Start writing your academic essay better by not trying so hard
Getting all constipated?
Your words won’t come?
Sometimes, when it comes to writing your academic essay, it’s wise to try a little beer. I don’t mean this flippantly. Sometimes it’s no bad thing to disinhibit a little. If beer isn’t your thing (and I only mean half a glass or so), maybe it’s music. Or maybe it’s a bit of gladiating on the basketball court with your friends. Maybe it’s a conjugal moment upstairs. Maybe it’s deep sleep.
I don’t mean lose your discipline. Nor do I mean try this in place of the procedures I lay out for producing your academic essay nicely and on time. They’re nice and mechanical, and they always work-unless there’s something emotional or biological that needs blasting out of your way first. And I don’t mean be vulgar. Pounding down a six-pack and ranting sloppily on the page is not what I mean at all.
What I mean is, do what the poets do. I respect them an awful lot, or the unselfconscious ones, anyway. Figure out what it is you need to do, physically, to feel like it’s all right to take some liberties with your words. The goal is not to notice what you’re writing so much, I guess. On the page, the result is unpredictability. Not chaos, mind you. But a kind of writing that’s more likely to be fresh, original, efficient, and, well, you.
Not sure you’re a poet? Of course you are. You’re instinctive enough with the language that you won’t tolerate stupid song lyrics, I’ll bet.
Watch. Here are two. Which do you like better?
‘Runnin’ like a ragin’ river.
Heart’s on fire.
Yeah, yeah, baby, yeah!’
‘She’s a Summer love
In the Spring, Fall, and Winter;
She can make happy
Any man alive.’
See what I mean? If you’re sensitive to this, you’re sensitive enough.
So when you write your essay, assuming organization and basic essay-building isn’t your problem, why don’t you just distract yourself a little from your writing? Paradoxically, you may need to try a little less at the craft.
Look out the window and try it. See those oak trees? Laurie Lee called them mansions of shade. Remember mama’s face over you when you were a toddler? Maybe her face was a bright shield. Maybe to you it was the sun. My own mom’s voice was bleach and breezing curtains. See? My father’s English was full of ivy. He wrote a story about an apparition with eyes like spoons, a child’s monster that ran away laughing like a hinge. I think you have to admit that this is not boring language. This is what disinhibiting produces.
Have half a beer now, and then try writing your academic essay.
Now read about how to plan your essay before you being writing.
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