense and so smooth that just a little bit goes a long, long way.

I have come to realize that my WIP has the basic story that I want to tell. It needs some reshaping, providing a little more context and foreshadowing to draw the reader into one of the two major story arcs. There are little tweaks in dialogue and description as I work my way through my revisions going from version 1.0 to 2.0. I’m learning about the kind of structure that helps my story as opposed to what would just turn it into a cookie cutter version of someone else’s idea. I’m also learning that I am still a very young writer.

So, Happy Thanksgiving, all. Katie, you and your blog are one of the things that I am thankful for this year. I have learned some wonderful things here and there are more to come! Journey on, young warrior. The paths through the storyverse are many and varied and beautiful and intense. And I’m pretty sure they have places for some really good food along the way. 😀

Of course, the problem with fudge is that you might get tempted into eating it all before you finish shaping it. 😉

Thanks for the kind words! I am certainly thankful for you and all the other Wordplayers out there too!

Well, in the writing/fudge analogy, eating would correspond to reading the story. Sounds like you might still be struggling with the scarcity mindset there. Fudge for everyone! 😛

So true. Turn everything else back on, or maybe turn on what wasn’t turned on before. I always go back to 2008-10 when one major event after another shattered my life. It culminated in my having an appointment with death and being pulled back in the ER hours short of making that appointment. Years of recovery followed.

In the aftermath, my creative self has flourished. Yes, it’s as if in the midst of all the changes and gasping for air that wasn’t there, that all my “off” switches were turned to “on.” I have to barricade my door to keep story ideas out. If I allowed them in I’d be reduced to creative paralysis. Me, the woman who dreaded the mere thought of revising, now launches into revising with a smile. Each moment is relishing every step in the process. Some of it might be because I’m older, and certainly some of it is because I was given a second chance, but with each passing week writing is becoming more fun.

Because of my lung damage I’ve been in lockdown since March 18th. I’ve watched little video, consumed more books, and been productive beyond my wildest imaginings. This is what rediscovering (or discovering for the first time) the fun in writing looks like. Your post captured it and only made me more grateful for each moment. Thank you.

This is an amazing story! Very sorry about your health struggles, but what a triumphant return. 🙂

I am always overthinking. :/ Overthinking is my biggest weakness I do believe.

Just don’t overthink whether overthinking is your biggest weakness. 😉

Ha ha! So true for us overthinkers. I think there should be another OA: Overthinkers Anonymous.

KM, WOW! It’s like you wrote this article/blog TO ME, for everybody else’s benefit. Because of the way I lived my childhood, of course I’d end up a perfectionist. I must learn to turn off that perfectionism in my writing. I’m guilty of all your seven points at one time or the other. I have rewritten my opening five times because if I’ve learned one thing, I’ve learned that the opening is the most important part of the book. But it has been at a fairly high cost – time. As a perfectionist, it is extremely hard to write something that isn’t perfect. Many times I’ve had to literally quit writing and holler, “STOP it!” You ought to see a page of writing. It looks like a road map, what with all the margin side notes, arrows, cross-outs, additions, and, and, and, and ad infinitum. Many times times I get lost in the arrows. LOL. So thanks for this post. It is uncanny that whatever I seem to be struggling with, I head for your site and “BAM,” there’s a post that speaks to the problem. You and Jerry Jenkins are my go-to help. I’ve gone through his Novel Blue Blueprint Course and learned a lot. It is where I learned of you and your site. I have a number of your books on writing and structure. Anyway, I like how Jerry has the capacity to write one day and edit the next. I am trying hard to follow that regimen, but I am getting better at it. One final comment, I take my writing seriously, NOT THAT OTHERS DON’T, believe me. So I join others herein who take their writing seriously as well. (Pro Writing Aid doesn’t like the two words “as well either.” But I think I’ll leave them in, this time. Sorry, for the long comment but I’m a writer, what can I say.” LOL. God bless.

I think there’s a high percentage of perfectionists among writers. For whatever reason, it seems to go with the territory. But the good news is we’re all in good company and can learn from each other’s experience. 🙂

Thank God for this post! I haven’t been commenting on any of your posts, K.M., since I’ve been going crazy about this short story contest I’m entering for 2021. I’ve been super panicked when I try writing and I end up just scratching off every single idea. I know my stories aren’t that bad, but I want it to be perfect so so so much that I’m just going nuts!

This helped so much. You have no idea. 🙂

Good luck in the contest! I’m sure whatever you write–whether it wins or not–will offer the rewards of new experiences and lessons learned.

Wow, K.M. You really struck a chord with this post today!

If there’s a universal problem among writers, I have a feeling this is it! :p

Wonderful, as always, KM. I relate, as I suspect most of us do, to the problem. I love the childhood analogy…which spoke to my heart. Section #3 on Ego? I have no idea what that means. I read it several times. I watched Wall-e. Still no light coming on in that regards and now… help me!… I am positive I can’t ‘get it’ because I am ‘overthinking’ it! LOL.

I’m talking about the ego in the more classical sense (and I’m certainly no expert). These days, when we talk about “ego,” we often use it, rather incorrectly, as a reference to arrogance. Really, the ego is a (theorized) part of our psychological makeup which is often the most surface or personality-oriented. It’s the part of us that interacts with the world and, as such, often gets out of touch with other, deeper parts. It’s a fascinating study!

I feel like I overthink all the time because I just took my first writing class this year and my brain is overwhelmed by learning the craft. It’s hard to stay in creative mode when I worry if I’m making any progress with all the do’s and dont’s of storytelling.

The logical, thinking side *is* important to writing. Just take it slow and be kind to yourself. It can be overwhelming in the beginning, but it all starts to fall into place with time and experience.

Wow! Thank you, Katie, for that link. I gobble that up now (pun intended). 🙂

Happy Thanksgiving! 😉

The link you sent has turned into another purchase (Character Arcs). 🙂

And my wife and I are working on preparing for Thanks Giving right now. Happy Thanks Given for you and your family!

Think Gratitude Mindset…

Happy Thanksgiving to you as well! I hope you enjoy the book. 🙂

Hi KMW You got that in one! My ‘constipation’ (aka overthinking) comes in the editing phase where I read my flowing, creative stuff and begin overthinking structure etc.etc. I know there are whole sections that I should sacrifice but I get caught up in the small details. I sit there wondering whether if I just add a new sentence here, take that paragraph out, rewrite it – the list goes on. Even though Iove them, I really need to kill my darlings and get it over with.

I recommend a “graveyard file”–a document where you can stick your darlings, so you can try the story without them, but easily retrieve them if you change your mind.

Having read a few of your books and others before setting out on my own path, I can’t help but think that you are toying with the idea that there is a trade off between focusing on the plan, the outline, and the plot and letting the story flow out of you without a fixed idea or intention of where it’s going and how it’s going to get there. When you tap into the flow do you trust where it takes you? Perhaps, after all these years of focusing on the plan and on the technique, you have realized that it reduces your capacity to tap into the flow of your stories that are waiting to be told.

Yep, that about sums it up. 🙂

Though I haven’t left a comment in some time, I’m still listening to these diligently 🙂 I just had to pop in to say this one really strikes a chord. You frame the problem so well here and I’m pretty sure it’s a struggle every creative faces in their journey, regardless of craft. Thanks for taking the time to both think and share about it with us!

Thanks for chiming in! 🙂 Yes, I rather tend to think that the creative life is a constant spiral revolving around an evermore integrated relationship between order and chaos/creativity, planning and flowing, logic and inspiration.

In reading this I was struck by two things. First, some types of overthinking bare a striking resemblance to multi-tasking, which many people try to do, but doesn’t work very well and is a major contributor to workplace stress. It’s not a perfect comparison, frankly I find I need a little bit of my editor voice while I’m drafting lest the first draft be so mushy that it’s useless. Really, what I think I should strive for for is to make my different voices an orchestra, each pitching in when needed, and harmonizing, but not fighting for the spotlight. Theme voice, plot voice, structure voice, line-editor voice, drafting voice, all of these are valuable every step of the way. The quandary is how to find the conductor voice which makes the activity both fun and productive. You definitely have good thoughts about searching for the baton.

Now that I’ve written that, my second observation seems less interesting – avoiding perfectionism comes down to accepting ourselves as imperfect children of God (or whatever mystical force brings you comfort).

Thanks again Katie. I’m still not sure I have Curly engaged, and somewhat fearful he’s who has my conductor’s baton.

I think it’s a great analogy! And, yes, please don’t give Curly the baton…

Thank you Katie, very helpful. I have a similar problem to Max in his comment, just above. I can sit down without even a character or much of a plot and just start blasting out words. And have been a writer for 30 years for magazines and am learning fiction’s a different pair of rollerblades altogether. I’ve written fiction along the way but the problem I have with free-flowing and just blasting words onto the page is that when I go back into the editing mode the left brain really goes nuts. I find this gets me to a point where I don’t trust my original instincts anymore, or I end up throwing so much out that I’m in danger of la-hoo za-hing the original heart and drive of the story, and my joy in writing it. It’s like my critic/editor becomes a little too or a lot too fine pointed about making it just “right”. I like the suggestion you made about a garbage file. Or whatever you called it. I use Scrivener which is an excellent program. And it has a snapshot feature where you can save different phases of your editing and re-examine and recall them at any time too. They’re always there in the corpus of the program. Still, and I really enjoyed your piece here today, it’s a dilemma for me to detect when I’m going over the exhaustion line and my brain is just spinning its wheels but I keep making changes and making changes and making changes. I don’t know whether to be more deliberate in the beginning, in other words to some degree have a loose working plot, or to just live with it and quit punishing myself for endlessly rewriting until I feel like I’ve got it right. I look back at stories or books I wrote in the 1980s for example and I see all kinds of “mistakes”. And I remember how hard I worked on them back then. Of course there is a lot to be said for seasoning as a human being and as a writer. But the hyper editing/perfectionism for me is the one trait that really savages my enthusiasm to keep going back at it day after day. It’s almost like never being able to be satisfied. I think that’s the biggest challenge I have in my writing. Now I’m gonna go back and edit this so it’s clear, ha ha!

I think you’ve highlighted why overthinking is such an endemic struggle for writers. At some point, we all end up in the throes of doubt and hyper-criticism of our own work. And that experience stinks. And we totally want to avoid it the next time around. So the overthinking in the editing phase may then turn into overthinking in the outlining or drafting stages.

The key, as ever, is not to *avoid* thinking but to learn think accurately. I find that much of the angst in the editing phase is either because we don’t know what we’re doing or we don’t know that we *do* know what we’re doing. If we can get very clear about what is *actually* going on, it can be helpful in allowing our thinking to do its job without kicking unnecessarily into high gear.

I talk about that some in this post: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/thinking-clearly/

I find this argument fascinating…that when we revise, we don’t know what we’re doing, or we do.

It brings to mind a story a docent at a museum related to us about a famed painter, Piet Mondrian, was it? who famously entered museums and retouched his paintings that were already hanging on display, and the curators would have to beg him to stop! But he knew what he was doing, constantly evolving his theme into a purity of line and balance, and he was never satisfied. Which reminds me of another story of a kindergarten art teacher whose students, all of them, turned out the most incredible pieces. She was interviewed on NPR years ago and the host asked her, what’s her secret? How did she get all of her students to create such magnificent work? She said, “I guess I just know when to take the paper and crayons away so they don’t wreck it.”

I wonder if we employed a muse, like “Pixie” mentioned in a previous comment, if that would help us know when to stop revising/overthinking. We might let go before overthinking ruins the piece, or help us continue when we’ve barely started.

How to restart the heart though? That’s what I’m struggling with. I’ve found lately (pre-COVID even) that writing hasn’t felt fun. I’ve been working hard to learn about structure, to polish and edit and try to publish – but doing that I think has led me away from the pure creativity (not to mention the fun of constant rejections). So I’ve slowly realized that my heart has left, like you said, and I’m not sure how to convince it to come back! Thanks for giving us a lot to think about!

Honestly, that’s what I’m working on too. Let me know when you figure it out. I’ll do the same! 😀

For now though, the message that keeps coming through clearly to me is: Patience.

I do not like this message, but there it is. :p

Hi Cecily, I hope it’s okay to jump in. A couple of years ago I had three really horrible reviews on GR. They were friends and I could see their ‘mean girl’ discussion as well as the reviews. It was humiliating and traumatic. I almost did something really stupid and I also stopped writing for about seven months. Then an author friend gave me a copy of Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art. It’s excellent. It’ll get you back in the fight and doing what you love again. I hope this helps you. It literally saved my life.

Reading your post leads me to look at the problem in a different way. I do agree that we can and do obsess to the point of stasis. A part of my brain always seems to be noodling over a question, subplot, or conversation in the story I’m working on. Sometimes it’s consciously, sometimes deeper. On the other hand, a number of your seven points seem to have some flavor of overthinking.

