Step 2: Lose the assignment sheets 10 minutes later.
Step 3: Forget about the assignments for several weeks.
Step 4: Realise that the essays are all due in a week.
Step 5: Panic.
Step 6: Begin carrying a stack of research materials with you everywhere you go. Read while eating, while sitting around, and in the loo.
Step 7: Don't tell anyone about reading in the loo.
Step 8: Do the fun paper first.
Step 9: Decide to leave the hardest paper until last.
Step 10: Flip a coin to decide the order of the next two papers. Finish the second one.
Step 11: Finish the third paper. Forget to save it.
Step 12: Finally start on the hard paper. Realise it wasn't as hard as you thought it would be. Feel silly.
Step 13: Finish the hard paper. Celebrate by dancing round the living room.
Step 14: Realise that paper #3 is lost to you.
Step 15 (Optional, depending on time pressures): Throw an adult temper tantrum.
Step 16: Summon the muse to rewrite paper #3.Step 17: Realise the muse, thinking that she was finished, has already departed for the muse equivalent of a week in Malibu.
Step 18: Rewrite paper #3, despairing that it is not as good as it was last time.
Step 19: Turn in all four papers. Start interviewing new muses.
Step 20: Recover with food or drink of your choice. (Chocolate frozen yogurt, if you're me.)
So, that was my week in writing! Of course, I left out the part about having to miss the last day of my two rhetoric classes that I really love, and then sending a mea culpa email to my instructor. But hey, it's done! One final left and that's the game on my first year at UT.
Is your essay-writing (or anything-writing) style similar to mine? What do you do when your muse skips town? Do you have any chocolate frozen yogurt?
6 comments:
In college I was a master at really stretching out my point and tackling it from various angels - but in a way that you couldn't quickly discern what I was doing. bwhaha!
Is there another way of doing it? ;)
This is perfect! So true. I remember writing papers by writing an outline and then beefing it out. I would SOMETIMES write an outline, then REFERENCE it, then fill in the words. I got worse and worse as I went. I became really burned out on school and finally just wrote papers the night before they were due with a stack of reference books next to me with (hopefully) good indexes. Whew. Thanks for reminding me that I DO NOT want to do that again if I can help it! :)
Andrea
I was talking about outlining with a girl at the writing center today-- she had come in for a consultation & her instructor encouraged her to "reverse outline" her paper, that is, write an outline after it's written to help with organization, backing up the thesis, etc. I told her about how I'm hopeless at outlining & can't possibly do an outline before; I only do them after writing. The best way for me to write is to just start! But that's no good when I'm procrastinating.
I wish I'd have had those tips a month earlier. Now I'm almost done with my last out of four.
But thanks for next time. I'm glad that my panicking in between was appropriate after all.
Nahno
Hee! I wish I'd had these tips a month earlier... I might have avoided a few steps! Especially the "not saving" one!
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