why am i so bad at writing english essays

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Why am I so Bad at Writing Essays: Expert Guide

In the journey of academic growth, essay writing often emerges as a challenge “Why am I so bad at writing essays?”. The struggle to convey thoughts effectively on paper can leave you questioning your abilities. However, fret not, for this expert guide is here to steer you towards conquering your essay writing hurdles and unleashing your true potential. Through a positive lens, we’ll delve into strategies and insights that will not only help you overcome these challenges but also foster excitement about enhancing your essay-writing skills. Let’s embark on this transformative journey together.

1. Understanding Essay Writing Challenges:

1.1. recognizing the importance of essay writing skills:.

In the intricate tapestry of education, proficient writing skills weave a thread of brilliance. Your ability to articulate thoughts cogently extends beyond the confines of essays, shaping your overall academic performance. Imagine a canvas where ideas flow seamlessly, supported by the brushstrokes of refined writing. These skills resonate in your communication, critical thinking, and future endeavors. So, embrace the endeavor to refine your writing prowess, for it’s a pathway to success.

Improving essay writing skills:

Improving essay writing skills is an essential endeavor that holds the key to unlocking your full potential as a writer. As you delve into the world of essay composition, you might notice certain areas where you struggle to convey your thoughts effectively. This is where the journey of improvement begins. By honing your skills, you’re not just addressing your challenges but also enhancing your ability to communicate ideas with clarity and precision. With each step you take to improve your writing, you’re setting the stage for a transformation that will elevate your essays and empower you as a confident and capable writer. Embrace this journey as an opportunity to nurture your talents and evolve from feeling inadequate to mastering the art of essay writing.

1.2. Exploring Different Essay Writing Challenges

The journey of crafting a compelling essay isn’t always smooth sailing. At times, you might find yourself grappling with the daunting task of starting, organizing, or expressing your thoughts coherently. The words seem elusive, and the structure perplexing. These challenges aren’t unique; they’re shared by many. It’s reassuring to know that you’re not alone in this voyage. Together, we’ll uncover strategies to overcome these obstacles and steer your essay toward excellence.

Overcoming essay writing challenges:

Overcoming the essay writing challenge is a significant milestone on your path to becoming a proficient writer. It’s natural to face obstacles such as starting an essay, organizing thoughts coherently, or finding the right words to express your ideas. However, these challenges should not define your capabilities. Instead, consider them as stepping stones toward growth. By addressing each challenge with determination and seeking strategies to conquer them, you’re not just conquering essays but also fostering resilience, patience, and creativity. Every challenge you overcome strengthens your writing arsenal and propels you towards a brighter future where writing essays will no longer be a daunting task but a platform for showcasing your skills.

2. Unveiling Root Causes of Essay Writing Struggles:

2.1. inadequate understanding of the essay prompt:.

Picture this: You’re handed an intricate puzzle, but the picture it forms remains elusive. Similarly, understanding the essay prompt is key to unraveling the enigma of essay writing. Deconstructing the prompt, discerning its nuances, and crafting a response aligned with its essence form the bedrock of your essay’s success. Let’s decode the art of interpreting prompts, guiding you toward clarity and focus.

Navigating essay writing difficulties:

Navigating essay writing difficulties is akin to embarking on a voyage of self-discovery and improvement. It’s common to encounter difficulties in various stages of essay composition, whether it’s understanding the prompt, organizing thoughts, or maintaining a consistent flow. These difficulties, while initially overwhelming, can be conquered with the right guidance and strategies. By addressing these difficulties head-on, you’re not just improving your writing but also cultivating valuable problem-solving skills. Remember, the journey may have its twists and turns, but the destination is a place where you wield the power to create essays that truly reflect your thoughts and ideas.

2.2. Converting Notes into a Coherent Essay:

The process of turn my notes into an essay might seem akin to assembling a mosaic. Fear not, for this transformation can be both logical and creative. By employing strategies that streamline your notes into a structured narrative, we’ll guide you in transforming your fragments into a harmonious composition that resonates with clarity and insight.

Effective essay composition tips:

Effective essay composition tips serve as your compass in the vast terrain of writing. These tips are your allies in tackling the intricacies of essay writing , from structuring your introduction to crafting compelling conclusions. They encompass everything from creating an outline that guides your narrative to selecting the perfect words that resonate with your readers. By embracing these tips, you’re arming yourself with a toolkit that streamlines your writing process and transforms your ideas into a coherent and impactful essay. Embrace them not as rules to constrain your creativity, but as guiding lights that illuminate your path to mastery.

2.3. Addressing Slow Essay Writing:

Why am I so slow at writing essays? Imagine an athlete perfecting their sprint – over time, the strides become more efficient, and the pace swifter. Similarly, addressing the factors that contribute to slow essay writing can lead to enhanced speed without compromising quality. By unraveling the causes and implementing techniques that bolster your writing pace, you’ll stride confidently towards a productive writing journey.

Writing clearer, stronger essays:

Writing clearer, stronger essays is a transformative journey that propels you from uncertainty to confidence. The journey begins by refining your ability to articulate your thoughts with clarity and precision. As you develop this skill, your essays become a canvas where your ideas resonate powerfully with your readers. Clear writing transcends mere words; it’s a symphony of expression that captivates, informs, and inspires. Through this journey, you’ll gain the power to navigate complex topics with ease, present arguments persuasively, and leave a lasting impact on your audience. Your words will no longer be trapped within you; they’ll flow effortlessly onto the page, creating essays that exude strength and clarity.

3. Overcoming Writing Weaknesses:

3.1. embracing effective essay composition tips.

The symphony of essay composition requires harmonious orchestration. From outlining to drafting, each note contributes to the composition’s brilliance. Embrace techniques that nurture effective essay crafting. The roadmap we provide will lead you through the landscape of structure, coherency, and persuasiveness, ensuring your essay resonates with eloquence.

Mastering essay writing struggles:

Struggling with essays is a transformative process that evolves you from a hesitant writer to a proficient wordsmith. Why am I so bad at writing essays? Every challenge you encounter in the essay writing process becomes an opportunity for growth. As you tackle issues like lack of focus or difficulty writing essays, you’re not just addressing problems but also cultivating resilience and determination. Through dedicated effort and the application of strategies tailored to your needs, you’ll find yourself overcoming hurdles that once seemed insurmountable. This journey is about mastering not just the art of writing essays but also mastering your own potential, transforming struggles into stepping stones towards excellence.

3.2. Enhancing Essay Writing Skills

Imagine an artist refining their masterpiece with every brushstroke. Likewise, your journey towards enhancing essay writing skills is an ongoing masterpiece. As you embark on exercises and strategies designed to polish your writing acumen, remember that growth comes from consistent effort. Embrace the journey; watch as your skills flourish, nurturing your writing proficiency over time.

Enhancing essay composition abilities:

Enhancing essay composition abilities is an empowering journey that allows you to sculpt your thoughts into eloquent essays. As you embrace strategies to refine your composition skills, you’re refining your ability to convey complex ideas with finesse. This journey extends beyond mere grammar and structure; it’s about molding your ideas into a narrative that resonates with your readers. By enhancing your abilities, you’re engaging in a process of self-discovery where you uncover your unique voice and style. Through practice, dedication, and the incorporation of expert techniques, you’ll witness your essay composition abilities soar to new heights.

4. Navigating Common Writing Obstacles:

4.1. unveiling common writing obstacles:.

Consider these obstacles as stepping stones, each contributing to your growth as a writer. Distractions, challenges in references, and other hurdles might seem daunting, but they’re milestones on your journey to essay mastery. By identifying these obstacles, you’re already primed to navigate them with resilience and strategic finesse.

Unveiling common writing obstacles:

Unveiling common writing obstacles is a crucial step toward understanding your journey as a writer. Distractions, doubts, and references that fall short—these are hurdles faced by many. Acknowledging and addressing these obstacles is an act of empowerment. By unveiling them, you’re recognizing that you’re not alone in facing these challenges. With the right strategies, you can transform these obstacles into opportunities for growth. As you navigate these writing roadblocks, you’re setting the stage for personal development and paving the way toward essay excellence.

4.2. Integrating Technology for Essay Excellence:

Embrace technology as a modern-day quill, empowering your essay writing with efficiency and precision. Tools designed to aid research, organization, and editing can elevate your composition process. By embracing these resources, you weave innovation into your writing fabric, ensuring that your essays resonate with modernity and excellence.

Embrace Technology for Essay Excellence: Proven Strategies :

Embrace technology for essay excellence: proven strategies that bridge the gap between traditional writing and modern innovation. In a world driven by technology, integrating its power into your essay-writing  process can elevate your compositions. Tools for research, organization, and editing offer a realm of possibilities. By leveraging technology, you’re not just embracing convenience but also enhancing the quality of your essays. These proven strategies enable you to navigate the digital landscape with finesse, creating essays that seamlessly merge traditional wisdom with contemporary tools.

5. Building Confidence and Overcoming Fear:

5.1. addressing essay writing anxiety:.

Acknowledge fear as a temporary visitor, and anxiety as a challenge that can be conquered. By confronting the fear of essay writing head-on and employing strategies to alleviate anxiety, you’re poised to transform apprehension into enthusiasm. The page becomes a canvas of possibility, where your thoughts can dance freely.

Empowering Your Essay Journey: Fear and Beyond:

Empowering your essay journey goes beyond conquering fear; it’s about embracing the unknown with courage. Fear often lurks in the shadows of creativity, hindering expression and inhibiting growth. By acknowledging your fears and pushing beyond their boundaries, you’re embarking on a transformative expedition. This journey empowers you to explore your potential, where fear becomes a catalyst for change rather than a barrier. As you venture beyond fear, you’ll discover a realm of possibilities that extends far beyond your initial apprehensions.

5.2. Cultivating Positive Writing Skills

Imagine you’re writing journey as a garden, where seeds of positivity yield a harvest of growth. As you cultivate a positive mindset towards writing and dedicate yourself to consistent practice, you’ll witness the blossoming of writing skills. Confidence and resilience flourish, enriching your experience and infusing joy into the art of expression.

Mastering Essay Essentials: Your Path to Proficiency:

Mastering essay essentials isn’t just a skill; it’s a journey towards proficiency. This journey encompasses more than just grammar and structure; it’s about refining your ability to convey ideas effectively. By mastering essentials such as clarity, coherence, and persuasive rhetoric, you’re crafting essays that captivate and persuade. This path requires dedication and practice, but the destination is worth the effort. Proficiency in essay essentials transforms your writing from average to exceptional, making your essays a testament to your growth and commitment to excellence.

6. Expert Insights and Solutions:

6.1. expert advice for improving essay writing:.

Let the wisdom of educators and seasoned writers guide your expedition toward essay excellence. Their insights offer a compass, directing you towards methods that have been tested and proven. By absorbing their guidance, you empower your writing journey with the tools of experience and knowledge.

Essay crafting insights and advice:

Essay crafting insights and advice are the keys to unlocking the art of essay composition. Expert guidance offers you a roadmap that leads to impactful essays. Through insights from experienced writers and educators, you’re privy to techniques that enhance your writing journey. Their advice serves as a beacon, guiding you through the intricate nuances of essay crafting. By embracing these insights, you’re not just enhancing your skills but also imbibing the wisdom of those who have mastered the craft.

6.2. Guiding Weak Writers to Essay Excellence

Consider yourself a mentor on your own journey, assisting your inner student to flourish. By applying techniques tailored for guiding struggling writers, you extend your nurturing hand to yourself. As you implement methods designed to elevate weaker points, you’re crafting a narrative of growth and transformation.

Guiding Weak Students to Essay Excellence: Effective Methods:

Guiding weak students to essay excellence requires a blend of patience, empathy, and effective methods. If you find yourself really struggling to write an essay, remember that you’re not alone on this journey. By employing methods tailored for those facing difficulties, you’re paving a path towards improvement. These methods, rooted in understanding and encouragement, offer a personalized approach to essay writing. As you guide yourself through these methods, you’re nurturing growth, resilience, and the transformation of weakness into strength.

How to write a six page essay?

Writing a six-page essay might seem like a daunting task, conjuring images of a blank canvas waiting to be filled. However, fear not, for within the expanse of those six pages lies an opportunity to articulate your thoughts, showcase your understanding, and engage your readers. The key is to break down the process into manageable steps that lead to a coherent and impactful essay. By employing effective strategies, you can transform this seemingly extensive task into a structured journey of exploration and expression. In the following sections, we’ll delve into the intricacies of essay writing, addressing challenges and providing insights that will not only help you overcome your uncertainties but also empower you to confidently craft a six-page masterpiece that resonates with clarity and conviction.

I can’t write an essay:

It’s a sentiment that many have experienced – the feeling of being unable to put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard when faced with the task of writing an essay. The blinking cursor becomes an adversary, and words seem elusive, trapped in a labyrinth of uncertainty. If you’ve ever muttered the words “I can’t write an essay,” rest assured that you’re not alone. This journey to mastering essay writing is one of growth, and the obstacles you encounter along the way are stepping stones toward improvement. Through insights, strategies, and a positive mindset, you’ll find that the ability to write an essay is not an innate talent but a skill that can be cultivated. So, let go of doubt and embrace the process – you’re on the path to unlocking your potential and transforming “can’t” into “can.”

Conclusion :

The journey to mastering essay writing isn’t an abrupt transformation but a gradual evolution. Remember that each challenge is a stepping stone, each obstacle a chance to refine your skills. Armed with strategies, insights, and a renewed perspective, you’re ready to embark on this ongoing voyage of growth. Embrace the process, for in your dedication lies the path to becoming a proficient essay writer. Your narrative is one of progress, from doubt to skill, and it’s a narrative that celebrates the art of expressing ideas with eloquence and conviction.

Q1. Why am I so scared to write essays?

In the realm of academic pursuits, the fear of writing essays is a sentiment many encounter. This fear often stems from the uncertainty of conveying thoughts effectively, of not meeting expectations, or of stumbling upon writer’s block. However, it’s essential to recognize that this fear is a common part of the writing process. By acknowledging this apprehension and understanding its source, you can begin to address it. Strategies such as breaking down the task, practicing mindfulness techniques, and setting realistic goals can help alleviate essay-writing anxiety. As you venture into the world of essay composition, remember that courage lies in embracing the challenge, and every step you take is a step towards conquering your fears and emerging as a more confident and capable writer.

Q2. Why are my writing skills so poor?

If you’ve ever questioned your writing skills, you’re not alone. The perception of poor writing skills often emerges from self-doubt and the comparison to others. However, it’s important to understand that writing skills are not fixed; they can be nurtured and refined over time. The journey from feeling inadequate to becoming a proficient writer involves consistent practice, seeking feedback, and a willingness to learn. By identifying areas where you struggle, such as organization, coherence, or grammar, and addressing them with patience and determination, you’re taking crucial steps toward improvement. Embrace your journey as a unique opportunity to evolve from a novice to a skilled wordsmith, and remember that growth is a continuous process.

Q3. How can I improve my essay writing?

Improving essay writing is a journey that involves a combination of self-awareness, practice, and strategic learning. Begin by identifying specific areas where you struggle, whether it’s generating ideas, structuring your essay, or refining your language. Seeking feedback from peers, instructors, or writing resources can provide valuable insights for improvement. Additionally, adopt effective writing techniques such as creating outlines, revising drafts, and expanding your vocabulary. Consistency is key – make writing a regular practice to build confidence and refine your skills. Remember that every effort you put into improvement is a step closer to crafting essays that reflect your true potential.

Q4. What is the hardest thing about writing an essay?

One of the most challenging aspects of writing an essay is often the initial step: starting. The blank page can be intimidating, and finding the right words to express your ideas can feel overwhelming. However, once you overcome the hurdle of beginning, the process tends to flow more smoothly. Another challenge is maintaining a coherent and organized structure throughout the essay. Ensuring that your ideas transition seamlessly and that each paragraph contributes to your overall argument requires careful planning and revising. By breaking down the writing process into smaller, manageable tasks and seeking guidance from proven techniques, you can navigate these challenges with greater ease.

Q5. Why do students struggle with essays?

Students often struggle with essays due to a combination of factors. Time management, lack of confidence, unclear understanding of the topic, and difficulties in organizing thoughts are common reasons for these struggles. Additionally, perfectionism and the fear of failure can hinder the writing process. Overcoming these challenges requires patience, self-awareness, and effective strategies. By setting realistic goals, seeking assistance when needed, breaking tasks into smaller steps, and practicing consistently, students can gradually alleviate their struggles and transform essay writing into a more manageable and even enjoyable endeavor.

Q6. How do you teach a weak student to write an essay?

Teaching a weak student to write an essay involves a tailored approach that addresses their specific challenges. Begin by identifying the student’s strengths and weaknesses, then focus on building a strong foundation. Provide clear explanations of essay structure, organization, and key writing principles. Break down the process into smaller steps and offer ample practice opportunities. Encourage the students to express their ideas without fear of judgment, emphasizing growth over perfection. Providing constructive feedback and positive reinforcement will foster confidence. Gradually introduce more complex concepts and exercises as the student progresses, ensuring that each step is manageable and aligned with their abilities.

Q7. What to do with students who hate writing?

For students who harbor a dislike for writing, it’s essential to approach the subject with empathy and understanding. Encourage open communication to identify the root cause of their aversion. Some students might find writing challenging due to specific learning styles, previous negative experiences, or low self-esteem. Tailor assignments to their interests whenever possible, allowing them to write about topics that resonate with them. Introduce creative writing exercises, collaborative projects, and visual aids to make writing more engaging. Gradually build their confidence by celebrating small achievements, and provide opportunities for them to see improvement. By fostering a supportive environment and offering alternatives to traditional writing, you can help students rediscover their potential and develop a more positive relationship with writing.

Q8. What are the 5 basic steps to writing a good essay?

Writing a good essay involves a structured approach that encompasses several essential steps:

• Understanding the Prompt: Thoroughly comprehend the essay prompt, identifying the main topic, question, and any specific requirements.
• Research and Planning: Conduct research to gather relevant information and ideas. Create an outline that organizes your thoughts and arguments logically.
• Introduction: Begin with a strong introduction that grabs the reader’s attention, introduces the topic, and presents your thesis statement.
• Body Paragraphs: Develop your argument in the body paragraphs. Each paragraph should focus on a single point, supported by evidence and analysis.
• Conclusion: Summarize the main points, restate the thesis, and provide a concluding thought that leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

Q9. How do I know if I’m a bad writer?

Determining whether you’re a “bad” writer is subjective and often influenced by self-perception. It’s important to remember that writing is a skill that can be developed and improved over time. If you find it challenging to convey your thoughts coherently, struggle with grammar and punctuation, or lack confidence in your writing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bad writer. Instead of labeling yourself, focus on identifying areas where you can improve. Seek feedback from peers or educators, read widely, and practice consistently. By dedicating effort to enhancing your skills, you’ll likely witness significant growth and transformation in your writing abilities.

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• 9 Essay Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Writing essays is a mainstay of education from secondary school through to university, and no matter how well you know the subject in question, if you can’t write a good essay, your marks will suffer. Different academic traditions approach essays in different ways, so in this article we’re going to focus on the kind of essay expected in British schools and universities; the kind you’d be taught how to write, for instance, at our Oxford summer school . That kind of essay should put forward an argument, develop it through several different points, and conclude in a way that marries the points together and reinforces your original argument. It sounds straightforward, but as anyone who’s ever had to write an essay knows, it isn’t always so simple. Here are the types of error people make when writing essays, and how you can avoid them.

1. The list

Perhaps the most common type of bad essay is the list. This can be a result of bad essay writing, but bad question-setting also plays a role. Take the classic essay topic of the causes of the First World War . One way of phrasing a question on this could be simply, “What were the causes of the First World War?” It naturally lends itself to a list; you could almost answer in bullet point. To avoid the list, you’d have to distort the question. Another question could explore the same area of knowledge, but encourage a better-structured essay, such as “Was the First World War inevitable?” or “Was imperialism responsible for the First World War?” You’ll know if you’ve fallen into the trap of writing a list if words like “moreover”, “furthermore” and “additionally” are creeping into your essay more than “therefore” and “however”. To avoid just writing a list, first see if the question invites a list, and if so, reframe it in your head in order to construct an argument. In the First World War example, you could say, “It is popularly believed that the chief cause of the First World War was… but the causes of war in fact went much deeper…” – and then you’re arguing, rather than listing, right away. Consider also which items on your list are more important or less important, and how they interact with each other, and make sure that you come to a firm conclusion that picks a stance and doesn’t settle for “there were many causes, all important” or related waffle.

2. The weighing scales

The “weighing scales” approach to writing an essay is when you have a choice of two options, and you come down firmly on the fence. This is particularly common in essays on a difficult or controversial topic, such as, “Would justice be better served if criminals were given longer prison sentences?” The weighing scales approach would say, “on the one hand, some criminals are treated too leniently… on the other hand, longer prison sentences can increase recidivism… then again, longer sentences may act as more of a deterrent… but they also cost the state a lot of money.” The essay then concludes that there are strong arguments in favour of both sides, and perhaps that more research is needed (even when there has been plenty of research on the topic). In some academic disciplines and some cultures, the “weighing scales” approach to an essay is considered actively desirable. But that’s not the case for British universities. While it’s important to mention both sides (more on that in a moment), an essay should advance an argument. If you conclude that both sides have merit, your argument should at least propose a way of navigating between them. Make sure that by the end of your essay, your reader knows what your opinion is.

3. The polemic

The direct opposite of the “weighing scales” approach is the polemic. In this kind of essay, your reader is in no doubt at all about what your point of view is; unfortunately, they’ve heard rather too much of it and rather too little of anything else. Continuing on the same example as above, in the polemic, you might argue that prison is wholly negative, based on punishment not rehabilitation, leading to worse outcomes for prisoners than alternatives like community service, and introducing ‘new’ criminals to experienced ones so that they end up learning not how to avoid crime, but how to become better at it. While all those points are reasonable, the issue is that the other side is altogether missing. In a “polemic”-style essay, the writer rejects the other side so much that they won’t even discuss their ideas. That’s not persuasive; you also need to spend time acknowledging and refuting the alternative point of view. You don’t need to accept it, only explain where it comes from, and why it’s mistaken.

4. The literature review

A literature review is a perfectly valid piece of writing: it’s where you look at everything that’s been written on a particular topic, and compare, contrast and analyse the writers’ stances without interjecting too much of your own views. It’s a standard part of theses and dissertations, allowing you to establish the thoughts of the major authorities in the field so that you can refer to them later in the piece without the need for a lengthy introduction. But if you’re not supposed to be writing a literature review, then your essay shouldn’t resemble one. After all, it’s about assessing your knowledge, ideas and opinions, not everyone else’s. When a subject has been written about extensively, it can feel impossible to produce an original thought on it. You can end up attributing every point you want to make to another writer, because otherwise it can feel like plagiarism. But while every point might have been said before, your route through them and your reasoning will still be original. Make sure your own point of view is established, without relying too heavily on the literature.

5. The plagiarist

The opposite of the literature review, the “plagiarist” is the essay that passes off a little too much as your own work when it really ought to be credited to someone else. To be clear, we’re not talking about genuine copy-and-paste plagiarism (or the same thing with a couple of words tweaked and examples changed, which is no better) – that’s not a pitfall, that’s grounds for expulsion. This is instead where you’ve maybe read an idea, forgotten which article or book you read it in – or even that it wasn’t your idea in the first place – and put it in an essay without a citation. But even if you didn’t do it deliberately, it’s likely to be frowned on by your teachers. The only way to avoid the “plagiarist” essay is to take more thorough notes when you’re working on an essay. If you read something interesting, even if you don’t think it’s relevant, make a note of where you found it in case you do want to refer back to it. If you’re feeling really lazy, just take a photo of the details on your phone. Then you can make sure you’re not taking credit for ideas that aren’t your own.

6. The long introduction

This one is reasonably self-explanatory – it’s when it feel like the majority of the essay is introduction or scene-setting, and you never really get to the point. To go back to the earlier example of an essay on the causes of the First World War, a “long introduction” essay would spend paragraphs describing the context, the different countries and personalities involved, not to mention their histories – and then, running out of word count, would cram in a paragraph or two at the end about how all of this resulted in war. A “long introduction” essay can be the result of misjudging the word count (and more on that later) but it can also be the result of knowing a great deal about a topic and not wanting to commit to an argument. Avoid the long introduction by making sure your argument is clear from your introduction onwards. Sometimes students also structure an essay by starting with their weaker points and leading to their best point, as a kind of rhetorical crescendo. This can be effective if done well, but it can also lead to a “long introduction” essay as your reader has to sit through paragraphs of muddle waiting for you to get to your real knock-out idea.

7. The textbook

Another perfectly valid piece of writing that nonetheless makes for a poor essay is the “textbook” approach. Instead of writing an essay – with points, examples, explanations and an argument running through it all like a stick of rock – you write an explainer on the topic. This is akin to the list, but typically better written and structured. A “textbook” essay is not necessarily a bad piece of work; it’s just not what’s being asked of you when you write an essay. Sometimes, when students are shy about expressing their opinion, a “textbook”-style essay is the end result. They outline all the examples and explanations that they might have included without committing to the points. The end result is an essay where the student’s point of view could perhaps be inferred from the approach taken, but where it isn’t made explicit. If this is you, try to express your opinion more assertively; you might be avoiding saying things like “I believe” (as usually essays shouldn’t contain the first person) but try phrases like “it is clear that” or that such and such an alternative argument “is flawed”.

8. The revision notes

The “revision notes” essay is not an essay that resembles revision notes; instead, it’s an essay that’s so painfully light on detail that it reads like you used revision notes rather than doing the reading or research that you were supposed to. It skims over dates; it focuses only on the main characters of a novel; where a reader might expect it to cite another theorist, it avoids it with vague statements such as “many people have argued that…”. Assertions go unexplained and unproven. Typically the reason a student writes an essay like this is because they’re out of their depth; they haven’t done the work or understood the topic well enough to go into any more detail. If you’re finding that you’re writing this sort of essay even when you do know your topic, go through and see where more detail could be added. Even something like adding dates for events in brackets can give the sense that you know what you’re talking about. Similarly, try to use examples that aren’t the most obvious or default choice for the point that you’re making. It might feel unnecessary when you know the person marking your essay knows these details already, but you have to prove that you know the details as well.

9. The word count challenge

This goes in both directions – the essays where you’re restricted to 2,000 words and you feel like you could write a novel on the subject, and the ones where you have to write 2,000 words and you feel like you could barely manage a paragraph. Every student will have developed some tricks for getting round this, such as changing the margins or font size, or adding or removing contractions and adjectives. Of course, your teachers are wise to this. It’s much better to write an essay that’s appropriate for the length set in the first place, which means planning it out carefully. If you have what feels like too few points for the word count, can you go into more detail on those points? And if you have too much to say, can your points be grouped together for more of an overview that skips out the finer detail? Or perhaps your approach is too broad, and you can stick more closely to the question asked to condense what you want to say. This is particularly relevant for exams, where realising that you have more to say than time to say it in can be disastrous; the way to avoid it is practising until you have a better sense for how much content you need for a certain exam duration or word count.

Image credits: writing an essay ; list ; scales ; speaker ; books ; citation ; long book ; textbooks ; post-it note ; miniature book .

Writing Anxiety

What this handout is about.

This handout discusses the situational nature of writer’s block and other writing anxiety and suggests things you can try to feel more confident and optimistic about yourself as a writer.

What are writing anxiety and writer’s block?

“Writing anxiety” and “writer’s block” are informal terms for a wide variety of apprehensive and pessimistic feelings about writing. These feelings may not be pervasive in a person’s writing life. For example, you might feel perfectly fine writing a biology lab report but apprehensive about writing a paper on a novel. You may confidently tackle a paper about the sociology of gender but delete and start over twenty times when composing an email to a cute classmate to suggest a coffee date. In other words, writing anxiety and writers’ block are situational (Hjortshoj 7). These terms do NOT describe psychological attributes. People aren’t born anxious writers; rather, they become anxious or blocked through negative or difficult experiences with writing.

When do these negative feelings arise?

Although there is a great deal of variation among individuals, there are also some common experiences that writers in general find stressful.

For example, you may struggle when you are:

• adjusting to a new form of writing—for example, first year college writing, papers in a new field of study, or longer forms than you are used to (a long research paper, a senior thesis, a master’s thesis, a dissertation) (Hjortshoj 56-76).
• writing for a reader or readers who have been overly critical or demanding in the past.
• remembering negative criticism received in the past—even if the reader who criticized your work won’t be reading your writing this time.
• working with limited time or with a lot of unstructured time.
• responding to an assignment that seems unrelated to academic or life goals.
• dealing with troubling events outside of school.

What are some strategies for handling these feelings?

Get support.

Choose a writing buddy, someone you trust to encourage you in your writing life. Your writing buddy might be a friend or family member, a classmate, a teacher, a colleague, or a Writing Center tutor. Talk to your writing buddy about your ideas, your writing process, your worries, and your successes. Share pieces of your writing. Make checking in with your writing buddy a regular part of your schedule. When you share pieces of writing with your buddy, use our handout on asking for feedback .

In his book Understanding Writing Blocks, Keith Hjortshoj describes how isolation can harm writers, particularly students who are working on long projects not connected with coursework (134-135). He suggests that in addition to connecting with supportive individuals, such students can benefit from forming or joining a writing group, which functions in much the same way as a writing buddy. A group can provide readers, deadlines, support, praise, and constructive criticism. For help starting one, see our handout about writing groups .

Identify your strengths

Often, writers who are experiencing block or anxiety have a worse opinion of their own writing than anyone else! Make a list of the things you do well. You might ask a friend or colleague to help you generate such a list. Here are some possibilities to get you started:

• I explain things well to people.
• I get people’s interest.
• I have strong opinions.
• I listen well.
• I am critical of what I read.
• I see connections.

Choose at least one strength as your starting point. Instead of saying “I can’t write,” say “I am a writer who can …”

Recognize that writing is a complex process

Writing is an attempt to fix meaning on the page, but you know, and your readers know, that there is always more to be said on a topic. The best writers can do is to contribute what they know and feel about a topic at a particular point in time.

Writers often seek “flow,” which usually entails some sort of breakthrough followed by a beautifully coherent outpouring of knowledge. Flow is both a possibility—most people experience it at some point in their writing lives—and a myth. Inevitably, if you write over a long period of time and for many different situations, you will encounter obstacles. As Hjortshoj explains, obstacles are particularly common during times of transition—transitions to new writing roles or to new kinds of writing.

Think of yourself as an apprentice.

If block or apprehension is new for you, take time to understand the situations you are writing in. In particular, try to figure out what has changed in your writing life. Here are some possibilities:

• You are writing in a new format.
• You are writing longer papers than before.
• You are writing for new audiences.
• You are writing about new subject matter.
• You are turning in writing from different stages of the writing process—for example, planning stages or early drafts.

It makes sense to have trouble when dealing with a situation for the first time. It’s also likely that when you confront these new situations, you will learn and grow. Writing in new situations can be rewarding. Not every format or audience will be right for you, but you won’t know which ones might be right until you try them. Think of new writing situations as apprenticeships. When you’re doing a new kind of writing, learn as much as you can about it, gain as many skills in that area as you can, and when you finish the apprenticeship, decide which of the skills you learned will serve you well later on. You might be surprised.

Below are some suggestions for how to learn about new kinds of writing:

• Ask a lot of questions of people who are more experienced with this kind of writing. Here are some of the questions you might ask: What’s the purpose of this kind of writing? Who’s the audience? What are the most important elements to include? What’s not as important? How do you get started? How do you know when what you’ve written is good enough? How did you learn to write this way?
• Ask a lot of questions of the person who assigned you a piece of writing. If you have a paper, the best place to start is with the written assignment itself. For help with this, see our handout on understanding assignments .
• Look for examples of this kind of writing. (You can ask your instructor for a recommended example). Look, especially, for variation. There are often many different ways to write within a particular form. Look for ways that feel familiar to you, approaches that you like. You might want to look for published models or, if this seems too intimidating, look at your classmates’ writing. In either case, ask yourself questions about what these writers are doing, and take notes. How does the writer begin and end? In what order does the writer tell things? How and when does the writer convey her or his main point? How does the writer bring in other people’s ideas? What is the writer’s purpose? How is that purpose achieved?
• Read our handouts about how to write in specific fields or how to handle specific writing assignments.
• Listen critically to your readers. Before you dismiss or wholeheartedly accept what they say, try to understand them. If a reader has given you written comments, ask yourself questions to figure out the reader’s experience of your paper: What is this reader looking for? What am I doing that satisfies this reader? In what ways is this reader still unsatisfied? If you can’t answer these questions from the reader’s comments, then talk to the reader, or ask someone else to help you interpret the comments.
• Most importantly, don’t try to do everything at once. Start with reasonable expectations. You can’t write like an expert your first time out. Nobody does! Use the criticism you get.

Once you understand what readers want, you are in a better position to decide what to do with their criticisms. There are two extreme possibilities—dismissing the criticisms and accepting them all—but there is also a lot of middle ground. Figure out which criticisms are consistent with your own purposes, and do the hard work of engaging with them. Again, don’t expect an overnight turn-around; recognize that changing writing habits is a process and that papers are steps in the process.

Chances are that at some point in your writing life you will encounter readers who seem to dislike, disagree with, or miss the point of your work. Figuring out what to do with criticism from such readers is an important part of a writer’s growth.

Try new tactics when you get stuck

Often, writing blocks occur at particular stages of the writing process. The writing process is cyclical and variable. For different writers, the process may include reading, brainstorming, drafting, getting feedback, revising, and editing. These stages do not always happen in this order, and once a writer has been through a particular stage, chances are she or he hasn’t seen the last of that stage. For example, brainstorming may occur all along the way.

Figure out what your writing process looks like and whether there’s a particular stage where you tend to get stuck. Perhaps you love researching and taking notes on what you read, and you have a hard time moving from that work to getting started on your own first draft. Or once you have a draft, it seems set in stone and even though readers are asking you questions and making suggestions, you don’t know how to go back in and change it. Or just the opposite may be true; you revise and revise and don’t want to let the paper go.

Wherever you have trouble, take a longer look at what you do and what you might try. Sometimes what you do is working for you; it’s just a slow and difficult process. Other times, what you do may not be working; these are the times when you can look around for other approaches to try:

• Talk to your writing buddy and to other colleagues about what they do at the particular stage that gets you stuck.
• Read about possible new approaches in our handouts on brainstorming and revising .
• Try thinking of yourself as an apprentice to a stage of the writing process and give different strategies a shot.
• Cut your paper into pieces and tape them to the wall, use eight different colors of highlighters, draw a picture of your paper, read your paper out loud in the voice of your favorite movie star….

Okay, we’re kind of kidding with some of those last few suggestions, but there is no limit to what you can try (for some fun writing strategies, check out our online animated demos ). When it comes to conquering a block, give yourself permission to fall flat on your face. Trying and failing will you help you arrive at the thing that works for you.

Celebrate your successes

Start storing up positive experiences with writing. Whatever obstacles you’ve faced, celebrate the occasions when you overcome them. This could be something as simple as getting started, sharing your work with someone besides a teacher, revising a paper for the first time, trying out a new brainstorming strategy, or turning in a paper that has been particularly challenging for you. You define what a success is for you. Keep a log or journal of your writing successes and breakthroughs, how you did it, how you felt. This log can serve as a boost later in your writing life when you face new challenges.

Wait a minute, didn’t we already say that? Yes. It’s worth repeating. Most people find relief for various kinds of anxieties by getting support from others. Sometimes the best person to help you through a spell of worry is someone who’s done that for you before—a family member, a friend, a mentor. Maybe you don’t even need to talk with this person about writing; maybe you just need to be reminded to believe in yourself, that you can do it.

If you don’t know anyone on campus yet whom you have this kind of relationship with, reach out to someone who seems like they could be a good listener and supportive. There are a number of professional resources for you on campus, people you can talk through your ideas or your worries with. A great place to start is the UNC Writing Center. If you know you have a problem with writing anxiety, make an appointment well before the paper is due. You can come to the Writing Center with a draft or even before you’ve started writing. You can also approach your instructor with questions about your writing assignment. If you’re an undergraduate, your academic advisor and your residence hall advisor are other possible resources. Counselors at Counseling and Wellness Services are also available to talk with you about anxieties and concerns that extend beyond writing.

Apprehension about writing is a common condition on college campuses. Because writing is the most common means of sharing our knowledge, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we write. This handout has given some suggestions for how to relieve that pressure. Talk with others; realize we’re all learning; take an occasional risk; turn to the people who believe in you. Counter negative experiences by actively creating positive ones.

Even after you have tried all of these strategies and read every Writing Center handout, invariably you will still have negative experiences in your writing life. When you get a paper back with a bad grade on it or when you get a rejection letter from a journal, fend off the negative aspects of that experience. Try not to let them sink in; try not to let your disappointment fester. Instead, jump right back in to some area of the writing process: choose one suggestion the evaluator has made and work on it, or read and discuss the paper with a friend or colleague, or do some writing or revising—on this or any paper—as quickly as possible.

Failures of various kinds are an inevitable part of the writing process. Without them, it would be difficult if not impossible to grow as a writer. Learning often occurs in the wake of a startling event, something that stirs you up, something that makes you wonder. Use your failures to keep moving.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Hjortshoj, Keith. 2001. Understanding Writing Blocks . New York: Oxford University Press.

This is a particularly excellent resource for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Hjortshoj writes about his experiences working with university students experiencing block. He explains the transitional nature of most writing blocks and the importance of finding support from others when working on long projects.

Rose, Mike. 1985. When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block and Other Composing-Process Problems . New York: Guilford.

This collection of empirical studies is written primarily for writing teachers, researchers, and tutors. Studies focus on writers of various ages, including young children, high school students, and college students.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Write Better Essays: 7 Mistakes to Avoid

Cari Bennette

Academic essays are an unavoidable part of the educational journey. Learning to write well may be one of the greatest skills you gain during your college years. Most students, however, will commit many errors before learning the art of academic essay writing.

While you can't avoid writing essays, you can avoid making some of these common mistakes:

Writing a Synopsis, Not An Analytical Essay

Not having a strong thesis statement, using too many quotes in an essay, making grammar, spelling and pronoun mistakes, not having a good bibliography, using resources that aren't credible, want to improve your essay writing skills.

The point of an essay is to create an argument and defend a thesis. If you're writing about a work of literature, some background to clarify the topic can be helpful. But the majority of your essay should involve your analysis based on credible research. Don't simply restate what happened in the book.

Coming up with a strong thesis statement is essential to writing a good essay. The thesis statement is the hook on which the rest of your essay hangs. It should state an opinion and be as specific as possible. Example weak thesis statement: The Great Gatsby is a great example of American Literature. Example strong thesis statement: The Great Gatsby captures the essence of America's Jazz Age in its decadence, materialism and ultimately, its tragic emptiness.

The essay is supposed to reflect your understanding of the topic and the research you've done to back up your argument. Overuse of quotes either from the work you're analyzing or from the research you've done undermines your authority on the topic. Quotes should be used sparingly and only when they drive home a point with an eloquence you can't match with your own words.

Defined as “the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own,” plagiarism is a serious offense. Colleges and universities have strict policies against plagiarism and use various tools to check your work for plagiarised content. You won't get away with it, and sometimes it can even get you suspended. Professors can recognize if something sounds like a student wrote it or if it came from another source, so don't try to fool them.

There are two kinds of plagiarism:

• The first kind is directly taking the words from a source and using them in your paper without quoting or giving credit.
• The second kind is trickier and you should take special care to make sure you're not committing this kind of plagiarism. It consists of rewording an entire article or section of an article. In this case, instead of coming up with your own original ideas and analysis, you're just rewording someone else's ideas including the order in which they present those ideas.

Your essay should contain your own original thesis, analysis and ideas backed up by credible research from academic authorities.