It seems to me that a key to take advantage of overthinking is to use your suggestions to immerse ourselves into the world we are trying to expose. As you say, many of us put a lot of effort into outlines and world building. But so much more lives in our imagination than we can put down on paper. The detailed history of the universe we put together rolls around our subconscious.

Story structure and craft are the physics and natural order that expose our story. But when I’m floundering, it helps to drop into my story and use those tools in kind of a virtual way to navigate the complexities around me. In other words, I try to watch what is happening and understand the underlying reasons.

For example, it may be that the elderly Queen has a soft spot in her heart for the diplomat from a rival kingdom because he reminds her of a lover when she was young. That pushes her to a decision which leads to set of complications, and finally to war that destroys her realm. We may choose to include some of those incidents as beats in our story. But there are a complex set of dynamics behind each one that will never see the light of day.

We, as authors, owe it to ourselves and our readers to delve into as many of those possibilities as we reasonably can. A masterful example is The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien (as well as his notes and unfinished works).

I guess the point I’m trying to make is you are right on both points. Overthinking can become a big problem. It can also be a way to enhance our understanding of our work.

By the way, this method might also be useful when we hit that mountain called writer’s block. Some random character or situation in our imaginary worlds may spur an idea to explore – maybe even unrelated to our current efforts. We might not choose to write it as a story, but I think that is where we can rediscover the fun.

Be safe and Happy Holidays (as well as we can in these days of COVID).

This is great, and I agree. I absolutely realize that in writing this post, it is a case of the blind trying to lead the blind. 😉

Great post. I’m finding that the more I learn about the craft of writing, the more overthinking I’m doing: “Is this opening chapter good enough? Is there a great hook?” and on and on. Being an engineer, mathematician, and software geek, I’m predisposed to logic and overthinking. After self-publishing a historical fiction novel, I’m struggling to find the creativity need to launch a viable sequel. I’m thinking of turning to fantasy because as a former D&D dungeon master and RPG gamer, I find creating worlds to be a lot of fun. It’s where my heart is I guess. Am I overthinking again?!

I think (!) this is a very common experience among writers. We run on instinct for a bit, realize we need to learn some more, then become temporarily too dependent on our learnings, then balance out with the instinct again.

From a fellow software, mathematics and engineering geek, its like when you really understand that a clean compile doesn’t mean that the program really works. Only after you have understood the goal of the program (and if you are smart, actually used your own code), then you are ready to improve the code. In writing terms, read your story and ask how you *as a reader* would feel about the story as written. I wouldn’t say that your concern for the effect on the reader is overthinking. Just engage your users for feedback early and often. And you qualify as a user in this scenario.

Brilliant, brilliant article. Thank you. I write in the midst of a hurricane. The ideas flow, the words pour. But later, when I come back to edit, I find that this word isn’t quite right, or that comma is in the wrong place, or this sentence is way too long and needs to be broken up because it breaks all the rules. And suddenly, the hurricane has stopped, the storm has abated and there was nothing to say after all. Damn! I over-thought it out of existence.

It’s a balance for sure–and a tricky one sometimes.

I’m so glad you wrote this and that I read it! I’ve read so much about the “rules of the road” when it comes to writing fiction that it scared me out of my journey. Now I feel I can start again and worry about any signs I missed later during revision.

Thank you so much!

Hear, hear!

Struggling with this a lot lately–or rather, dropped writing for a bit because the struggle was getting exhausting and interfering too much with the rest of life. I’ve learned a TON about story structure, character arcs etc in recent years but haven’t actually written much prose in that time, so I feel like although I know exactly what I want to write, I forgot how to do it. So I’d spend a writing session staring at the page, knowing exactly which bits of emotion, action and information I need to put into words next but not finding the words.

I like your conclusion that ‘combating overthinking is less about turning the brain off and more about turning everything else on’. I find the same approach can work nicely with changing habits: focus not on what I want to stop doing but what I want to do instead. I hope I can make it work for this too!

I think sometimes we have to take the time to let what we’ve learned process, percolate, and return to a more “habitual” level where it doesn’t require as much of our cognitive space upfront.

I think you’re right, I’ve noticed that happening before. I may also have had some other life stuff, stress, etc getting in the way. I’ll let the writing theory percolate a bit more, sort through the other stuff, and then see if my brain wants to do prose again!

Dear Anna, your website is brilliant! So creative. I love it! And the sketches for your kingdom of Mennistriam… “I’ve learned a TON about story structure, character arcs etc in recent years but haven’t actually written much prose in that time, so I feel like although I know exactly what I want to write, I forgot how to do it.” Oh goodness, get writing, girl! To hell with all those shoulds and shouldn’ts. Your characters are itching to stretch and play. You’ve created the setting, now let them free!

Thank you! That website is my perpetually unfinished design/coding playground, always lovely to hear that someone enjoys it!

Oh, don’t worry, they’ve been playing… I’ve been experimenting with writing more overview-to-detail than front-to-back (like the snowflake method but different) and it seems to work great for the way my brain works. And the characters have a lot to say at every step of the process! I actually have a finished version of the shortest Mennistriam story that’s somewhat between an outline and a very ugly first draft; the point where I’m having trouble is turning that into reader-comprehensible prose. I can do it, as my writing group’s enthusiasm about the first scene shows, it’s just taking too much effort at the moment. That may have to do with other areas of life rather than writing, so I’m focusing on those. Hopefully the writing lessons and insights will use that time to process and percolate as Katie suggests above!

Ah, glad to hear you ARE writing. I thought you had stopped. I hope your creativity percolates, as you say. Good luck!

I love this: “…stories themselves are tales of our imperfections. Our words and our pages are where we capture all the messiness of our lives.”

Yes! I often find that the words in my journal leap of the page and I feel inspired by them, but when I take a closer look, my logician says, that’s a poorly constructed sentence.

And, “We must honor our inner logicians. But it’s best if we can also learn to keep them in the classroom.”

I agree, because the logician often destroys messy creativity, but does that mean we need to keep a bit of messiness in our work? When I edit, it’s a bit like having OCD. I want to make sure every dangling modifier and misplaced participle is removed, sure, but what if that destroys the tone, the easy breezy feel of the piece?

Or are we just talking about letting the creative juices flow first, and then entering the classroom to clean up our work? That we must balance recess and playground time with classroom instruction? Never just all classroom or all recess? Because we need both?

I guess when I’ve edited the life out of my work, then I need a bit a recess. I need to put that particular chapter away for a week (or longer?), give it a rest and come back to it with fresh eyes, like going on vacation and returning to work renewed.

Wonderful article. Thank you, K.M.. And now, I shall go back and read all the other comments!

It’s been fun reading all the comments. Thanks again!

