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Afraid of writing essays, can't get myself to start and keep going. (critical)

Guys, please I need your help.
I have this thing where I avoid the things I find intimidating and challenging rather than facing them. With essays, not only this but because of my bad experience too with my teachers from my previous sixth form college- virtually all of my confidence has gone. My new teachers are amazing though, they are the ones still giving me hope to continue but I still struggle with writing essays because I think it wouldn't be good enough, to my standard, their standard etc. The worse bit is it is not even coursework but assignments set by them to monitor our writing skills yet I am struggling.

It's so bad now to the point where I have multiple essays due/ past their deadlines because I had purposely avoided doing them because to of these reasons, fear and anxiety. Help!

Reply 1

RoseScott

Do not worry. It is always difficult to start. Without stylistics, writing would be plain and boring. To perfect your writing skills, read about figurative language http://literarydevices.net/figurative-language/ It is also necessary to master a non-fiction way of writing, so start your day with The NYT or The Guardian, try to pay attention to the strong arguments journalists always use. Besides, before to send your essay to a teacher, it is better to check it for plagiarism. The thing is that, sometimes we can plagiarize unintentionally and the result of such work can be low grade.

Reply 2

MJlover

Original post by RoseScott

This helped me when I focused on humanity subjects for A level.
I did well in all of my Sixth Form classes (history, English lit, and sociology), because I read broadsheets and paid attention to their style of writing and how they argued. Picking up on that, I was able to write more critically and analytically.

Reply 3

username944192

Original post by Cherry82

I have a similar thing to this, whenever I have to write an essay I get really panicky because I would rather hand in no work than bad work. So I end up leaving it late and have to rush it, often very stressed out etc.

I think one of the main things is to make sure you give yourself enough time and that you've done enough research. I personally can never research an essay as I go along, I often spend more time researching now than I do writing. Make yourself a very detailed essay plan so that when it comes to typing up the essay all you're really doing is changing bullet point format issues into essay style issues. This way the actual writing of the essay shouldn't take you very much time at all.

Another thing if you find it hard to start is to not start at the beginning. Whenever I write an essay I often write my conclusion first as I find this helps keep me focused throughout the rest of it - you know what you're arguing and what you're going to conclude if you write the conclusion first and you can keep this in your mind while writing, which will also help you cut out any waffle. I often start with conclusion, then next whichever point I'm most comfortable with, and then the rest of the main body. I always write the introduction last because here you should be setting out what you're going to conclude in the essay and how you're going to go about it i.e. explain briefly what you're going to look at in the main body and in what order. So it makes sense for this to come last once you've done your main body and conclusion and you're happy with the structure, your introduction will then not take very long to write.

These tips don't work in exams though obviously you can't spend any time researching and you can't write your essay in a funny order because you can't go back and move it around like you can with an assignment but hope this helped a bit for assignments at least! I get really stressed over assignments and it's best just to do enough research so you know what you're talking about and then start with your conclusion.

Reply 4

Nadine_08

Original post by Cherry82

I have the exact same issue!

Reply 5

Nadine_08

Original post by infairverona

Very similar to me. I would definitely rather hand in no work than bad work but often, because of this, I end up missing multiple deadlines and getting shouted at my English teacher.

Reply 6

username944192

Original post by Nadine_08

Very similar to me. I would definitely rather hand in no work than bad work but often, because of this, I end up missing multiple deadlines and getting shouted at my English teacher.

It's horrible, the only thing is when you go to uni you realise that you have to meet the deadlines or you get marked down for lateness or even get 0 marks if you're too late. The only way I found to counter this was to make sure you start your essays wayyyyyy in advance so that you don't feel like you're handing in bad work, it gives you time to go over it lots and edit, get it proofread by people etc. Takes more organisation though

Reply 7

Cherry82

Thanks for your advice guys, sorry for replying late. I didn't know other people were experiencing the same thing. It's terrible.
I'm still looking for a solution, I was told to mediate and listen to relaxing Zen music. I have still yet to try this technique, just hope it works.

Reply 8

Cherry82

Original post by infairverona

Wow, uni sounds a bit scary! How am I going to cope with those essays let alone A level essays :L I'm screwed. I may as well give up now, bye uni. You sound so organised, great advice. The only thing is knowing myself I would spend too much time planning and panicking over my drafts.

Reply 9

CoronationStreet

What I always recommend for people who struggle to begin an essay is to not think about it and write free flow, anything that comes in your head and you think is remotely relevant. At least then you have something to refine rather than nothing at all.

Reply 10

HzlC

Original post by CoronationStreet

Completely agree with this. I've used this http://www.neilstoolbox.com/speed-writing/ in the past to help me just get something written. I find starting is the hard bit, the rest just kind of flows.

Reply 11

HagueBlue

Original post by Cherry82

The absolute best thing you can do is look at previous high scoring essays. It tells you structure, and gives you a hint to the writing style you should write in. If you understand why they got high marks, turn to your own work and try and use the same rules. For me, I noticed that to get high grades in A Level Engkish Lit I needed to is make my analysis more subtle. That basically means rather than starting with ' The writer uses similes to do this' you start with ' The writer explores these themes with this similie'

And if you're worried, start doing the thing which worries you. Pick the essay topic you're most vomfortable with and just write 100 words a day, and a little more and more as you get more confident. Problem with essays is that it becomes hard not to obsess on every word. But even if the essay isn't as flowing or good as you hoped it would be, get it done so your teacher can mark it. They'll tell you how to improve it, and usually a good teacher shows how easy it is to improve an essay with a few tips.

Reply 12

username944192

Original post by Cherry82

Trust me I'm not organised, I always left my uni essays until the last minute - I did my dissertation, the whole 10,000 words, 3 days before it was due. I'm currently working on a postgraduate essay due on 14th January and I'm panicking like mad.

You can do your draft in bullet form, anything to jot down your thoughts. The essay I'm currently working on I have about 4 different pages where I've scribbled stuff down and it's hard to organise your thoughts sometimes, but if you can get down in bullet points what you want to say etc then I find it's much easier to then structure those bullet points. Then you can just pad them out when you write :smile: