It’s a problem we’ve all encountered, even before university. It’s both an analogue and digital problem, plaguing almost all forms of assessment and creative exercise. It’s also the problem I faced until a couple of lines ago. The wall of white, the clean page, the eerie lack of typing or writing sounds. It’s hard enough to get past the wall now, without the pressure of a qualification relying on those words. How on earth are we meant to do this with that pressure?
The answer, at least as far as I’ve found, is at once simple yet frustratingly difficult. Easy to say but hard to do, everybody’s favourite combination of things (not).
Having fallen victim to this problem many times in the past, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to think it over. In fact, I had so much opportunity to think about it, I realised that there is the first issue – thinking about the seemingly insurmountable task ahead of you makes it all the more insurmountable. When I say ‘thinking’, I really mean ‘worrying’, but in this case they generally seem to mean the same thing. It’s an issue of mentality. If a sprinter stepped onto the track thinking there was no way on earth they could ever outrun their opponents, then they’d probably be right. You may have seen or heard a quote attributed to Henry Ford (though the general idea has been expressed many times by figures as early as the ancient Roman poet Virgil) – ‘Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right’. The quote has remained so prevalent because it highlights the power of mentality. As with any other challenge, the first step to succeeding is to realise success is attainable.
Of course, those are just words, and words are meaningless without actions to match them. Fortunately, there are ways to make actions easier to complete, particularly for common tasks such as coursework essays. A detailed plan always helps, taking into account both what you want to say and the situation you have to say it in. You probably know that time management is a valuable skill to learn so you can work at a good rate yet having a handle on time is little help if you can’t decide what to write. If you’re like me, you’ve approached an essay (especially a coursework essay) with far too many ideas to fit into the word count, and you want to write about them all. Or perhaps (my other big issue) you have two different ideas that you really like but are near-impossible to connect in any meaningful way. Struggling with issues like these makes getting anything down on the page difficult, which is why you need to learn to be brutal with your own ideas. After all, an essay isn’t intended to be an exhibition of absolutely everything you know and think about a topic – you need to be able to cut your own ideas from the rabble of disconnected noise to a refined set of ideas that link nicely together.
I suppose the biggest enemy present in the blank page is misguided self-criticism. The blinking cursor on the screen reminds us of the task whilst exaggerating its difficulty – rather than sorting through our thoughts with a fair critical perspective, we end up criticising our inability to get anything down. Here’s where I’ve found the ‘first draft’ attitude quite helpful. I’ve found it common that people don’t like changing something they’ve created – we’ve all received bad feedback that we’ve been tempted to throw back in whoever’s face in rejection. To help fix this, I’ve started to accept the need for change before I’ve even begun, and as I write I acknowledge that everything I’m writing is a first draft, and it all might be totally different by the end. It sounds simple, yet the most important part of the beginning of any task is starting it – to get anywhere with an essay, you need to get your ideas down. Your first draft might be terrible (mine usually are), however by writing it you’ve not only abolished that imposing blank page, but you’ve made progress on your task. Who knows, the skeleton of your first draft may end up in your final essay.
Sadly, essays will always be essays, and they’ll always be significant challenges to overcome. However, by allowing your mentality to shift a little bit, you can take some of the edge off the task and handle the stress of the deadline more easily. Good luck with those essays!