I think it’s helpful to remember the old saying about how “in writing, there are no rules, only guidelines.”

When I met my husband more than 15 years ago, he used to say “Lighten up, Francis” to me. Oy. We were both lawyers then and, if I’m being perfectly honest, lightening up wasn’t a way to succeed in that field. I worked mainly on corporate/tax matters. Out of place commas could be a huge problem, so I was constantly in fear of making mistakes at work.

When I had my son (who is now seven), I took time off from the law and all of a sudden I started hearing little snippets in my head. It took me a while to realize this was, my GOD could it be possible, my IMAGINATION working again after years of stifling my creativity with political science courses and then law school/bar exam/billing hours.

I started writing a novel during my son’s naps. This was the same time I found your website and began soaking in all of the information I didn’t even know I didn’t know. And so my lawyer’s brain took over my creativity from a very early stage in my journey.

I’ve been writing creatively off and on since 2014 (mostly off this year thanks to my kids being at home with me all day every day and sucking up all of my emotional lifeforce). This year has been difficult for me, BUT it’s taught me a huge lesson. One you so perfectly pointed out in your post when you said this:

“Because it came so easily when we were young or just starting out with our writing, we don’t realize that creativity only emerges when we achieve and maintain certain balances in our lives. Balance requires discipline. And the further out of balance we are—the more our thinking brains have tyrannized over our creative selves—the more discipline it takes to recreate the circumstances we may once have taken for granted.”

When I was feeling at my most creative, brimming with excitement about a story percolating in my head, it was when I was training for a marathon. I was moving my body constantly. I was healthy and fitter than I had been since I played volleyball in college. My kids were also in school a few days a week, so not only could I write in the morning before they woke up but I also had time to exercise and let my mind wander a bit while they were in the good care of nurturing teachers.

This is why what you said about maintaining balance is so meaningful to me. I’ve been doing the willpower old boy thing to myself this year. When the pandemic hit I was about half way through my novel (the first one I’ve actually tried to finish). There’s never a good time for a global health crisis, but the timing was very complicated in terms of where I was in my writing journey. I was at a difficult point in my novel and pushing through the middle of a novel (so I’ve heard) is hard under the easiest of circumstances.

The pandemic threw me way, way off balance. I basically chose to spend most of my free time writing rather than moving my body, because the urge to write is still there and the desire to finish my novel almost rising to an obsession. And I was clearly relying on depleted energy stores to, as you say, recreate the circumstances that worked for my creativity. The truth was (and remains, unfortunately, with the recent uptick in COVID cases), that it was not possible to recreate these circumstances. My reality has changed and there is nothing I can do about it. In order to nourish my creativity, I need time to move, I need time to write, I need time to let my mind wander, and I need external stimuli.

I’ve *almost* let go of my novel completely because of how hard it’s been to drag myself to the page in the absence of the things I need to live creatively. But the desire to complete the project and to prove to myself I can finish a novel is stronger. I will say, though, that it’s been hard to fend off the feelings of anger, frustration and disappointment that come along with the feeling of loss of control over my creative pursuits. Especially when I had worked so hard to understand what my creativity actually required.

I thought I had a specific question to ask you when I began to write this. It seems, though, simply an exercise of reflection for me. To any of you who read this, thank you. Perhaps reading the result of me spilling thoughts into the comments will lead to some clarity for you.

Thanks very much for sharing this. It’s actually helped me realize something for myself as well–and that is that the pandemic has had a greater effect on my creativity this year than I’ve let myself admit. It actually feels like a weight lifted to realize and say that. I’d struggled last year as well and have been chalking a lot of this year’s “non-writing” to the fallout from that. But undoubtedly the global circumstances have had their impact as well. I always find peace in being able to better understand the causes and motivations for things. Even if the realizations don’t change the outcome, they usually help me let go of self-flagellating explanations.

2020 has been a tremendous year for lessons learned. In the end, I’m very thankful for that.

K-Denying our realities is certainly not benign.

I often find I expect myself to work with the energy and ferocity that I had when I was a 25 year old lawyer even though I’m a 37 year old mother of two small children. On top of that, I am teaching myself to write fiction. Cobbling together a syllabus for my studies, practicing on my own without much feedback, working in the dark with no accountability whatsoever except to my own dreams, which are quiet when compared with the demands of my kids. Those are my realities when it comes to writing fiction, but still I beat myself up when I think about the old me, the one who was able to work 70 hours a week at a Big Law firm and do so quite successfully.

I was struggling personally last year as well. Reading your blogs as you were uncovering the connection between your creativity and your life was so nourishing to me. It taught me so much about, once again, that elusive balance that, as the famous song goes, you don’t know that you have ’til it’s gone.

Thank you, as always, for sharing on this blog. You help so many of us light up the dark parts with your wisdom.

Yes, I relate to this very much. I suppose we also tend to idealize our past selves. In re-reading old journals from ten years ago, I suddenly remembered that I’ve gone through similar creative dry spells over and over throughout my life. This latest one is more pronounced maybe, but it’s not new. Strangely, that’s encouraging. 😀

Somewhere, early on, I learned the unhealthy pattern that

Caring about something = Controlling it = Working to exhaustion in the attempt to control it

In my case, the pattern was reinforced by some of the effort coming naturally and by ignoring the truth that what I cared about might not be what was best for me to care about.

The learning process is still going on. 😉

Hi Sarah, just saying I once stopped working on a novel for at least four years, maybe even longer, before I went back to it. When I did, the passion was still there, the characters still breathing. For whatever reason, life, more pressing projects, overthinking, fear, had gotten in the way. Just saying never say never when it comes to a project you love, no matter how long it may lie dormant while life gets in the way.

Thank you, Polly 🙂 I’ve been clinging to it out of fear that I’d lose it. Hearing that it’s possible to go back after a long hiatus is encouraging.

I liked the part “My life is my art.” Not sure I understood it right, but deep down my inner child hugged the shared thought.

Thank you for your writings and insights. You give me lots to think about. Over-thinking, to me, seems like thinking which leads one astray from one’s conscious goal. At the same time, I can see how such diversion can sometimes lead one to a better goal, and expose the original goal as merely a hand-hold on a climb toward a partially obscured truth. Perhaps the worst overthought is that which takes away without giving anything of value.

Your article helped me make sense of something I’ve been living. I’m getting tired of writing. What I used to love is becoming a chore to me and I can’t get excited about it much. Your articled reminded me of when I loved writing what was my life like then. It was when my children were home and we were always outdoors in nature. I miss that connection with nature, since we seldom go out much anymore. I also miss music. I love certain music I used to play while I write. Why don’t I go outside or play music anymore? Since my husband’s retirement we don’t do the fun things we used to do. We seem so serious all the time. I know there’s a pandemic on but I could still get outside and listen to my music, but it just never seems to happen. Maybe I answered my own question of why isn’t writing fun anymore? I have to get back to the fun things I used to do that would spark ideas in my head. There’s no reason I can’t get outside and walk again or take my “boom box” up into the office and play “my” music while writing. I’m going to try it tomorrow and see if that’s what is missing. I’ll let you know if it works.

Great insight – and encouragement to trust the writer inside the heart and soul.

Thank you for this timely post!

Thanks for stopping by! 🙂

Wow. it’s 2021 and the pandemic is wearing me out so having to write a novel and be creative is like killing me. I just took a deep dive editing course that last 2 mos which resulted in ‘this-is-what-your-book-needs’ overload. I have tried to get over it and write but what I need is a break. I need to breathe. I need to leave my ms alone for a while to get my creativity back. Watching comedy shows helps. 🙂

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Our Students Can’t Write Very Well—It’s No Mystery Why

My organization decided a few weeks back that we needed to hire a new professional staff person. We had close to 500 applicants. Inasmuch as the task was to help us communicate information related to the work we do, we gave each of the candidates one of the reports we published last year and asked them to produce a one-page summary. All were college graduates. Only one could produce a satisfactory summary. That person got the job.

We were lucky this time. We are more often than not disappointed at the subpar writing ability of the applicants for openings at our organization. Many applicants are from very good colleges. Many have graduate degrees. Many are very poor writers.

Their lack of writing ability does not augur well. When we look at what they have written, the logic of the narrative is often very hard to find. It would appear that their lack of writing ability stands as mute testimony to their lack of thinking ability.

How, we ask, could this have happened? The answers are not hard to find. My friend Will Fitzhugh points out that high school students are rarely required to read entire works of fiction and are almost never asked to read entire works of non-fiction. I know of no good writers who are not also good readers.

More directly to the point, high school students are hardly ever asked to write anything of significant length. Why not? Because in this age of accountability, they are not tested on their writing ability. By which I mean that they are not asked to submit to the testing authorities 10- or 15- or 20-page papers in which they are expected to present a thesis and defend it, analyze something complicated from multiple points of view and draw a reasoned conclusion, or put together a short story in which characters are developed in some depth and insights are revealed.

This point is critically important. There is only one way that we can find out whether a student can write a substantial research paper—by asking them to write a substantial research paper and looking carefully at the result. If we do not ask them to produce this product—over and over again, as they get better and better at it—then they will not be able to do it well. If they have not done the work, then neither their teacher nor the engines of the accountability system can assess it. If this sort of serious writing is not done and—in our accountability-oriented environment—is not assessed, then it will not be learned. End of argument.

Oh, sure, we have tests of writing ability for college-bound students, but they do not ask the student to produce anything like what we asked our candidates to produce. They ask a student to choose one word or phrase from a list to fill in the blank in a passage. That is not writing. It is something else. PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments have made progress in more effectively evaluating the writing skills of our students, but many states are actively taking steps away from these types of assessment tasks. And it is of course true that asking a student to write a one-page summary of a longer piece is no test of their ability to write a well-argued, fact-based, 10- or 20-page research paper.

We are fond of producing long lists of things we want 21 st century students to be able to do. But the ability to write well and think critically always tops the list, both because so much work requires these skills and because they are so fundamental to so many other kinds of cognitive activity we value. What could be more central to a good education?

So it is simply unbelievable that we do not build our curriculum around the assumption that we will be asking students to read demanding books—not just parts of books, but whole books—and then asking them to write, at length and in detail, about what they have read, explicating, analyzing, synthesizing and summarizing it, with insight and narrative skill that demonstrates their ability to think clearly. Isn’t that the heart of the matter?

Writing is a craft. Like any other craft, it is learned only by doing it, over and over and over, at increasing levels of challenge, under the watchful eye of an expert. How on earth are our students to learn to write if we do not ask them to write, and write a lot, and write well? The reason, of course, that they are not asked to write much is because their ability to write a substantial paper is not tested. And why, in this age of accountability, when we judge teachers by how well their students do on the test, would we expect their students to write well when we do not test their ability to write a good paper, 10 to 20 pages in length?

Our own research tells us that a large fraction of community college professors do not assign writing to their students because their students cannot write and the professors do not consider themselves to be writing teachers. It is no wonder that employers like us find it so hard to find candidates with serviceable writing skills.

What do you suppose would happen if a state announced one day that it was redesigning its accountability system and half of a teachers’ rating would henceforth depend on their students’ grades on long research papers in the subject taught by that teacher—papers, say, at least 15 pages long at the high school level? They might be told that that grade would depend on the way evidence was presented and marshaled, the range of the evidence presented, the depth of the analytical ability displayed in the essay, the logic and persuasiveness of the argument made, and so on.

I am not arguing that we should do this, but simply making the point that if we really cared about the ability of our students to think and write well, we would assign substantial papers frequently, critique those papers effectively, and expect students to write well long before they left high school. It is hard to reach any conclusion on this point other than that we simply don’t care whether or not our students can write effectively, if we judge by what is assigned to students, what is expected of students, the instruction we offer students, the way we evaluate their work, the design of our accountability systems or our criteria for graduating students from high school.

But assume for the moment that all these issues were addressed. Can we then assume that our students would be graduating high schools able to think clearly and write well? I don’t think so.

I said in passing above that writing is a craft and crafts are best learned by apprenticing oneself to an expert, in this case an expert writer. This suggests that if our students are to become good writers, they will have to get their work critiqued in detail by teachers who are themselves good writers.

But I also said at the beginning of this blog that we and many other employers are having a very hard time hiring anyone who is a good writer, even graduates of leading universities and graduate schools. We know that most of our teachers come not from our leading universities but from institutions that get their students from the lower half of the distribution of high school graduates going to college. If there is no reason to assume that the graduates of the leading institutions are themselves good writers, what would make us assume that the graduates of less demanding institutions are better writers?

It is true that many universities require applicants to submit a short essay as part of their application. But I am willing to bet that few, if any, require their applicants to do something as straightforward as our request to our job applicants to summarize a complex research paper in one page, on demand, in a short time, capturing all the key points and creating a narrative that makes sense of it all for the reader.

If we do not demand that those who want to become teachers are themselves very good writers, why would we expect our teachers to be good teachers of writing? We should, in fact, be requiring our candidates for teaching positions to write 20-page papers of their own which analyze and summarize a topic from the literature in their field. We should be asking them to produce, on demand, a one-page summary of something they are given to read that is complicated and difficult.

But we don’t do any of these things. So, once again, I conclude that we are not serious. We are not serious about teaching students to reason and write well and we are not serious about hiring teachers who have the skills needed to teach our students how to reason and write well. We are no doubt lucky to have many teachers who know how to read and write critically and care enough to pass those skills on to their students. But if these core skills were really important to us, we would be making very large changes in curriculum, demanding much more reading of complete novels and non-fiction, asking our students to write much longer papers much more frequently, providing expert and copious commentary on what they had written, changing our accountability systems to reflect these priorities and, not least, we would be making sure that our teachers are themselves very good writers.

I very much doubt that our high school graduates write less well than high school graduates used to write. But jobs for truck drivers, hamburger flippers and grocery store check out clerks are disappearing fast. This is just one more—but crucially important—arena in which our education system is failing to adapt to a fast-changing environment.

The opinions expressed in Top Performers are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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9 Writers on Why Writing Is So Hard

Best-selling authors talk to Shondaland about what makes their craft so difficult and special.

There are few things as magical as reading a book that fully immerses you in a new world. Poetic and profound prose can evoke emotions that can remain with you for your entire life, transforming how you see the world. With that in mind, this month, Shondaland is exploring the world of books, from authors discussing their favorite reads and a publisher explaining the need for more transparency in the industry to a nearly published author sharing what it’s like to be on the brink of putting her first book out into the world. Happy reading!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “If writing were easy, everyone would do it!” You’ve likely read it a million times, right? Well, there’s a reason for that. You see, everybody has a story to tell. But it’s the actual telling of those stories that separates writers from everyone else yearning to share their tales. That being said, even the most seasoned and celebrated writers will quickly let you know that writing is just downright hard!

So, what is it that actually makes putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) so daunting, and how do you combat that difficulty when trying to write your story? Shondaland caught up with some of our favorite authors to find out. And what they have to say just might surprise you.

Why is writing so hard?

The solitariness of it, the elusiveness of it. If forced, we could generate words, sentences, paragraphs, but it would be meaningless. So, the thing that makes it a story, the words that etch out a character that the reader can see and feel and hear … there’s plenty of tricks to get there. You can create the conditions for that element to come forward, and do what you can to push yourself into that state that makes it happen … but part of it remains mysterious.

Alex Aster (author of Curse of the Forgotten City ) @alex.aster

Writing is so hard because we put so many expectations on our writing, and those expectations weigh down not only our fingers while typing, but also our words. I started writing books when I was 12, which I think saved me from a lot of the fretting about writing that I see so many people struggle with. When you’re a kid, you do what you love just because you love it. You don’t think to yourself, “Will these words be worth the time and effort? Will they turn into a book that will sell for enough money to allow me to pay my rent?” You just … write. As an adult, there are so many constraints on our time, so it’s natural for us not to want to waste it. We don’t have time to simply play the way we used to. Writing is hard because it’s a fluid, organic, almost magical form of creation that we often try so hard to bottle up or cookie-cut so it can be monetized.

Brandy Colbert (author of Black Birds in the Sky ) @brandycolbert

For me, not writing is often harder than writing. I don’t believe you need to write every day, but when I’m in the middle of a project, I either need to be actively thinking about it — working out plots and character arcs in my head — or getting words down on the page. I start to feel antsy and a bit anxious when I’ve taken too much time away from a project, to the point where it’s actually a relief to get back to work.

Sarah Gerard (author of True Love ) @sarahnumber4

It can be hard. It can also be easy and fun. Or fun and hard. Or hard but important, exciting, and fulfilling. We wouldn’t keep doing it otherwise. It’s hard because doing it well matters, because stories matter, and the details matter, and there are often a lot of details. Sometimes they take years to organize. The feelings and ideas and memories that we put into the writing also matter, and are layered, and we can’t force an understanding of them. We can only try to approach them with words, and, as many words as there are to choose from, or create, and despite their myriad iterations, they’re never enough.

John Green (author of The Anthropocene Reviewed ) @johngreen

I think writing is easier than many other things. For me, anyway, it is much easier than talking. But still, writing is difficult for me. Sometimes it is difficult because I do not know what I want to say, but usually it is difficult because I know exactly what I want to say but what I want to say has not yet taken the shape of language. When I’m writing, I’m trying to translate ideas and feelings and wild abstractions into language, and that translation is complicated and challenging work. (But it is also — in moments, anyway — fun.)

Kosoko Jackson (author of Yesterday Is History ) @kosokojackson

For me, the hardest part of writing is deciding what to write about. I have a lot of ideas, but not every idea is a viable idea. Is there a character? Is there a plot? Is there a through line? Is this something I want to spend 18 to 36 months on? Do I know enough to walk through the forest, but not so much that it feels boring to tell the story to myself? Writing is a journey for me that is as much writing a story that will appeal to readers (and my agent and editor) as much as telling a story to myself. What “lesson” am I trying to teach myself? What skill am I trying to sharpen? These are just a few of the questions I ask myself when making a novel, and not every novel has the answers — yet.

Morgan Jerkins (author of Caul Baby ) @morganjerkins

Writing is hard because sometimes — or perhaps many times — the words do not match the imagery of a specific scene that you have in your mind. It feels like there is always something that’s lost in translation as soon as it’s immortalized on the page.

Jonny Sun (author of Goodbye, Again ) @jonnysun

Writing is hard because you are dealing with the infinite. Out of a blank page, there is an unlimited number of possibilities of what to write. And at every scale of writing, this limitlessness exists — it feels like every word is an impossible choice. Every sentence can be written in endless different ways. And the ways those build to say something also exist in a million different permutations. The ideas and the way you structure those ideas are endless — the endlessness multiplies itself.

Chuck Wendig (author of The Book of Accidents ) @chuckwendig

I don’t know. Why is it hard digging ditches? Why is it hard being a god? Writing is somewhere in between both of those. You’re the god of digging ditches. You’re navigating this interstitial terrain between art and craft, between self-actualization and commerce, between empathy and evil. It has all these rules, and almost none of them are true. The work is the work, and the work is sometimes hard. It’s supposed to be easy, and some days it is — ironically, the easy days don’t mean the work was good, and the hard days don’t mean the work was bad. The short answer is, again, I don’t know. Maybe it’s hard because it needs to be hard, because if it were too easy, it wouldn’t really matter.

What do you do when writing gets most difficult?

Megan Abbott (author of The Turnout ) @meganeabbott

Go to a matinee. Take a walk. Read a writer I love. Main thing for me: Step away from the computer.

