For my final blog post, I’d like to talk about a few writing techniques that I utilize when faced with difficult or long essays. To be honest, I’m the type of person to do things very last minute. I usually write my essays the day that they are due with just minutes until the deadline. If I try to start writing before that, I hit a complete writer’s block and can’t get out more than a few stunted sentences. But since it really sucks to have to push out 8-10 pages in just a few hours, I typically take a few days before the deadline to make a good old-fashioned outline. I don’t go deep into detail like we were taught in grade school (with roman numerals, letters, etc.) but I do create a “topic statement” for each paragraph I plan to write. Under each topic statement, I write the pertinent quote that I will be using, and 2-3 bullet points as to why I’ve included that quote or thought. Even though it doesn’t seem like much work, it definitely helps because it maps out the direction I need to be taking each paragraph individually while figuring out how they all mesh together as a whole. I also find that when I begin writing, skipping the introduction and the conclusion help. I end up writing all of the body paragraphs individually, then look at it all together to see if anything needs to be moved around. After I’ve figured out the order I go ahead and write the introduction and the conclusion.

Hope this helps!

P.S. Don’t write things last minute like me. That’s not the writing tip… the outline part is. (: