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• Feelings of anxiety come up when you are about to start writing: fear of an empty page or screen.

• You experience bouts of lack of concentration, or your thoughts seem to melt away just when you are about to start writing them down.
• Your text is nothing but a collection of quotes and paraphrases, not expressing any thoughts of your own.
• You start over and over, but can’t seem to get past the first couple of pages.
• You procrastinate when you have a writing assignment to the point that you can only get the text written in marathon sessions, leaving no time for careful revision.
• You regularly eat into the time you had set aside to work on an assignment, engaging in lengthy avoidance or doing other things. One popular avoidance strategy is tidying up your room or apartment instead of organizing your thoughts.
• You let the deadline pass without really having started and then blame yourself for failing.
• You don’t give your texts to anyone to read, or you finish a text but don’t submit it for fear of failing and exposing yourself as incompetent.
• You are unable to turn in completed papers (out of fear and a sense of shame).

  
  

• Prevention is best, of course. Don’t assume you have to be able to write academic work right when you start out as a student. As you plan your studies, remember that you will need time to learn this skill as you go along.

• You need a routine. You should regularly formulate your thoughts on your subject: Keep a scholarly or scientific journal or log where you write a couple of things each day about what you have learned, heard, discussed, or thought that day about something related to your discipline.

• Don’t hide what you have written. Find a fellow student with whom you can swap drafts and texts on a regular basis. Take notes on individual seminars and exercises and discuss them. Be sure to talk about what aspects of writing are hard for you.
• Before you start writing a paper, clarify the key points: How long is it supposed to be? When do you have to turn it in? What are you supposed to learn as you write the paper, and what do you need to show in your work? Do you have a specific rubric to work from, or are you supposed to come up with a topic on your own? What formal rules and standards do you need to bear in mind? How is your work going to be discussed?
• Identify the specific topic, objective, and method for your work in detail. Write up a synopsis and talk about it – including with your advisor.
• Identify your goals for the assignment. What do you want to express? Do you have specific content you want to cover? What do you personally want to achieve or prove with this paper?
• Plan your work carefully and review your schedule. Will you be able to keep to it? If not, adjust your plans and goals to reflect reality.
• Whenever you read, be sure to take specific notes geared toward your topic. Always write down your thoughts and assumptions about a subject before you start reading the secondary literature.
• Don’t be put off by feelings of discomfort when writing. Try to identify the source of the feelings. Are you unhappy with the structure of your work? Is the objective unclear? Are there problems with the content? Take your feelings as an indication that you need to sort and consider your thoughts. Talk to others about the parts of your text that are causing issues. Get feedback on certain phrasings. This will inevitably bring you back around to your questions relating to the content.

• Ask your teachers for feedback and insist on discussing specifics of your project and the finished paper. You can only learn from criticism if you understand the reason behind it.

The Workshops and advising section presents points of contact where you can turn whenever you want personal advice and support, along with our workshop program, which can help you tackle specific issues.