When writing gets really difficult, I stop writing. But just for a few hours. When words are hard to wrangle, I don’t try to force them onto the page. I have tried before, and the result was just more food for my computer’s trash bin! That being said, when I’m on deadline, I treat writing like any other job that has to be done, regardless of my mood. So, I’ll take a walk, reread something I’ve written that I particularly like (almost to show myself, see, you can make something good; you’ve done it before! ), or watch a movie. Once I’m out of the writing chair for a while, I’m often itching to get back in it to try again.

I do write every day when I’m on a tight deadline, and some days it takes hours just to squeeze out a few words. Sometimes I have to power through and remind myself I can fix whatever is not working in edits, either the next day or down the road. But it’s also important to realize when you need breaks. I’m a big fan of taking in other forms of storytelling, like watching television and films, reading graphic novels, newspapers, and magazines, or even rereading a favorite author’s work. Getting outside for some fresh air or a walk or hike usually helps. Cooking and yoga are also soothing ways for me to reset. Just engaging in activities that don’t require you to stare at a computer screen or notebook are all helpful.

Look at one piece of it at a time, rather than trying to apprehend the entire project. Alternatively, take 10 steps back and apprehend the entire project. Look at a different piece of it. Look at a different piece of writing altogether. Make dinner. Read. Hang out with my partner.

I get so frustrated. I cry. I take a walk. I get really angry at myself for being such a terrible writer. This is stupid! Why am I even attempting this when I am so hopelessly inept at storytelling? And then eventually, I get over myself and write. If there is a way to write without at least occasional weeping and gnashing of teeth, I have not yet found it.

I try to take a step back and evaluate “Is the issue I’m facing difficult or something that I truly don’t know how to solve?” If it’s the former, then that means I’m learning, and I’ve learned to be comfortable in the discomfort and trust my skills. If it’s the latter, then there’s something missing. Maybe I’m not at the skill level I need to be. Maybe I need to read more in the genre or more examples of what I’m trying to accomplish. Writing is as much pen-to-paper as it is refilling the well and learning from those who came before you.

I like to tell myself that it’s only a draft. I have to build a foundation first no matter how bad it is because it’s not meant to be perfect. Other times, I take breaks in between writing sessions. It may be a day, or four. I also have been okay with knowing that not every writing session is going to be easy. There are good days and bad days.

I try to establish rules and boundaries so that the limitlessness feels like a puzzle. Instead of a blank everythingness, defining a container helps to figure out how to use those bounds to express things that feel outside of those bounds, and also helps to figure out when I can break those rules for specific purposes. I also — when faced with indecision — just try to write the bad version, and then revisit later. It’s always easier to edit and have something in front of you that you can improve as opposed to coming up with something when nothing is in front of you.

It depends on when, and why, it’s difficult. If it’s difficult toward the end of a writing day, I give up and go do something else for the day. If it’s at the start, I try to push through. Sometimes it’s a problem in the work, sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s, I dunno, a Thursday on a full moon with a high pollen count. Sometimes the thing to do is go take a walk, get the blood moving. The blood carries oxygen, and the brain needs oxygen, so churn that red stuff, get the idea bubbles bubblin’.

Do you have any advice for fellow writers struggling with their work?

Write badly. Give yourself permission to write badly. We’re always trying so hard to make it good, vivid, real, faithful to the vision in our head … and that’s a lot of pressure. If we give ourselves permission to write one bad page, two bad pages, we can forget all the rest and just churn out words, ideas … and, in the best circumstances, get to see that beautiful unconscious place that leads to good stuff!

The times when writing is most difficult is when I don’t have a plan. Anyone is going to look at an empty page and think, what am I supposed to do to fill it?! So, I recommend always working with some sort of outline. Some might believe it takes the magic out of writing, but what it really does is just gives a writer a place to start … and a direction to go when they’re a little lost. Almost like a map.

I also recommend writing for yourself first. When I began writing at 12, I was just writing the type of book that I wanted to read. Pretend you’re the only one who will ever read it. At least in the drafting stages. That way, you won’t be afraid to take risks.

I think writers could stop being so hard on themselves — myself included. It’s irrational but easy to compare works in progress to finished books on our shelves, and it helps to remember that no piece of writing comes out fully formed. And that every project is different, so it’s best to go into it without expectations and know that you might have to figure out new ways to shape the piece into what you want it to be.

Talk to other writers about it. Meditate on what brings you to the work in the first place, what is important to you at the core of it.

Try to be nice to yourself!

Your journey won’t match anyone else’s, and you should embrace that. Find what works for you and what doesn’t, but don’t be ashamed. I’m a writer who bounces around a lot, but when I settle? I settle. I write so many hundreds of pages of books that will never become real. That’s okay because that’s me. I’m also a messy drafter; that works for me. Don’t be ashamed of what works for you, and embrace what makes you unique.

Write it down. Just write it all down. Set the foundation first before you start sculpting. Who knows? Even the pieces you inevitably discard may help to propel the next plot point or character development. All can be useful if you allow it.

Figure out what you enjoy writing about and the ways you write that make you enjoy writing. It’s less about “write what you know” but more “write what you know you like.” So much is already difficult in this world — it doesn’t help to also make writing something a struggle too. I think it helps to find the topics and structures and ideas that make writing feel exciting and joyful — the writing will still be hard, of course, but if there’s something there that makes you keep wanting to revisit it, over and over, that you still feel excited about trying to figure out, then I feel like that means you’ve found something to continue following.

Write a lot. That’s it, really. Iterate as often as you can. Part of this is, obviously, doing the thing helps you learn the thing, but more specifically it also helps you learn your process and your voice, and in knowing those things, you come to recognize when a difficult writing day is normal — meaning, it’s part of your process, your pattern — and when it is abnormal. Abnormal difficulty can mean you’re not dealing with a writing problem, but rather anxiety or depression or some other neurodivergence, and those are normal and okay but can’t be solved the same way you’d solve an average writing block — you can’t “write your way through” depression. You’ll only sink deeper, like with quicksand. You have to be able to see clearly the difficulties in front of you and see when they belong to your writing process or exist outside of it. Writing a lot helps you get to that kind of clarity.

Scott Neumyer is a writer from central New Jersey whose work has been published by The New York Times , The Washington Post , Rolling Stone , The Wall Street Journal , ESPN , GQ , Esquire , Parade magazine , and many other publications. You can follow him on Twitter @ scottneumyer .

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COMMENTS

Why Students Struggle With Essay Writing
Poor Mechanical & Content Skills. In the same article, Debbie argued that students with poor processing and poor content and mechanical skills often struggle with essay writing. The most notable processing skills that many students would often lack include fluent development of ideas, language formulation and ideation, and active working memory.
Writing Anxiety
What are writing anxiety and writer's block? "Writing anxiety" and "writer's block" are informal terms for a wide variety of apprehensive and pessimistic feelings about writing. These feelings may not be pervasive in a person's writing life. For example, you might feel perfectly fine writing a biology lab report but apprehensive ...
Writing Anxiety: Why Does Writing Sometimes Make You Anxious (And How
Problem 1: The Story Is Too Long. It's easy to feel like a story is so massive and complicated that you will never be able to do it justice. Most ideas spark from a novel premise or a vision of a story's climax. This excites the writer, but then the hard work begins and writing anxiety sets in when trying to build the structure supporting that idea or leading up to that finale moment.
7 Common Issues Shared by Struggling Writers
3. Struggling writers often have a hard time editing their writing and/or the writing of others. These students tend not to read with an eye to detail and, as a result, they often miss all but the most glaring errors. Even when told that there are remaining punctuation issues, for example, they may be unable to find the errors.
Here's Why You Struggle to Write
A lot of fear and hesitancy comes because you are not sure why you are writing in the first place. You do not have an honest assessment of your mission. If you're avoiding the question or you find it uncomfortable, I suspect why. Writing isn't all platitudes of "changing the world" or "helping people with your words."
Overcoming Writing Anxiety and Writer's Block
You're experiencing writing anxiety. Writing anxiety is the condition of feeling uneasy about writing. Writer's block is what you experience when you can't manage to put words on the page. But your condition isn't about the act of writing. Just yesterday you wrote a great review for those cool new headphones.
Why Is Writing So Hard? 7 Common Obstacles (and What to Do About Them
Here are 7 common challenges you may face while writing, plus action steps to overcome each one. 1. You're anxious or insecure about your writing. Writing requires courage in the obvious ways, like being brave enough to share your work with the world, send it to publishers and reviewers, or read it aloud.
Symptoms and Cures for Writer's Block
Example: You have to complete a lab report and hate writing the "Introduction" section. In order to complete the project on time, you overcome your anxiety about writing that section by first writing the "Materials," "Method," and "Results" sections. You write the "Introduction" last, reorder, and revise holistically.
7 Common Writing Struggles and How to Overcome Them
Here's her list: 1. You can't fix a blank page. "In my conversation with V.E. Schwab (episode #38), she makes a very strong case for accepting that in your first draft, your idea and what it looks like on the page will be the farthest apart, and in revision you can get it closer to what you imagined.
Struggling with your academic writing? Try these experiments to ...
For example, Jay does his best writing—including this column—in the late afternoon before he races to pick up his kids from school. June, on the other hand, prefers the quiet of the morning alone at a coffee shop in her mountain college town. We propose that you act like a scientist and try these three simple writing "experiments" designed ...
I struggle to write essays like really struggle (50 words took ...
I often find it easier to start the essay when I have all my ideas in front of me. 1. Furthur_slimeking. • 9 yr. ago. I would guess that if it's taken you three hours to write fifty words, you probably don't know what you're writing about. Sit down (or stand up - whatever works) and formulate a plan.
Essay Writing Tips: 10 Steps to Writing a Great Essay (And Have Fun
Body #1: Most students think writing an essay is tedious because they focus on external rewards. Body #2: Students should instead focus on internal fulfillment when writing an essay. Body #3: Not only will focusing on internal fulfillment allow students to have more fun, it will also result in better essays.
7 Essay Writing Problems That Students Often Deal With
The inability to believe in one's capabilities and skills is one of the most common problems in essay writing that students have to face. Students who think they are not good at writing will have trouble starting their papers. They doubt their capability to complete it as well. And with this self-doubt, they may never even try to start ...
I Can't Write Essays: Tips to Overcome Struggle Writing Essays
Communicate to your readers what you intend to put forward, your points, and what you plan to argue about in your essay. 3. Outline your Essay. Always ensure you have an outline of your ideas. Put everything on paper, even if it means having diagrams to help you write efficiently, then do so.
Why Is Writing So Difficult? Here Are 3 Reasons Why
Here are the three main reasons why writing is more difficult for some writers. 1. Crippling perfectionism. Try telling a perfectionist "done is better than perfect.". They'll say nothing's better than perfect, that's why it's perfect! The problem is, it's nearly impossible to produce anything perfectly.
7 Things to Try When Writing Is Hard
I moved my writing session to the evening, when my energy is always most reliable. This gave me the ability to once again consistently show up for writing time—which removed the useless poison of guilt from my already complicated cocktail of problematic catalysts. 7. Inhale Information and Inspiration.
ADHD and Challenges with Writing
So, when presented with a writing task, the following symptoms may hinder your progress: difficulty organizing tasks. difficulty sustaining attention. inattention to details. procrastination ...
7 Steps to Stop Overthinking Your Writing
5. Honor Your Logician. None of this is to suggest our rational, thinking, logical brains aren't important—especially in our writing. Writing well is as much a craft as an art. Indeed, the craft of writing is a delight in itself. Most of us come to appreciate the glories of the theories and techniques we study.
Our Students Can't Write Very Well—It's No Mystery Why
That is not writing. It is something else. PARCC and Smarter Balanced assessments have made progress in more effectively evaluating the writing skills of our students, but many states are actively ...
9 Writers on Why Writing Is So Hard
Why is writing so hard? Megan Abbott (author of The Turnout) @meganeabbott. The solitariness of it, the elusiveness of it. If forced, we could generate words, sentences, paragraphs, but it would be meaningless. So, the thing that makes it a story, the words that etch out a character that the reader can see and feel and hear … there's plenty ...
anyone else painfully slow at writing essays : r/ApplyingToCollege
We think about each word before we put it down instead of freely writing lmao. This is not necessarily a bad thing; taking that much time likely means you're not "rushing" the process and are thinking about your strategy, which is good. The short essays (less than 250) are the worst to write. They take me so long.
How to not suck at writing essays : r/writing
A suggested order of sentencing (that is, one that's hard to screw up): General comment on the nature of the question. Introduce your thesis (could be a reading, or just a theme) and how they intersect with the question (in other words, your thesis is your position on the question) Introduce text/s.
Does anyone else feel they just can't write an essay?
Don't worry too much about it being difficult. It is for most people, and that's completely normal. Now, some schmuck might come in here saying that they regularly write post-graduate essays to the highest level in 2 hours. They are either lying (most likely) or they are the very rare exception to the norm.