Papers are so frustrating >_<

Joementum

787 Posts

March 01 2011 10:55 GMT

I don't know how, but all of a sudden, essays, research papers and anything involving writing has become so god damn frustrating for me. I just spent the better part of 1 hour trying to summarize a 2 page article in 2 paragraphs. The article in itself was easy to understand, but when it came to summarizing the article, I just couldn't do it. This is so frustrating. I've been like this for the past 2 weeks now. Any time I have to write something for school, I struggle and it takes me forever.

This god damn writer's block needs to go away. I can form thoughts clearly in my head when it's not for an assignment. I can write out posts without any damn problem here on TL and get my point(s) across on any useless debate thread clearly, but I just can't write shit for school.

How the hell do you guys deal with this, if it happens to you? This has happened to me in the past and it just went away eventually, but it always seems to hit at the worst times. Maybe it's because I'm somewhat tired right now and trying to write a paper, but that has never bothered me before -.-. I think it's time for bed though. I'll try again tomorrow and hope I can get my thoughts out clearly.

hp.Shell

United States2527 Posts

March 01 2011 11:05 GMT

When that happens I just try to think of a good sentence for the essay... doesn't have to be anywhere near in order, just write up some good lines about what you're talking about. Then I usually end up putting these lines into the paper somewhere in the middle when the current topic gets stale. Then it's easier to expand upon the "magic line" and talk about it naturally as the next topic.

If you have 2-4 good sounding sentences that would fit, I think this could be a big help for you.

Edit: also, it's good to ask yourself questions to come up with magic sentences. Ask yourself a question that the essay would answer, and then answer it in a simple conversational form and type it out. Then when you have the basic answer on the screen, you can physically look at the sentence and flesh it out into essay-level sentence form. Then you just plug these in where they sound good.

[Atomic]Peace

United States451 Posts

March 01 2011 14:23 GMT

Writing is just like anything else. You need training and coaching to get better at it. Does your school have a writing center or some other similar resource you can go to?

Torte de Lini

Germany38463 Posts

March 01 2011 15:57 GMT

I'll write your paper for you if you want.

Papers are easy when 75% of it is your intro and conclusion ;D

Eeryck

United States184 Posts

March 01 2011 16:51 GMT

On March 01 2011 20:05 hp.Shell wrote:
When that happens I just try to think of a good sentence for the essay... doesn't have to be anywhere near in order, just write up some good lines about what you're talking about. Then I usually end up putting these lines into the paper somewhere in the middle when the current topic gets stale. Then it's easier to expand upon the "magic line" and talk about it naturally as the next topic.

If you have 2-4 good sounding sentences that would fit, I think this could be a big help for you.

Edit: also, it's good to ask yourself questions to come up with magic sentences. Ask yourself a question that the essay would answer, and then answer it in a simple conversational form and type it out. Then when you have the basic answer on the screen, you can physically look at the sentence and flesh it out into essay-level sentence form. Then you just plug these in where they sound good.

This is excellent advice!

The other thing I have heard that is similar to this is to think smaller. A teacher told students to write a paper describing a specific building. Many students had a hard time with what to write. But when he revised the topic to write about a single point on a single brick, the ideas started to flow.

Start by taking a more narrow view and describe everything about it and let it expand from there.

Mofisto

United Kingdom585 Posts

March 01 2011 17:08 GMT

I used to suffer from this as well mate. I found that three things helped me get through both my politics and history degree, and my politics masters. Part of my job is copy-writing so I often have to do these things at work as well (except for the last one. Ive got a cool job, but not that cool.....):

1/ Write everything down before you type. For some reason I'm able to formulate my thoughts much better with a pen and paper.
2/ Pace around your room. This could just be me, but i'd spend the entire day (and night) before the essay was due, pacing around my room with my pen and paper in hand. For some reason this used to help me immensely, but used to piss the mrs off.
3/ If you get stuck move on. What this means is that if you're getting a block about one of your points, just move onto the next one. Try to constantly be writing, even if the essay doesn't seem to flow as you can always make it flow after. Most people write their essays from A-Z. I used to go fom x to b to n then back to b ie. I get my thoughts down and only worry about the flow once all my points are there.

4/ I know I said three points, but not everyone willl be willing to do this. Whenever I used to get stuck I'd smoke a small joint. Seriously . Just enough to get me slightly stoned, but not too much that I started playing games/eating/sleeping. For some reason doing this used to cure the block almost immediately.

Anyway my two cents

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Papers are so frustrating >_<

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