The Toils of Essay Writing

My last post doubled as an introduction and something of a more intangible, perhaps even ontological pointer about how, as students, we should approach university; namely through self-belief, determination and confidence. I stand by the relevance of this however I always find these kinds of tips the most irritating as they are less instantly utilisable and more of a long-term psychological project. Alas, let’s talk about a few difficulties and methods for making studying social science degrees easier without embarking on an exponential journey of self-re-imagination and development.

Succeeding in a social science degree means being fluent in a multiplicity of different skills. Reading and writing stand out as two of the most obvious components but breaking these two down reveals the crux of the difficulty. Firstly, writing. I have found that whether I’m sitting down to craft a report, a segment of a group project, an essay, book review, critical reflection and so on, the words rarely, if ever, trickle onto the page with ease and fluidity. Instead, my typing is stalled by consideration of the pillars of academic writing, that of sustaining a critical engagement, developing an in-depth analysis and presenting a focused discussion amongst others. Moreover, students are expected to satisfy these requirements within what is often a painfully limited word count. Regardless of whether the word count is 1000 or 10,000 it is, and shouldn’t ever, feel like enough in a social science essay given that markers will always be able to comment on avenues you could have explored further, scholars you can have engaged with, contrasting arguments you may have examined and so on. Thus it is never as simple as just putting pen to paper. Every sentence is oriented around a means and an end, is a bridge towards the overarching argument and can constitute the holy grail of a mark taken away or awarded. Within this minefield a common enemy is writers’ block. I often suffer from this feeling of an inability to write a single word despite knowing or partially knowing what I would like to say and how I would like to say it. I present these issues in the hope that they resonate with some readers experiences of academic writing. Writing is undoubtedly a very subjective process but yet I hope this demonstrates the fact that mediating the relationship between each of the different requirements of academic writing alongside word count allowances and even the ability or motivation to translate one’s inner voice into comprehendible text is a commonly shared difficulty- you’re not the only one finding it hard. Its easy to forget that throughout university we are refining and being examined on our ability to process and present information coherently in written form, as much as we are being examined on the course content.

Okay, okay… some tips now:

• Planning: an obvious one but don’t try to start writing before you know what you want to say, how you’re going to say it and how it adds to your overall argument. For an essay, you’re taking your reader on a journey, but you need to know the way.

• Visual diagrams: to plan, (come up with, then…) write your argument in the top left-hand side of a piece of paper, use arrows to map out a journey from each line argument to the next, going up and down the page, eventually meeting your conclusion in the bottom right-hand side. This forces you to think about how each point, piece of literature, example, etc feeds into the overall flow of the piece. When you then come to write the essay it’s much easier to be reminded of where you’re going next and where you need to end up. This also allows you to do ‘signposting’ in your essay (‘I will now examine Billy Black’s work to show X and how this feeds into the broader discussion on Y’) which markers tend to be very big on.

• Have all your weapons ready: when you sit down to actually write an essay make sure you’re well set up. It doesn’t matter if your desk looks like a bomb-site, the important thing is to have all your resources and notes readily available and ideally printed (sorry trees) because flicking between word docs is just annoying. Hunting for an article/doc disrupts the flow of writing, which leads to pauses, which leads to confusion, which leads to Tiktok, snapchat and Instagram.

• Use sites to get over writers’ block: if you know what you want to say but just can’t seem to bash the words out try using the two writing support applications in the ‘have a lookie here’ section of this blog. One takes on a somewhat terrifying and militant approach to encouraging writing, whilst the other rewards a defined number of words with pictures of kittens. Choose wisely depending on whether you require positive reinforcement or are motivated by fear, but both can be effective.

• Contrary to what you may think, you cannot write an essay with the TV on- even if its just Friends. Give yourself 20-40-minute writing slots, time these sessions, take 5-15-minute breaks but DON’T GO ON SOCIAL MEDIA (even just for a browse) because it yanks you out of the writing mindset and it then takes more time to get back in it. Once the task is complete, or you’ve finished what you wanted to do for the day, then you can scroll to your heart’s content.

• Following on from this, put your phone in a different room. For me, even the sight of it can be off putting. Out of sight, out of mind really applies here.

• If you’re really struggling and your brain is on fire go for a half an hour walk. You can do some of your best thinking on a walk and it gives you a second to reset.

What underscores the process of writing is knowing what you want to argue, and in essays this largely comes from having done a sufficient amount of relevant research- which basically means having done all your readings. I will soon publish a further post exploring ways of making reading less of an intimidating task and slightly more palatable (from the perspective of a non-reader).