Worried about plagiarism? ProWritingAid's plagiarism checker checks your work against over a billion web-pages, published works, and academic papers so you can be sure of its originality. Did you know that many of the free plagiarism checkers online sell your writing to other sources? With ProWritingAid, you can be certain that your original work is secure. Paying for this kind of service might feel like a lot, but trust me, it's worth it.

Okay, let's break these down:

• Get your contractions right. You're = you are. Your = second person possessive. It's = it is. Its = third person possessive. They're = they are. Their =third person plural possessive.
• Make sure your subjects and verbs agree.
• Beware of incomplete sentences (there must be both a subject and a verb to be complete).
• Use your spell check.
• Essays should be written in the third person (he/she/it/they). Don't use the first or second person (I, you or we) in an essay.
• Follow proper formatting ( MLA formatting is a common example.

You can check for all of these errors using ProWritingAid. The Homonym report will highlight all of the words in your essay that sound the same as others but are spelled differently. This will help you avoid any 'its/it's or 'their/they're/there' mistakes.

The bibliography format for academic essays is usually the MLA style unless your professor specifically requests a different format. For a complete list of how to cite resources in MLA style, check out this site . Don't lose points over your bibliography. The hard part of your essay should be coming up with an original analysis of your topic. The bibliography is formulaic and easy to get right if you give it a little effort.

In the age of the Internet, it's easy to type in a keyword and find dozens of articles on it. But that doesn't mean all of those articles are credible. Make sure that the resources you use come from academic experts. For tips on how to find credible academic resources online, check out this site .

Avoiding these mistakes will improve your essay writing, so you can achieve higher quality and confidence in your academic writing. And it will make your professors happy, too.

Use ProWritingAid!

Are your teachers always pulling you up on the same errors? Maybe your sentences are too long and your meaning is getting lost or you're using the same sentence starter over and over again.

ProWritingAid helps you catch these issues in your essay before you submit it.

Be confident about grammar

Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.

Cari Bennette is an avid blogger and writer. She covers different aspects of writing and blogging in her articles and plans to try her hand in fiction writing.

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What to do if you dislike writing research or academic papers.

BY DAVID GUTIERREZ

Unfortunately, even if you hate writing academic papers more than anything else in the world, you still have to do it if you want to graduate successfully. However, it is possible to alter one’s attitude towards something – often to a greater degree than you may believe. Here are some techniques that can make writing your next academic assignment bearable, if not outright pleasant.

1.    Take breaks

Taking regular breaks is important in any kind of work, and writing is no exception. Divide your assignment into a number of reasonably small parts and promise yourself to take a break after you successfully complete each of them. Both the parts and the breaks may be as large or small as it is useful for your situation. For example, if you write an essay, you can take 5-minute breaks every 200 words. If you write something more substantial, both the parts and the breaks can be larger. Do something pleasant in the course of your breaks – this will motivate you to complete each part faster.

2.    Eliminate distractions

When you do something you hate, every potential distraction is twice as enticing as it usually is. This means that if you are surrounded by distractions while you write your academic paper, you are likely to get distracted all the time. To prevent this, single out the things that are likely to attract your attention as you work and remove them from you. If it is structure and general layout of the paper that give you trouble, consider custom term papers for sale. Block distracting websites using Leechblock or RescueTime, turn off notifications, switch off your smartphone, block out the external noises by some music in your earphones.

3.    Find a writing place that works for you

If you do something you hate, you should at least do it somewhere you feel comfortable. Where it exactly depends on your preferences: some like to work at home, others prefer a nice café; still others find it inspiring to work in the park. Take your pick.

4.    Don’t try to write like somebody else

One of the reasons why you may hate writing is because you believe that you shouldn’t write in your own voice. You think you need to imitate either someone else or to write in an affected manner that has little in common with your own way of thinking and writing. Most likely, you are wrong, and your writing will only be improved if you choose to follow your heart and write the way you like.

5.    Practice

Another reason why students hate writing academic assignments is that they are not very good at writing. The reverse is true as well – once you learn how to write more or less well, you start feeling pleasure doing it. Do a bit of practice writing assignments of the type you have to write most often. Who knows? Perhaps, it will grow on you.

6.    Don’t be perfectionistic

Perfectionism is equally deadly both for enjoyment received from writing and the results achieved. Don’t try to make every sentence perfect – it is impossible. Write reasonably well, don’t go crazy correcting what you’ve already written because you will never finish doing it.

Learning to love writing is hard and long work, and we don’t claim that everybody is capable of doing it at first attempt. But making writing pleasant is achievable – and you can do it.

David Gutierrez has worked in the field of web design since 2005. Right now he started learning Java in order to get second occupation. His professional interests defined major topics of his articles. David writes about new web design software, recently discovered professional tricks and also monitors the latest updates of the web development.

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Understanding Why Students Avoid Writing

On this page:, skill development, overall guidelines to help students avoid the avoidance of writing.

It is common for students in today’s educational system to dislike and/or avoid the writing process. Many students feel writing takes too long. For some, writing is a very laborious task because there are so many sub-components which need to be pulled together. For others, the reason lies in some processing difficulties, such as dyslexia or dysgraphia . Some educators wonder if students no longer enjoy the slower, more refined process of written communication because they spend so much time watching the faster-paced visual modality of television.

Students with learning problems, even those who read well, frequently submit written work which is brief and/or difficult to read. Such students can be victims of misunderstandings, a problem which becomes much more pronounced at the secondary level. “Accusations of laziness, poor motivation, and a reprehensible attitude are often directed toward deficit writers. The results can be a serious loss of incentive, a generalized academic disenchantment and demoralization” (Levine 1998, 363).

There are many reasons students avoid writing. Primary reasons may be one or more of the following:

• They have a hard time getting started and feel overwhelmed by the task.
• They need to concentrate to form letters: it is not an automatic process.
• They struggle to organize and use mechanics of writing.
• They are slow and inefficient in retrieving the right word(s) to express an idea.
• They struggle to develop their ideas fluently (poor ideation).
• They struggle to keep track of their thoughts while also getting them down on paper.
• They feel that the process of writing on paper is slow and tedious.
• They feel that the paper never turns out the way they want.
• They realize that the paper is still sloppy even though substantial time and effort were spent.
• They are dysgraphic, which causes multiple struggles at the basic processing levels.
• They are dyslexic, which causes very poor spelling and interferes with automatic use of writing mechanics.

As parents and teachers, we can help students deal with their lack of enjoyment of the writing process and also with poor skill development. The techniques are twofold. Students need to:

• develop a greater understanding of and appreciation for the purpose of writing.
• develop more efficient skills.

When students have a combination of this understanding and the skills, they are then free to apply techniques and abilities in a wide range of situations. This is especially true and necessary for dyslexic and/or dysgraphic students who are compensating for processing inefficiencies in the language domain.

This graphic represents the necessary steps in developing writing skills. These steps are in a hierarchy: if a student has too many gaps in one (or more) of the lower levels, then the top levels may be shaky and unstable.

The underlying processing skills involve development in a variety of memory, motor, and language areas. Examples include:

• Physical components of writing
• Speed of motor performance
• Active working memory
• Language formulation and ideation

The mechanical skills involve lower level tasks such as automatic letter form, use of space, basic spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. More mature mechanics involve speed, clarity of expression, and appropriate grammar.

The content skills relate to organizing and expressing ideas. The upper level skills include:

• Writing using different writing styles
• Being flexible in the writing process
• Understanding the viewpoint of the reader
• Writing with enthusiasm

There are many reasons a student may avoid writing, but most relate to the concept that writing is not fun or enjoyable. When writing is not meaningful, it is difficult to pull together the variety of skills needed to develop enthusiasm about writing. Students learn to write by writing, which then gives them the confidence to continue to write and continue to develop their skills. Using a variety of modalities can help create enthusiasm for writing and help students view writing as a more meaningful activity.

It is also important to analyze the lower level skills to ensure that the student has appropriately developed automaticity in these skills. When students are frustrated with individual components related to the task of writing and/or when they struggle to get started or to keep track of their thoughts, then the writing process is not fun, and their lack of enthusiasm becomes evident. Writing remains at the level of drudgery no matter how exciting the topic and students may feel threatened by the process of writing.

The goal for these students is to reduce the frustration, struggles, and feeling of threat. Increasing automaticity of skills is required to increase overall writing automaticity for a student. When automaticity, as developed by metacognitive awareness of the writing process and use of specific strategies, is combined with skill development and bypass strategies, the student should be able to deal with the vast majority of written expression tasks. The next step is to integrate purpose and meaning to generate fun and lead to enthusiasm for writing.

Jerome Elkind (The Lexia Institute, Los Altos, CA) “Computer Reading Machines for Poor Readers.” Charles A. MacArthur, Ph.D. (University of Delaware) “Assistive Technology for Writing.” Marshall H. Raskind, Ph.D. (The Frostig Center, Pasadena, CA) “Assistive Technology for Individuals with Learning Disabilities: How Far Have We Come?” Thomas G. West (Visualization Research, Washington, D.C.) “Words to Images: Technological Change Redefines Educational Goals.” Marshall H. Raskind, Ph.D. and Toby Shaw, M.A. (The Frostig Center, Pasadena, CA) “Assistive Technology for Persons with Learning Disabilities: Product Resource List.”

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Acosta, Simone and Richards, Regina G. "Cursive Writing: A Multisensory Approach," in 1999 So. California Consortium Resource Directory , International Dyslexia Association, www.retctrpress.com.

Levine, Melvin D. Developmental Variation and Learning Disorders, 2nd ed., www.epsbooks.com.

Levine, Melvin D. Educational Care: A System for Understanding and Helping Children with Learning Problems at Home and in School , www.epsbooks.com.

Richards, Regina G. The Source for Dyslexia and Dysgraphia , East Moline, IL: LinguiSystems, 800/PRO-IDEA.

Richards, Regina G. When Writing's A Problem , Riverside, RET Center Press, www.retctrpress.com.

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Why Students Hate Writing (and How to Change their Minds!)

In today’s digital world, written communication is more common, more transparent, and more permanent than every before. It’s critical that every student is able to express themselves clearly in writing, yet sadly, many cannot.

This is reflected in the statistics. The National Association of Educational Progress estimates that only 27% of 8th and 12th grade students can write at a proficient level. Among high school students who took the ACT in 2016, roughly 40% could not write at a college level according to the company’s data.

One reason why students struggle with writing is that it can often be challenging to foster a love of writing or deeply engage students in the writing and revision process. Why?

• Students do not see the point or the relevance of the topic they are writing about.
• Students feel pressure to write perfectly from the start of their writing process, which slows them down.
• Feedback is important for student learning , and when students receive bad feedback, slow feedback, or no feedback at all, this is deeply demotivating.

How to Help Students Overcome the Intimidation of Writing

Solving this issue can be challenging. That said, there are several strategies that teachers of all content areas can leverage to reduce a student’s dislike of writing.

PRIMING STUDENTS FOR WRITING

It is common for teachers to point out specific concepts or subjects in a given class and state, “This might be on a test someday. Hint, hint!” You’ll see your students’ ears perk up. The same practice could also be used for essays.

For example, let’s say you plan to assign an essay on a book being read in your English class. As your students are working through the novel, you can point out topics and events in the book that could be discussed in a future essay during class readings and discussions.

This can help eliminate student anxiety during the Monday surprise when the essay is assigned, and students can start their essays with a handful of ideas.

ALWAYS HAVE A TOPIC IN MIND

For many students, receiving a writing assignment where they can write about any topic of their choice can be a generally positive experience. Many students view this as an opportunity to write about something in their lives, or the chance to get creative and make up a story.

However, not all students react favorably to choosing their own topic. Some students immediately go into a panic attack of indecision. Others immediately develop writer’s block.

By having a backup plan for those students, teachers can help reduce the anxiety that comes with these types of writing assignments. Some examples of topics that teachers can suggest include:

• Subjects that have been discussed in class
• Events that have happened at the school
• Important news stories, social trends or current events

MAKE WRITING FUN

No matter what, some students will think of writing the same way they think of root canals. But if teachers can have writing clubs and fun names for daily writing time, and provide more in depth feedback on writing, students will have an easier time replacing dread with acceptance.

Engagement and feedback are how people improve at nearly everything. Students, whether they are first graders or doctoral students, need to be able to understand not only what they did wrong and how to fix it, but what they did right and how to leverage their writing strengths. Outsourcing grading for writing assignments can be highly beneficial in such instances.

Helping Students Accept Writing Assignments

Every teacher can agree that strong writing skills are crucial to a student’s long term success, both academically and professionally. There are several tactics teachers and students can employ to make writing more acceptable and fun.

Get in touch with Marco Learning to discover how we can help enhance your student’s writing skills.

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Accessing the Website and Account Security

We reserve the right to withdraw or amend this Website, and any service or material we provide on the Website, in our sole discretion without notice. We will not be liable if for any reason all or any part of the Website is unavailable at any time or for any period. From time to time, we may restrict access to some parts of the Website, or the entire Website, to users, including registered users.

You are responsible for (i) making all arrangements necessary for you to have access to the Website, and (ii) ensuring that all persons who access the Website through your internet connection are aware of these Terms of Use and comply with them.

To access the Website or some of the resources it offers, you may be asked to provide certain registration details or other information. It is a condition of your use of the Website that all the information you provide on the Website is correct, current, and complete. You agree that all information you provide to register with this Website or otherwise, including but not limited to through the use of any interactive features on the Website, is governed by our Marco Learning Privacy Policy , and you consent to all actions we take with respect to your information consistent with our Privacy Policy.

If you choose, or are provided with, a user name, password, or any other piece of information as part of our security procedures, you must treat such information as confidential, and you must not disclose it to any other person or entity. You also acknowledge that your account is personal to you and agree not to provide any other person with access to this Website or portions of it using your user name, password, or other security information. You agree to notify us immediately of any unauthorized access to or use of your user name or password or any other breach of security. You also agree to ensure that you exit from your account at the end of each session. You should use particular caution when accessing your account from a public or shared computer so that others are not able to view or record your password or other personal information.

We have the right to disable any user name, password, or other identifier, whether chosen by you or provided by us, at any time in our sole discretion for any or no reason, including if, in our opinion, you have violated any provision of these Terms of Use.

Intellectual Property Rights

The Website and its entire contents, features, and functionality (including but not limited to all information, software, text, displays, images, graphics, video, other visuals, and audio, and the design, selection, and arrangement thereof) are owned by the Company, its licensors, or other providers of such material and are protected by United States and international copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, and other intellectual property or proprietary rights laws. Your use of the Website does not grant to you ownership of any content, software, code, date or materials you may access on the Website.

These Terms of Use permit you to use the Website for your personal, non-commercial use only. You must not reproduce, distribute, modify, create derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, republish, download, store, or transmit any of the material on our Website, except as follows:

• Your computer may temporarily store copies of such materials in RAM incidental to your accessing and viewing those materials.
• You may store files that are automatically cached by your Web browser for display enhancement purposes.
• You may print or download one copy of a reasonable number of pages of the Website for your own personal, non-commercial use and not for further reproduction, publication, or distribution.
• If we provide desktop, mobile, or other applications for download, you may download a single copy to your computer or mobile device solely for your own personal, non-commercial use, provided you agree to be bound by our end user license agreement for such applications.
• If we provide social media features with certain content, you may take such actions as are enabled by such features.

You must not:

• Modify copies of any materials from this site.
• Use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences, or any graphics separately from the accompanying text.
• Delete or alter any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices from copies of materials from this site.

You must not access or use for any commercial purposes any part of the Website or any services or materials available through the Website.

If you wish to make any use of material on the Website other than that set out in this section, please contact us

If you print, copy, modify, download, or otherwise use or provide any other person with access to any part of the Website in breach of the Terms of Use, your right to use the Website will stop immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made. No right, title, or interest in or to the Website or any content on the Website is transferred to you, and all rights not expressly granted are reserved by the Company. Any use of the Website not expressly permitted by these Terms of Use is a breach of these Terms of Use and may violate copyright, trademark, and other laws.

Trademarks, logos, service marks, trade names, and all related names, logos, product and service names, designs, and slogans are trademarks of the Company or its affiliates or licensors (collectively, the “ Trademarks ”). You must not use such Trademarks without the prior written permission of the Company. All other names, logos, product and service names, designs, and slogans on this Website are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Prohibited Uses

You may use the Website only for lawful purposes and in accordance with these Terms of Use. You agree not to use the Website:

• In any way that violates any applicable federal, state, local, or international law or regulation (including, without limitation, any laws regarding the export of data or software to and from the US or other countries).
• For the purpose of exploiting, harming, or attempting to exploit or harm minors in any way by exposing them to inappropriate content, asking for personally identifiable information, or otherwise.
• To send, knowingly receive, upload, download, use, or re-use any material that does not comply with the Content Standards set out in these Terms of Use.
• To transmit, or procure the sending of, any advertising or promotional material, including any “junk mail”, “chain letter”, “spam”, or any other similar solicitation.
• To impersonate or attempt to impersonate the Company, a Company employee, another user, or any other person or entity (including, without limitation, by using email addresses or screen names associated with any of the foregoing).
• To engage in any other conduct that restricts or inhibits anyone’s use or enjoyment of the Website, or which, as determined by us, may harm the Company or users of the Website or expose them to liability.

Additionally, you agree not to:

• Use the Website in any manner that could disable, overburden, damage, or impair the site or interfere with any other party’s use of the Website, including their ability to engage in real time activities through the Website.
• Use any robot, spider, or other automatic device, process, or means to access the Website for any purpose, including monitoring or copying any of the material on the Website.
• Use any manual process to monitor or copy any of the material on the Website or for any other unauthorized purpose without our prior written consent.
• Use any device, software, or routine that interferes with the proper working of the Website.
• Introduce any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, logic bombs, or other material that is malicious or technologically harmful.
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to, interfere with, damage, or disrupt any parts of the Website, the server on which the Website is stored, or any server, computer, or database connected to the Website.
• Attack the Website via a denial-of-service attack or a distributed denial-of-service attack.
• Otherwise attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Website.

If you use, or assist another person in using the Website in any unauthorized way, you agree that you will pay us an additional $50 per hour for any time we spend to investigate and correct such use, plus any third party costs of investigation we incur (with a minimum $300 charge). You agree that we may charge any credit card number provided for your account for such amounts. You further agree that you will not dispute such a charge and that we retain the right to collect any additional actual costs.

User Contributions

The Website may contain message boards, chat rooms, personal web pages or profiles, forums, bulletin boards, and other interactive features (collectively, “ Interactive Services “) that allow users to post, submit, publish, display, or transmit to other users or other persons (hereinafter, “ post “) content or materials (collectively, “ User Contributions “) on or through the Website.

All User Contributions must comply with the Content Standards set out in these Terms of Use.

Any User Contribution you post to the site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. By providing any User Contribution on the Website, you grant us and our affiliates and service providers, and each of their and our respective licensees, successors, and assigns the right to use, reproduce, modify, perform, display, distribute, and otherwise disclose to third parties any such material for any purpose.

You represent and warrant that:

• You own or control all rights in and to the User Contributions and have the right to grant the license granted above to us and our affiliates and service providers, and each of their and our respective licensees, successors, and assigns.
• All of your User Contributions do and will comply with these Terms of Use.

You understand and acknowledge that you are responsible for any User Contributions you submit or contribute, and you, not the Company, have full responsibility for such content, including its legality, reliability, accuracy, and appropriateness.

For any academic source materials such as textbooks and workbooks which you submit to us in connection with our online tutoring services, you represent and warrant that you are entitled to upload such materials under the “fair use” doctrine of copyright law. In addition, if you request that our system display a representation of a page or problem from a textbook or workbook, you represent and warrant that you are in proper legal possession of such textbook or workbook and that your instruction to our system to display a page or problem from your textbook or workbook is made for the sole purpose of facilitating your tutoring session, as “fair use” under copyright law.

You agree that we may record all or any part of any live online classes and tutoring sessions (including voice chat communications) for quality control and other purposes. You agree that we own all transcripts and recordings of such sessions and that these Terms of Use will be deemed an irrevocable assignment of rights in all such transcripts and recordings to us.

We are not responsible or liable to any third party for the content or accuracy of any User Contributions posted by you or any other user of the Website.

Monitoring and Enforcement: Termination

We have the right to:

• Remove or refuse to post any User Contributions for any or no reason in our sole discretion.
• Take any action with respect to any User Contribution that we deem necessary or appropriate in our sole discretion, including if we believe that such User Contribution violates the Terms of Use, including the Content Standards, infringes any intellectual property right or other right of any person or entity, threatens the personal safety of users of the Website or the public, or could create liability for the Company.
• Disclose your identity or other information about you to any third party who claims that material posted by you violates their rights, including their intellectual property rights or their right to privacy.
• Take appropriate legal action, including without limitation, referral to law enforcement, for any illegal or unauthorized use of the Website.
• Terminate or suspend your access to all or part of the Website for any or no reason, including without limitation, any violation of these Terms of Use.

Without limiting the foregoing, we have the right to cooperate fully with any law enforcement authorities or court order requesting or directing us to disclose the identity or other information of anyone posting any materials on or through the Website. YOU WAIVE AND HOLD HARMLESS THE COMPANY AND ITS AFFILIATES, LICENSEES, AND SERVICE PROVIDERS FROM ANY CLAIMS RESULTING FROM ANY ACTION TAKEN BY ANY OF THE FOREGOING PARTIES DURING, OR TAKEN AS A CONSEQUENCE OF, INVESTIGATIONS BY EITHER SUCH PARTIES OR LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES.

However, we do not undertake to review material before it is posted on the Website, and cannot ensure prompt removal of objectionable material after it has been posted. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any action or inaction regarding transmissions, communications, or content provided by any user or third party. We have no liability or responsibility to anyone for performance or nonperformance of the activities described in this section.

Content Standards

These content standards apply to any and all User Contributions and use of Interactive Services. User Contributions must in their entirety comply with all applicable federal, state, local, and international laws and regulations. Without limiting the foregoing, User Contributions must not:

• Contain any material that is defamatory, obscene, indecent, abusive, offensive, harassing, violent, hateful, inflammatory, or otherwise objectionable.
• Promote sexually explicit or pornographic material, violence, or discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation, or age.
• Infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, or other intellectual property or other rights of any other person.
• Violate the legal rights (including the rights of publicity and privacy) of others or contain any material that could give rise to any civil or criminal liability under applicable laws or regulations or that otherwise may be in conflict with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy .
• Be likely to deceive any person.
• Promote any illegal activity, or advocate, promote, or assist any unlawful act.
• Cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety or be likely to upset, embarrass, alarm, or annoy any other person.
• Impersonate any person, or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with any person or organization.
• Involve commercial activities or sales, such as contests, sweepstakes, and other sales promotions, barter, or advertising.
• Give the impression that they emanate from or are endorsed by us or any other person or entity, if this is not the case.

(collectively, the “ Content Standards ”)

Copyright Infringement

If you believe that any User Contributions violate your copyright, please contact us  and provide the following information:

• An electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;
• A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed;
• A description of where the material you claim is infringing is located on the website (and such description must reasonably sufficient to enable us to find the alleged infringing material);
• Your address, telephone number and email address;
• A written statement by you that you have a good faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; and
• A statement by you, made under the penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf.

We may terminate the accounts of any infringers.

Reliance on Information Posted

From time to time, we may make third party opinions, advice, statements, offers, or other third party information or content available on the Website or from tutors under tutoring services (collectively, “Third Party Content”). All Third Party Content is the responsibility of the respective authors thereof and should not necessarily be relied upon. Such third party authors are solely responsible for such content. WE DO NOT (I) GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS OR USEFULNESS OF ANY THIRD PARTY CONTENT ON THE SITE OR ANY VERIFICATION SERVICES DONE ON OUR TUTORS OR INSTRUCTORS, OR (II) ADOPT, ENDORSE OR ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ACCURACY OR RELIABILITY OF ANY OPINION, ADVICE, OR STATEMENT MADE BY ANY TUTOR OR INSTRUCTOR OR ANY PARTY THAT APPEARS ON THE WEBSITE. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES WILL WE BE RESPONSBILE OR LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE RESULTING FROM YOUR RELIANCE ON INFORMATION OR OTHER CONENT POSTED ON OR AVAILBLE FROM THE WEBSITE.

Changes to the Website

We may update the content on this Website from time to time, but its content is not necessarily complete or up-to-date. Any of the material on the Website may be out of date at any given time, and we are under no obligation to update such material.

Information About You and Your Visits to the Website

All information we collect on this Website is subject to our Privacy Policy . By using the Website, you consent to all actions taken by us with respect to your information in compliance with the Privacy Policy.

Online Purchases and Other Terms and Conditions

All purchases through our site or other transactions for the sale of services and information formed through the Website or resulting from visits made by you are governed by our Terms of Sale, which are hereby incorporated into these Terms of Use.

Additional terms and conditions may also apply to specific portions, services, or features of the Website. All such additional terms and conditions are hereby incorporated by this reference into these Terms of Use.

Linking to the Website and Social Media Features

You may link to our homepage, provided you do so in a way that is fair and legal and does not damage our reputation or take advantage of it, but you must not establish a link in such a way as to suggest any form of association, approval, or endorsement on our part without our express written consent.

This Website may provide certain social media features that enable you to:

• Link from your own or certain third-party websites to certain content on this Website.
• Send emails or other communications with certain content, or links to certain content, on this Website.
• Cause limited portions of content on this Website to be displayed or appear to be displayed on your own or certain third-party websites.

You may use these features solely as they are provided by us, and solely with respect to the content they are displayed with and otherwise in accordance with any additional terms and conditions we provide with respect to such features. Subject to the foregoing, you must not:

• Establish a link from any website that is not owned by you.
• Cause the Website or portions of it to be displayed on, or appear to be displayed by, any other site, for example, framing, deep linking, or in-line linking.
• Link to any part of the Website other than the homepage.
• Otherwise take any action with respect to the materials on this Website that is inconsistent with any other provision of these Terms of Use.

The website from which you are linking, or on which you make certain content accessible, must comply in all respects with the Content Standards set out in these Terms of Use.

You agree to cooperate with us in causing any unauthorized framing or linking immediately to stop. We reserve the right to withdraw linking permission without notice.

We may disable all or any social media features and any links at any time without notice in our discretion.

Links from the Website

If the Website contains links to other sites and resources provided by third parties (“ Linked Sites ”), these links are provided for your convenience only. This includes links contained in advertisements, including banner advertisements and sponsored links. You acknowledge and agree that we have no control over the contents, products, services, advertising or other materials which may be provided by or through those Linked sites or resources, and accept no responsibility for them or for any loss or damage that may arise from your use of them. If you decide to access any of the third-party websites linked to this Website, you do so entirely at your own risk and subject to the terms and conditions of use for such websites.

You agree that if you include a link from any other website to the Website, such link will open in a new browser window and will link to the full version of an HTML formatted page of this Website. You are not permitted to link directly to any image hosted on the Website or our products or services, such as using an “in-line” linking method to cause the image hosted by us to be displayed on another website. You agree not to download or use images hosted on this Website or another website, for any purpose, including, without limitation, posting such images on another website. You agree not to link from any other website to this Website in any manner such that the Website, or any page of the Website, is “framed,” surrounded or obfuscated by any third party content, materials or branding. We reserve all of our rights under the law to insist that any link to the Website be discontinued, and to revoke your right to link to the Website from any other website at any time upon written notice to you.

Geographic Restrictions

The owner of the Website is based in the state of New Jersey in the United States. We provide this Website for use only by persons located in the United States. We make no claims that the Website or any of its content is accessible or appropriate outside of the United States. Access to the Website may not be legal by certain persons or in certain countries. If you access the Website from outside the United States, you do so on your own initiative and are responsible for compliance with local laws.

Disclaimer of Warranties

You understand that we cannot and do not guarantee or warrant that files available for downloading from the internet or the Website will be free of viruses or other destructive code. You are responsible for implementing sufficient procedures and checkpoints to satisfy your particular requirements for anti-virus protection and accuracy of data input and output, and for maintaining a means external to our site for any reconstruction of any lost data. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PROVIDED BY LAW, WE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGE CAUSED BY A DISTRIBUTED DENIAL-OF-SERVICE ATTACK, VIRUSES, OR OTHER TECHNOLOGICALLY HARMFUL MATERIAL THAT MAY INFECT YOUR COMPUTER EQUIPMENT, COMPUTER PROGRAMS, DATA, OR OTHER PROPRIETARY MATERIAL DUE TO YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE OR ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE OR TO YOUR DOWNLOADING OF ANY MATERIAL POSTED ON IT, OR ON ANY WEBSITE LINKED TO IT.

YOUR USE OF THE WEBSITE, ITS CONTENT, AND ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE WEBSITE, ITS CONTENT, AND ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS, WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. NEITHER THE COMPANY NOR ANY PERSON ASSOCIATED WITH THE COMPANY MAKES ANY WARRANTY OR REPRESENTATION WITH RESPECT TO THE COMPLETENESS, SECURITY, RELIABILITY, QUALITY, ACCURACY, OR AVAILABILITY OF THE WEBSITE. WITHOUT LIMITING THE FOREGOING, NEITHER THE COMPANY NOR ANYONE ASSOCIATED WITH THE COMPANY REPRESENTS OR WARRANTS THAT THE WEBSITE, ITS CONTENT, OR ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE WILL BE ACCURATE, RELIABLE, ERROR-FREE, OR UNINTERRUPTED, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, THAT OUR SITE OR THE SERVER THAT MAKES IT AVAILABLE ARE FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS, OR THAT THE WEBSITE OR ANY SERVICES OR ITEMS OBTAINED THROUGH THE WEBSITE WILL OTHERWISE MEET YOUR NEEDS OR EXPECTATIONS.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PROVIDED BY LAW, THE COMPANY HEREBY DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND FITNESS FOR PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

THE FOREGOING DOES NOT AFFECT ANY WARRANTIES THAT CANNOT BE EXCLUDED OR LIMITED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW.

Limitation on Liability

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PROVIDED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL THE COMPANY, ITS AFFILIATES, OR THEIR LICENSORS, SERVICE PROVIDERS, EMPLOYEES, AGENTS, OFFICERS, OR DIRECTORS BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, UNDER ANY LEGAL THEORY, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE, OR INABILITY TO USE, THE WEBSITE, ANY WEBSITES LINKED TO IT, ANY CONTENT ON THE WEBSITE OR SUCH OTHER WEBSITES, INCLUDING ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PERSONAL INJURY, PAIN AND SUFFERING, EMOTIONAL DISTRESS, LOSS OF REVENUE, LOSS OF PROFITS, LOSS OF BUSINESS OR ANTICIPATED SAVINGS, LOSS OF USE, LOSS OF GOODWILL, LOSS OF DATA, AND WHETHER CAUSED BY TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), BREACH OF CONTRACT, OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF FORESEEABLE.

THE FOREGOING DOES NOT AFFECT ANY LIABILITY THAT CANNOT BE EXCLUDED OR LIMITED UNDER APPLICABLE LAW.

Indemnification

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless the Company, its affiliates, licensors, and service providers, and its and their respective officers, directors, employees, contractors, agents, licensors, suppliers, successors, and assigns from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, judgments, awards, losses, costs, expenses, or fees (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of or relating to your violation of these Terms of Use or your use of the Website, including, but not limited to, your User Contributions, any use of the Website’s content, services, and products other than as expressly authorized in these Terms of Use or your use of any information obtained from the Website.

Governing Law and Jurisdiction

All matters relating to the Website and these Terms of Use and any dispute or claim arising therefrom or related thereto (in each case, including non-contractual disputes or claims), shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the internal laws of the State of New Jersey without giving effect to any choice or conflict of law provision or rule (whether of the State of New Jersey or any other jurisdiction).

Any legal suit, action, or proceeding arising out of, or related to, these Terms of Use or the Website shall be instituted exclusively in the federal courts of the United States or the courts of the State of New Jersey in each case located in the County of Monmouth although we retain the right to bring any suit, action, or proceeding against you for breach of these Terms of Use in your country of residence or any other relevant country. You waive any and all objections to the exercise of jurisdiction over you by such courts and to venue in such courts. You may not under any circumstances commence or maintain against us any class action, class arbitration, or other representative action or proceeding.

Arbitration

By using this Website, you agree, at Company’s sole discretion, that it may require you to submit any disputes arising from the use of these Terms of Use or the Website, including disputes arising from or concerning their interpretation, violation, invalidity, non-performance, or termination, to final and binding arbitration under the Rules of Arbitration of the American Arbitration Association applying New Jersey law. In doing so, YOU GIVE UP YOUR RIGHT TO GO TO COURT to assert or defend any claims between you and us. YOU ALSO GIVE UP YOUR RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE IN A CLASS ACTION OR OTHER CLASS PROCEEDING. Your rights may be determined by a NEUTRAL ARBITRATOR, NOT A JUDGE OR JURY. You are entitled to a fair hearing before the arbitrator. The arbitrator can grant any relief that a court can, but you should note that arbitration proceedings are usually simpler and more streamlined than trials and other judicial proceedings. Decisions by the arbitrator are enforceable in court and may be overturned by a court only for very limited reasons.

Any proceeding to enforce this arbitration provision, including any proceeding to confirm, modify, or vacate an arbitration award, may be commenced in any court of competent jurisdiction. In the event that this arbitration provision is for any reason held to be unenforceable, any litigation against Company must be commenced only in the federal or state courts located in Monmouth County, New Jersey. You hereby irrevocably consent to the jurisdiction of those courts for such purposes.

Limitation on Time to File Claims

ANY CAUSE OF ACTION OR CLAIM YOU MAY HAVE ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OF USE OR THE WEBSITE MUST BE COMMENCED WITHIN ONE (1) YEAR AFTER THE CAUSE OF ACTION ACCRUES, OTHERWISE, SUCH CAUSE OF ACTION OR CLAIM IS PERMANENTLY BARRED.

Waiver and Severability

No waiver by the Company of any term or condition set out in these Terms of Use shall be deemed a further or continuing waiver of such term or condition or a waiver of any other term or condition, and any failure of the Company to assert a right or provision under these Terms of Use shall not constitute a waiver of such right or provision.

If any provision of these Terms of Use is held by a court or other tribunal of competent jurisdiction to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable for any reason, such provision shall be eliminated or limited to the minimum extent such that the remaining provisions of the Terms of Use will continue in full force and effect.

Entire Agreement

The Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy, and Terms of Sale constitute the sole and entire agreement between you and Marco Learning LLC regarding the Website and supersede all prior and contemporaneous understandings, agreements, representations, and warranties, both written and oral, regarding the Website.

Communications and Miscellaneous

If you provide us your email address, you agree and consent to receive email messages from us. These emails may be transaction or relationship communications relating to the products or services we offer, such as administrative notices and service announcements or changes, or emails containing commercial offers, promotions or special offers from us.

Your Comments and Concerns

This website is operated by Marco Learning LLC, a New Jersey limited liability company with an address of 113 Monmouth Road, Suite 1, Wrightstown, New Jersey 08562.

Please contact us   for all other feedback, comments, requests for technical support, and other communications relating to the Website.

Anxiety about academic writing: I'm a bad writer

• Am I the only person who feels like this?
• I never have enough time
• I'm a bad writer
• I don't know enough
• Writing is too hard

You might be feeling:

• I'm bad at writing; I always have been, and I always will be.
• I'm a bad writer because my work isn't perfect.
• My writing will never be as good as my colleagues' work.
• I have writer's block, which just shows that I'm a bad writer. If I was a good writer, I would be able to write.
• I'm not comfortable with using computers, so the process of creating my documents is really hard for me. Even typing is hard for me, so how can I be a good writer if I can't type well?
• I work really hard at my writing, but my grades on my assignments are never as good as I expect them to be.

What can you do right now?

Emotional strategies

Persistent negative inner self talk can create quite a block to your ability to flourish at university.  It's not easy, but there are definitely some strategies you can try to help calm the little voices and help you create a more realistic story of you as a writer:

• If there is evidence that you really are a "bad" writer, what steps can you take to solve the problem? See the writing strategies below for some great tips to get you started.
• If there's not much evidence, can you think of a more accurate way to describe yourself as a writer? Could you describe yourself as a novice writer, an adequate writer, or a developing writer?
• How would you know that you were a good writer? What is one small change you could make to move you in that direction?
• If your self talk is still getting in the way, please book an appointment with Counselling Services so we can help quiet the unhelpful inner chatter and build up your confidence.

Writing strategies

Writing involves many complex thinking and communication skills, and as with all skills, all writers are constantly in the process of learning and improving. People are never "done" as writers; rather, we're all writers-in-development. Try to think of yourself as someone who is learning new skills, versus that you're a bad writer, and be patient as you learn those skills. Skills take time, information, practice, and feedback to develop, and it's inevitable that mistakes will be made along the way. While no one enjoys making mistakes, they're a normal part of learning a new skill. Consider someone who is learning how to play a musical instrument; they wouldn't be expected to play a complex piece of music the first time they pick up the instrument. Similarly, as a developing author, focus on learning the individual skills, rather than expecting you'll be perfect every time you write.

• Try the exercises in " Assess yourself as a writer " to learn more about your strengths and areas for development as a writer.
• Writer's block happens to everyone and is seldom an indication of ability. Rather, it tends to happen when people don't have enough information or haven't planned their works. See " Overcoming writer's block" for suggestions.
• If typing is a struggle, try speech-to-text software to capture your ideas. See " Speech-to-text tools".
• Contact your instructor to request a conversation to learn more about why your grades aren't as high as you expect. While receiving the feedback might not be easy, the conversation will identify specific skills for you to develop. Once you have that information, book an appointment with the Writing Centre so that we can assist you.

Where can you learn more?

Counselling Services

• "Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck)" (Alison Ledgerwood TED Talk) 

Writing Centre

• " Gradschoolitis " pep talk ( transcrip t)
• " Bad feelings about writing don’t mean you’re a bad writer " (Amy Benson Brown)

Ask for help

[email protected] (250) 391-2600 ext. 4515   Book an appointment

[email protected] (250) 391-2600, ext. 4353 or 1-800-788-8028 Book an appointment

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Really bad writing.

Welcome to the intriguing world of writing – a tantalizing tapestry of creativity, emotion, and intellectual exploration. Here, words aren’t merely vessels of communication; they’re mirrors, reflecting the vibrant mindscapes of their creators. While we often celebrate the artistry of good writing, we rarely venture into the intriguing shadows of its less glamorous counterpart – bad writing. It’s akin to exploring a secret attic, dusty and daunting, but filled with untold lessons. Let’s bravely pull back the curtain on bad writing, discover its quirks, understand its pitfalls, and learn how it can guide us on our journey to becoming stronger, more skilful writers. Buckle up, for we’re about to embark on a writing adventure like no other!

Examples of Bad Writing

Below are sample excerpts from what I think is a really bad writing. These excerpts are collected from different stories, either written by me (sometimes, when you edit, you find monsters), or by other authors. I won’t disclose their names though. Read the following samples, guess what’s wrong with them, and never write like this.

1. Sunday was a marvelous, uplifting day, perfect for our usual slow and cozy strolls around the picturesque autumn park. It was late glorious October outside, and the whole town was covered with yellow, red, brown, and crimson crispy leaves. The blue sky with fluffy, curly white clouds in it looked light-minded as if all the gruesome and sad miseries of unhappy people living under it were none of its business but its own. I put on my beige warm sweater of large viscous, pushed an old ragged door of my tiny apartment, and went outside and went outside, oh, went outside.

I hope you noticed the enormous quantity of adjectives and epithets and the grammatical errors. Don’t repeat these mistakes.

2. Whenever I was feeling depressed, sad, or just out of place, I would pack my things into a small backpack, write a couple of short letters to my friends—just to prevent them from worrying about my whereabouts—and set off travelling around the state; it really did not matter for me where to go—in youth, I was fascinated with the aesthetics and nomadic romance of the beat generation, so usually I would buy a ticket on a bus (Greyhound Express, just like Jack Kerouac would like it, baby) driving to nowhere, sit, drink from my canteen, and watch the endless miles of the road pass by me outside of the window.

I almost fell asleep while I tried to read to the end of this super-long sentence. And this is not even the longest sentence I’ve encountered.

3. She looked as if she was struck by lightning: her eyes going to fall out of orbits, her mouth wide open, as if she was trying to swallow a train, her skin deadly pale. To me, seeing her in such a condition was heartbreaking, like eggs being cracked upon a stone.

Metaphors and comparisons can be okay if you use them once every few pages. But back to back, they can be annoying—especially poorly-used metaphors.

4. Emotional detachment between us during manifested harmony in relationships was causing a cognitive dissonance within me; my mind was wandering in Kafkian labyrinths of doubt, guilt, and sorrow, while my mouth almost subconsciously produced sparkling words that people usually associate with love.

Don’t try to sound smart. It destroys the magic of your text. If your reader has no idea about Kafkian labyrinths or cognitive dissonance, your effort will be in vain.

5. Electric compulsion of misery flowed through the night megalopolis, filling the veins of pragmatic reality with juices. Magnetic Adam of the new epoch, the innocent function of digital satori, who were you in this entropy?

WHAT?! This is too avant-garde, and in this case, it’s not a compliment.

You seriously don’t want to stumble upon such authors. So, if you were planning on working with some writers, you better check their works beforehand. Consider checking out the best custom writing service reviews – maybe you can find true masters of the words there.

Top Writing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them: A Comprehensive Guide

The art of writing holds immense transformative power. But, as with any craft, it can also be filled with potential pitfalls. This article unveils some common writing mistakes and provides insightful strategies to improve your craft. Let’s dive in.

One common writing faux pas is ‘info-dumping’. Authors can fall into the trap of overloading the reader with a sudden onslaught of information to create context or background. Rather than risking the reader’s interest with a wall of text, try subtly sprinkling details throughout the story . As the old saying goes, a little can go a long way.

Next on our list is the pitfall of excessive descriptive language. While well-chosen adjectives can help transport readers to another world, their overuse can slow down the narrative and disengage readers. Remember, a well-crafted narrative strikes a balance between descriptive language and concise storytelling. To achieve this balance, consider using a free sentence rewriter to refine your prose and eliminate unnecessary verbosity.

Clichés are yet another common writing mistake. Overuse of these familiar phrases can make a story feel stale and predictable, suggesting a lack of original thought. Instead of resorting to clichés, try using fresh, original metaphors and descriptions to make your work truly stand out.

Our exploration into common writing errors would be incomplete without addressing ‘telling’ instead of ‘showing’. Instead of explicitly telling your readers that a character is scared, for example, show them descriptions of the character’s trembling hands, quickened breath, or the chill crawling up their spine. The art of storytelling lies in not just what information you convey, but how you convey it.

Another critical issue arises when dialogue feels unnatural or stilted. If characters speak like robots or philosophers in everyday conversation, it can create a disconnect for the reader. To prevent this, try incorporating authentic, real-world dialogue . Remember, your characters should feel like real people.

Lastly, we address the common writing mistake of overusing passive voice. Passive sentences tend to be wordy and less direct, which can make them feel awkward or weak. To enhance the energy of your writing, be bold, be direct, and let your active voice shine!

Let’s shift gears and explore some insights derived from personal experiences shared by writers.

Many writers initially struggle with ‘purple prose,’ a term for writing that’s overly ornate or flowery. Over time, they realize that simplicity often makes for more compelling reading. In the world of writing, less is indeed often more.

Overuse of adverbs is another pitfall writers often face in their early attempts at crafting a story. Learning to trust nouns and verbs to carry the scene can help writers overcome this habit and produce more impactful prose.

Creating two-dimensional characters is another common issue. Characters should feel like living, breathing beings with depth and motivation, rather than mere cardboard cutouts.

Inconsistent point-of-view is another challenge that writers often need to overcome. Maintaining a consistent narrative perspective can help to create a stronger narrative focus and engage readers more effectively.

Finally, writers new to poetry often struggle with forced rhymes and rhythms. With practice, they learn to let the words flow naturally, focusing on the message rather than the rhymes.

Exploring Examples of Bad Writing and How to Improve Them

Bad writing is something every writer wants to avoid. However, understanding what constitutes poor writing can be a useful tool in improving writing quality. To shed light on this, we’ll explore some examples of bad writing, commonly seen in popular books, both in literary fiction and commercial fiction.

Inappropriate Dialogue and Dialogue Tags

One common example of bad writing can be found in the execution of dialogue. Good writing involves creating conversations that sound natural and real. However, in some bestselling books, character conversations can feel forced or unnatural, leading to poor writing. For instance, using dialogue tags inappropriately can disrupt the flow of speaking parts. Tags like “he exclaimed” or “she bellowed” used excessively can distract the reader and detract from the narrative. Skilled writing involves using dialogue tags sparingly and effectively.

Another example of bad writing in dialogue is the use of unnatural language. Characters should speak like real people, their language reflecting their background, age, and personality. When character names start to spout jargon or use overly complex language without any contextual reasoning, it can feel jarring to the reader.

Ineffective Description

Description is a critical component of both literary novels and genre fiction. However, bad writing often includes detailed descriptions that don’t serve the story. For example, imagine a scene in a coffee shop where the author spends three paragraphs describing the intricate design of the espresso machine. Unless the coffeehouse or the machine plays a significant role in the narrative, such a vivid depiction is unnecessary and can slow down the pace of the story.

Good writing, on the other hand, incorporates descriptive writing that enhances the narrative and deepens the reader’s understanding of the characters or the setting. A quality description in a literary work or a popular novel should be concise, relevant, and evocative, creating a vivid picture in the reader’s mind without overburdening them with unnecessary details.

Confusing Point of View

A clear and consistent point of view is a hallmark of effective writing. However, in some highly read books, the author’s perspective or the narrative perspective can become muddled, leading to bad writing. For instance, if a story is told from a single character’s point of view, but suddenly includes information that this character couldn’t possibly know, it breaks the consistency of the storytelling angle and can confuse the reader.

The Power of Redrafting

Improving writing, particularly in commercial fiction and literary fiction, often involves significant rewriting, editing, or revising. Redrafting is a critical part of the writing process that allows authors to identify and correct instances of bad writing.

For instance, dialogue can be improved by removing unnecessary dialogue markers, making conversations more natural, and ensuring that character names and their speech reflect their personalities and backgrounds. Descriptions can be refined to ensure they serve the story and aren’t overly detailed. The point of view can be clarified and made consistent throughout the story.

Inconsistent Characterization

Characterization is a vital aspect of both literary works and mainstream novels. However, bad writing often manifests as inconsistent characterization, where the traits, actions, or reactions of the protagonist or other characters don’t align with what has been established earlier in the story. For instance, a character portrayed as shy and introverted suddenly becoming outgoing and gregarious without any plausible explanation or character development can confuse readers and weaken the narrative.

In good writing, characters evolve over time, but such changes are gradual and justified by the plot or their experiences. The names of the characters and their actions should align with their personalities, backgrounds, and the story’s overall context.

Misuse of Common Settings

Another area where bad writing can be evident is in the depiction of common settings, such as a coffee shop or a café. For example, if every significant conversation or revelation in the story occurs in an espresso bar without any compelling reason, it can strain the story’s credibility and become repetitive. Effective writing employs a variety of settings and ensures that the location matches the scene’s tone and significance.

Ineffective Use of Language

Poor writing often includes redundant phrases, incorrect word usage, and convoluted sentence structures, which can distract the reader and interrupt the narrative flow. An essential part of improving writing is honing language skills, choosing the right words for clarity and impact, and maintaining grammatical accuracy.

Overcoming Bad Writing through Redrafting

One of the most reliable ways to address bad writing is through redrafting, rewriting, or revising the text. This process involves examining every aspect of the story, from dialogue and description to character consistency and point of view, and making necessary changes to enhance the writing quality.

Redrafting can also involve replacing overused words with synonyms, improving sentence structure, and eliminating unnecessary details or repetitions. For instance, a dialogue tag like “he said” can often be removed entirely if it’s clear who’s speaking, leading to cleaner, more effective writing.

The Transformational Journey from Draft to Masterpiece

Few writers strike gold with their first drafts; the true magic happens during the revision phase. Revision, or redrafting, is a powerful tool that can elevate a good piece to greatness. It’s the process where we refine our thoughts, improve our arguments, and perfect our language to better connect with readers. An essential aspect of writing, revision can transform a raw manuscript into a polished masterpiece.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Organizing Effective Redrafting:

• Embrace the Pause: Once you’ve completed your initial draft, give yourself permission to take a break. This intentional distancing allows your mind to reset, and when you return, you’ll be equipped with fresh eyes, ready to identify any gaps in information, inconsistencies in the plot or argument, or any parts that may be unclear to your reader.
• Read Aloud:: When you read your work aloud, you engage another sense that helps you perceive your writing from a different perspective. You become the audience, able to pick up on awkward phrasing, clunky sentences, or tonal inconsistencies that might be overlooked when reading silently.
• Involve Others: Enlist the help of a trusted friend, mentor, or editor to review your work. They bring an outsider’s perspective, essential for pinpointing areas that might be confusing or lacking in explanation. This feedback provides a road map for your revisions.
• Revise in Stages: : Attempting to revise everything simultaneously can be daunting. Therefore, break your revision down into manageable stages. Start with the macro level by focusing on the overall content and structure. Once you’re satisfied, dive into the micro level, examining sentence structure, language use, and word choice. Lastly, focus on fine-tuning the grammar and punctuation.
• Sacrifice for the Greater Good: Writers often coin the term “kill your darlings” when talking about beloved but unnecessary portions of their work. It’s vital to stay objective and be willing to cut your favourite sentence or paragraph if it doesn’t contribute to the overall piece.
• Final Sweep – Proofreading: After all the conceptual and structural changes, meticulously scour your work for any overlooked typos, grammatical errors, or punctuation mishaps. These seemingly small mistakes can greatly affect the credibility and impact of your work.
• Iterate and Refine: Remember, good writing is the result of continuous refining. Don’t hesitate to undergo multiple rounds of revisions. With each round, your writing will become more refined, clear, and powerful. This process doesn’t necessarily get easier, but the rewards of a well-crafted piece are worth every revision.

The path to becoming a skilled writer is paved with lessons. Embrace the process of continual learning and improvement. Every story you write is a part of your unique narrative as a writer.

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Why Academic Writing Sucks

Building on pinker's perspective on why academic writing is terrible.

Posted September 30, 2014

I'm not a huge fan of Stephen Pinker's psychology, but he is a solid writer, and I respect his perspective on many subjects. So when he wrote a Chronicle article on " Why Academics Stink at Writing " I took notice. The article starts by considering, and rejecting several suggestions for why academic writing is so bad:

• Bad writing is there deliberately, to stop normal people from realizing scholars are talking about nothing.
• Bad writing cannot be avoided, because the topics of discussion are so complex.
• Bad writing is virtually required by reviewers and editors, who will not accept papers written in more straightforward manners.

These things happen, but apply to a very small percentage of published work, Pinker claims. Instead, Pinker suggests that academic writing is bad because it tries to mix writing styles, and authors become muddled about the audience and its desires. As he puts it:

Most academic writing, in contrast, is a blend of two styles. The first is practical style, in which the writer’s goal is to satisfy a reader’s need for a particular kind of information, and the form of the communication falls into a fixed template, such as the five-paragraph student essay or the standardized structure of a scientific article. The second is a style that Thomas and Turner call self-conscious, relativistic, ironic, or postmodern, in which "the writer’s chief, if unstated, concern is to escape being convicted of philosophical naïveté about his own enterprise."

With this perspective in mind, Pinker argues that much bad writing in academia is the result of "agonizing self-consciousness". This leads to too much meta-discussion, and leads academics to lose the balance between their role as communicators of knowledge vs. their role as members of a profession with its own internal norms and mores. There are many good criticisms of common phrases used by academics, which weaken their writing, and bad habits, such as the misuse of scare quotes. He goes on to talk about how certain cognitive processes (chunking, functional fixity, and the curse of knowledge) make it hard for authors to realize what will make sense to their readers. And he ends with a discussion about how few obvious incentives there are for academics to write well. For the most part I nodded in agreement, and thought about making some minor tweaks to a few papers that are in the pipeline. However, there were two points that made me uneasy.

First, Pinker criticizes "apologizing", such as when authors say that the topics they are about to write on are "extremely complex." I can see how this can be inappropriate in some circumstances, but I think the audience needs to be considered. Many of the things I write about are not subjects that others think about much, and when others do think about those subjects, they tend to think things are very simple. In that context, when I use the language Pinker is criticizing, it is because I am informing the reader that their initial views might be mistaken. For example, the types of psychological questions you can ask using a rat, in a box with a level and a few lights, are quite complex. Many psychology students and even many psychology professors (nevertheless members of the general public) do not believe that assertion, until they have learned quite a bit about the amazing studies that people have done.

Second, Pinker criticizes authors who "hedge" their statements, rather than relying on the reader to be charitable. This criticism baffled me. Certainly it is possible to over-hedge, but Pinker lives in a world full of non-charitable readers. I cannot understand his position except as a weird statement of elitism: He is too influential to be taken down by minor nit-picking, so he assumes all academics have the luxury of ignoring it as well. In my world, there is a big difference between making a claim such as "Perception is accurate" and saying "For the most part, perception is accurate." Depending on the context, a paper could easily get rejected for the hedged sentence, or get rejected for the non-hedged sentence. --- In fairness, Pinker acknowledges that some hedging may be necessary, but argues that skilled writers use it cautiously, rather than as a "tick." Alas, I'm not sure that hedge is sufficient to convey the reality; most academic authors face extremely ungenerous gatekeepers.

It is also interesting to note how often Pinker cannot resist the urge to be clever, inserting semi-jokes, at the expense of clarity. I do that too, but I am not sure I would do it so much in a piece specifically about clear writing. It makes his article half-way between something amazingly clear, like Elements of Style, and joking self-aware rule lists, with entries such as "Preposition are not things to end a sentence with."

Overall, however, very good, and recommended reading.

Eric Charles, Ph.D., runs the research lab at CTRL, the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning, at American University.

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8 Bold Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Writing

by Sarah Gribble | 0 comments

Free Book Planning Course!  Sign up for our 3-part book planning course and make your book writing easy . It expires soon, though, so don’t wait.  Sign up here before the deadline!

Today I want to talk about fear. Fear of writing, fear of sharing your work, fear of publishing—and how you can overcome it.

Writers face fear on a day-to-day basis.

The self-doubt . The fear of failure. And, oh, the vulnerability.

Writing is hard enough with all the self-evaluation and doubt about your abilities. But then sharing your work with other people so they can critique or review it? CRINGE.

When you sink into that fear it debilitates you. If you let fear hold you back, you’re ensuring you never achieve your goals. You’ll never write that book and you’ll never get published. All because you were too scared.

8 Ways to Overcome Your Fear of Writing

It’s time to stop letting fear control you and get writing. Here’s how:

1. Do what scares you.

When you’re up against something that makes you cringe, ask yourself what the worst-case scenario is. Is it actually  harmful? Unless it’s something like jumping from a bridge into a rocky river or stepping in front of a speeding vehicle, it’s probably not.

Fear is trying to keep you safe. It needs to learn that just because something is scary doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s detrimental to your health. Do what scares you, and keep doing it, and the fear will subside.

This includes fear of our own writing. I'm not saying you have to go write a 90,000 word novel. Start with a short story, or try out some writing prompts.

Aspiring writers might feel intiimdated because they don't think that they are a great writer. The reality is, you can never become a great writer unless you practice—and to practice, you have to write.

Embrace and overcome your fear by putting words down. Start writing, have patience with yourself, and worry about the rest later.

The blank page becomes way less scary as soon as you put words on it.

2. Stop procrastinating.

Your house is already clean enough. That TV show can wait. No, you don’t need to run to the store to pick up a bag of chips.

Figure out when the best time for you to write is and then write.

If you really, truly need a break to clear your mind, set a time limit. Ten minutes of scrubbing the grout with a toothbrush and then get back to your writing.

Ultimately, those who procrastinate will be more prone to writing off procrastination as writer's block—and the more time you spend away from writing, the scary it will become.

3. Learn from criticism.

Criticism is what everyone fears. Not just in writing, but in life. We all want to be liked, to be perfect, to be praised.

Your writing will not please everyone and that’s something you should realize and accept now. Criticism is much easier to take when you go into it knowing that fact.

Don’t just ignore criticism, though. Writing is like everything else in that it requires practice. You don't have to rank #1 on Amazon or make a bestseller list your first go (even though I won't argue that would be fantastic).

The first meal you cooked wasn’t a gourmet meal. The first time you dribbled a basketball wasn’t Lebron-level. Someone was there to point out what you were doing wrong and set you on the right path. They taught you how to get better.

That’s what criticism is: teaching.

It's not  rejecting your work, which might be why some writers fail to share their work: because their fear of rejection is mistakenly associated with getting critiques.

Yes, sometimes it’s mean-spirited, especially in this age of internet trolls. But even in those nasty reviews, there’s normally something to learn from.

Find it. Use it. And do better next time.

4. Stop revising.

You want every sentence in your work to be perfect . I have a secret for you: you’ll never get there.

Your writing will never be perfect. 

Not to you, not to your editors, and not to your readers. It’s impossible, so stop revising ad nauseam. At some point, you have to let it go and put the work out there.

Perfectionism can stunt your creative writing instead of empower it.

To avoid this, set a limit. I prefer three drafts. That’s it. Three and then I let it fly on its own.

What are you writing for? We'll never know unless you decide to share your work.

5. Set goals and move toward them.

Focus on milestones like daily word counts and deadlines (self-imposed or otherwise).

Writing a book is like summiting a mountain: you do it  one step at a time . When you reach the top you might be a little exhausted and out of breath, but you’ll look back at all you’ve accomplished and feel proud.

Without these smaller milestones, it might be hard to finish your piece of writing, or even find the motivation to keep writing each day.

Stories are finished one day at a time, with hard work and a desire to grow your writing process.

Don't sweat the small stuff in your first drafts, like word choice. Instead, set a long term goal of continually learning how to write better and smaller milestones that will help you finish stories you start.

All of this is accomplished word by word, and by turning real and irrational fears into manageable tasks.

6. Embrace the fear of writing.

You’re going to be scared frequently in this business. My stomach still flips every time I submit a short story , even though I’ve submitted hundreds of times. It’s going to happen.

The trick is to acknowledge it and move forward. It didn’t kill you.

In fact, that little tingle of fear should be your signal to celebrate. You did what scared you and that’s amazing.

One book that a lot of writers really love on this subject is The War of Art  by Steven Pressfield. If you're feeling discouraged or swallowed by your fear, check out this book for some motivation.

Even better, find and join a writing group like we have here at The Write Practice. Nothing helps you overcome your fears like a supportive community with a kindred creative spirit.

7. If your character can do it, so can you.

You don’t let your characters sit back on their heels because they’re scared, do you? I hope not, because if you do, you don’t have a story .

Your characters don’t have the luxury of sitting on the bench. They must make decisions and do something about the problem. And so should you.

Don’t let fear of writing take over your writing life. Decide to move forward, to write that book, to send out that manuscript. Decide and then do it.

8. Ask for help if you need it.

Don’t be afraid to ask for time to yourself so that you can write. Your family and friends will understand you need that time because writing is important to you.

Find a group of writers and readers that can go through your story and give constructive feedback. You can't improve in a vacuum.

Need to know what a day in the life of a flight attendant looks like, or the lingo of a truck driver? Ask them. Trust me, you’re not bothering them. People love talking about themselves.

In the same vein, if you need help with research, that’s literally what librarians are for. They’ll be glad to help.

Don’t let fear of asking for help stagnate your writing.

Embrace the Fear

I want to leave you with these words from Carrie Fisher:

Your fears are natural and normal. They're also not the end of the story.

Your task, the challenge for every writer, is to face that fear of writing, acknowledge it, and write, share, publish anyway .

Need extra motivation? Have you checked out The Write Practice’s 100 Day Book program ? It’s the best way to stop letting fear of writing control you and get that book done. Click here to find more information on the course.

What scares you most about writing and/or the business side of writing? What are some steps you can take to overcome that fear?  Let me know in the comments !

Today I want you to spend fifteen minutes writing about a time you were scared to do something but did it anyway. Describe the exact feelings of fear you had. How did you feel after you'd done what scared you?

When you’re finished, share your work in the Pro Practice Workshop here (and if you’re not a member yet, you can join here ).

Sarah Gribble

Sarah Gribble is the author of dozens of short stories that explore uncomfortable situations, basic fears, and the general awe and fascination of the unknown. She just released Surviving Death , her first novel, and is currently working on her next book.

Follow her on Instagram or join her email list for free scares.

Work with Sarah Gribble?

Bestselling author with over five years of coaching experience. Sarah Gribble specializes in working with Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, Horror, Speculative Fiction, and Thriller books. Sound like a good fit for you?

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Why Is My Writing So Bad? 4 Causes and Solutions

You may have written your first draft of a story or novel and have to face the fact that you feel your writing is, in fact, bad. You had such great ideas, but your draft was far from what you imagined when you tried to put them in writing . You might ask yourself why your writing is so bad when you have so many great ideas.

Your writing may be bad because you may have neglected to learn the ins and outs of the writing craft. You tried so hard to be writerly that you bogged your story down in superfluous details, and you indulged in cliches. Most lousy writing also shows a lack of proper editing. 

Don’t be discouraged if you feel your writing is terrible. You can learn to improve your craft. Below are some of the leading causes of poor writing and some solutions to this dilemma. 

1. You Haven’t Done Your Homework

It’s a popular misconception in the non-writing world that anyone who can speak a fluent language and type can easily be an author. You could look at writing like taking up the violin; just because you can hold a bow and move your arm doesn’t make a maestro. If you’re serious about improving your writing and writing well, you need to put in the time and dedication.

It would be best if you had some understanding of the inner workings of the writing craft before you expect your prose to shine. You don’t need to join expensive writing courses or have a college degree (although this may help.) Much of the craft of wiring can be self-taught by reading extensively and learning from the masters who came before you. 

• Read books on the craft of writing voraciously and learn from some of the greats.
• Read extensively from the classic and modern masterpieces, first for pleasure and then with a pencil and a critical eye in how the novels achieved their fame. 
• Short story writing and poetry are a great warm-up to your potential novel and teach you much of the art of expression and characterization in an intensive form. 
• Learn the art of editing your work and rewriting, as even great authors aren’t always brilliant in their first drafts of writing. 

2. You’re Trying Too Hard

Often newbie writers fall into the trap of trying to be ‘writerly’ and bog down their prose with adjectives and archaisms. When you’re overly conscious of your writing , the result is often stilted.

For instance, if Larry walked up the hill, let Larry walk up the hill, for Pete’s sake! Don’t let Harry ‘perambulate peripatetically; his bony shoulders slumped o’er the graveled turf.’

There’s a place for more flowery prose in the parts of your story that are pivotal, and you need to draw the reader in for a closer look. But if you let your writing become a showpiece for your extensive descriptive vocabulary, you might just end up losing your readers. Ultimately, your focus should arguably be on the story, not on your masterful writing skills.

Solution 

• When you find yourself in love with your erudite turn of phrase, kill your darlings. Your reader wants to experience the story, not a showcase of your writing ability. 
• Don’t bog your writing down with superfluous descriptions and asides, and allow your story to move. 
• Watch out for adjectives and adverbs in your writing , as they can be hallmarks of lazy and cluttered writing.

3. You’re Indulging in Cliches

Cliches can bog down prose like a ton of bricks (see what I mean?). When writers indulge in often said prosaic cliches, they lose the readers’ interest. After all, readers seek new and fresh experiences hungrily and are soon put off by reading tired and often used sayings. 

You should be constantly aware of cliches in your writing, and instead of using tired old adages, you should use the opportunity to make your writing fresh and original. So instead of ‘he punched him so hard he saw stars, why not ‘he punched him so hard his brain flared up like the fourth of July’? Okay, that’s awful, but you get my gist. 

Cliches don’t just exist on the sentence level. Your storyline and characters can also be cliche. The dark and brooding ex-policeman carrying a torch for his ex-wife and the blonde vixen with breasts straining against her shirt is done to death. The bad boy who changes his ways for the pretty and intelligent girl next door STOP!

To make engaging stories with characters that a reader falls in love (or hate) with, you need to find original ways of expression. You can’t out-Anne Rice Anne Rice, no matter if you call your vampire Rudolf instead of Lestat. Use your life experiences to create something new and engaging.

• Try and avoid cliches in your writing as they make your text unengaging and bore your readers.
• Don’t follow too closely on often repeated plotlines, especially in genre fiction.
• Make well-rounded and conflicted characters and stay away from two-dimensional archetypes. Each villain should be a bit of a saint and vice versa.
• Try and create your own engaging and original analogies whenever you come across ‘like…” in your writing.

4. You’re Not Taking the Time To Edit Your Work Properly

Stephen King uses a 10 percent rule when he edits his work. After each spell at writing, he lets his writing sit for a day or two and then takes out at least 10 percent of his written draft. You’d be surprised at how many famous writers’ first drafts are actually fairly awful until they edit and rewrite their prose into a fine sheen. 

It would be best if you were quite ruthless with your writing when you turn to it with an editor’s eye. If it’s not paying rent, it’s got to go. Any writing, no matter how well written, has no place in your story unless it drives the action and serves a purpose. 

Many experts agree that Gordon Lish created Raymond Carver’s success by his ruthless editing of Craver’s work. There’s no doubt that Carver was a great talent , but Lish put Carver’s writing on the map and secured his place as a literary giant. If you haven’t discovered the wonders of Carver, I highly suggest you read his masterful art of fiction . ( https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3059/the-art-of-fiction-no-76-raymond-carver )  

• The editing process can turn your prose from a frog to a prince. By eliminating all the prose that weighs your story down, you can breathe life into your work. 
• Don’t be afraid of a mediocre to bad first draft. The first draft is where you let your imagination run wild, and you leave your inner critic picking his nose somewhere. 

There are some great books on the editing process to learn to refine and rewrite your own work. Here are a few I found really helpful on Amazon:

• Renni Brown & Dave King: Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
• Brandon Royal: The Little Red Writing Book
• Stephen King: On Writing
• James Scott Bell: Revision and Self-Editing for Publication

Don’t be too hard on yourself if your writing seems terrible. Recognizing that you need to improve your writing is the first step on your journey to becoming the writer that you want to be. Remember that a writer who doesn’t write a word is far worse off than a bad writer on the road towards improvement . 

And try to have fun! 🙂 Ask some friends for feedback on your work. Maybe your writing is brilliant and you just don’t realise it. A helpful and positive writer’s community can make the lonely times and the doubt much more fun!

• Writing cooperative: Use Stephen King’s 10% Rule to Have a Sharply Edited Piece .