You might think of the writing itself as a laborious, drawn out process, but breaking it down into cycles and manageable chunks can really speed you up.
Freewriting
In the initial stages of writing, we’re often still working out our ideas and making connections, as if talking to ourselves. To capture this creative phase, try freewriting. Set a timer for 10 minutes and write, in full sentences, without stopping, re-reading or editing. If you go blank or get stuck, keep going, writing whatever is coming to mind, as a stream of consciousness. Freewriting is not a draft of the assignment, and is not intended to be seen by anyone but you, so don’t worry about style or structure – there is no judgement, but a space to explore and see what happens. You can then review what you’ve produced, and pick out any useful bits to add into a first draft, or set them aside if it’s a tangent you’ve now got out of your system.
If you’re struggling to produce any writing at all, freewriting also gives you a starting point, however messy, to improve from. It can also help you with writer’s block or to untangle a tricky point as well as simply warming up and getting in the mood for writing, so you might want to return to freewriting at various stages throughout the process.
Writing routine
You might find a structured schedule of writing in short bursts with breaks might help you keep up momentum. After warming up with some freewriting, try setting a timer for 30 minutes (or shorter if your concentration span that day isn’t up to longer periods) and write, stopping when the timer goes off for a 5-10 minute break, and repeat. If you’re really on a roll, you can always keep going, but if your motivation and concentration are fading, then stop. Leave yourself a brief note of what you were intending to write next, or a half-finished sentence to complete, so you can easily pick up the thread again.
You can also interleave these short bursts of writing with other activities – revising for an exam or reading for another assignment. The change will keep you fresh, and your mind will also keep processing ideas in the background when you’re working on something else, particularly useful if you’ve got stuck. Interleaving also means that you don’t risk spending all your time on one assessment at the expense of another but can keep progress going on both.
Focussed writing
To focus a writing stint, you could use various approaches.
- If you make detailed plans, you could go back to your plan and choose one section to work on – one or at most two paragraphs.
- Write the point you’re working on – the argumentative statement you need to convince the reader of – and unpack it with questions, such as ‘what do I mean by that?’ ‘how do I know that?’ ‘how does that work?’ ‘How else might that be explained?’
- Give yourself a writing prompt. This might be a question to answer, such as ‘what is the most important factor in this case?’ or the beginning of a sentence, such as ‘the main factor in this case is…’
- If you’re working on the first draft, focus on articulating your point and its relevance with its reasoning and evidence. You can worry about improving clarity and style, or editing it for conciseness on the next draft, or the one after that.
- You don’t need to write paragraphs in order. As long as you know where it fits and how it links to your question, you can write the section that feels easiest at that time.
- Introductions don’t have to be written first. You could jot down at the beginning what you think might go in the introduction, to help focus your thinking, and/or come back to it at the end to refine it and make sure it fits the essay you’ve actually written. It might actually help to write the conclusion at an early stage to give you a clear sense of where you want to get to – subject to the essay turning out as planned or revising it if not, of course!
- Try answering the following questions for a focussed introduction:
- What are you aiming to do in this assignment? Don’t just repeat the question, reflect for the reader how you’ve understood it, telling them any choices of topic you’ve made.
- Why do you feel this is an interesting/significant/tricky issue, worth answering?
- How are you going to answer it – what structure will you follow, what methods, theories or examples will you bring in?
