About My Writing Style...

[IceChateau777]

I personally feel that the quality of my writing needs work; all of it does. Sometimes, when I write certain things, such as a research paper or any academic topic, I sometimes experience confusion and trouble associated with overthinking, stress, and procrastination. I want to reserve my temperance, in light of my assignments. I want to keep unity and coherence in my writing. Unfortunately, I tend to go off on unnecessary tangents, which can further confuse my readers.

Why is academic writing difficult for me?
Although creative writing is awesome, academic writing seems hard.

Can you give me any suggestions?

 

[Fluffy]

Academic writing can be stressful, I totally understand. I actually developed a whole different writing style for my college papers when I was attending. Instructors always complimented me on how "scientific" my voice sounded, whatever that's supposed to mean.

Anyway, I totally love writing essays and research papers. >___>; I can say from personal experience that taking breaks helps a lot with the procrastination and panic. Take about twenty minutes in between writing sessions to take a walk, sip some tea or coffee--whatever settles your nerves. Be disciplined. Set a timer and promise yourself you'll get back to work in X amount of time.

If you find that simply starting the process is difficult, give a diagram a try. Collect all your ideas into whatever organizational format works for you. A list, a venn diagram, a flow chart--the possibilities go on. :] Talking out loud helps, too, I find. No one knows your thoughts better than yourself, after all. (And talking to oneself can be therapeutic.) Of course, friends can help too, if you have one willing to listen and maybe even comment. This would totally help you catch any areas where you go off on those aforementioned tangents.

I also find first drafts very useful. It's like writing out your thoughts on the paper, no matter how jumbled they may seem. Take another break, then go back to read it, but try to read it from the perspective of a reader. Do any questions come to mind when you come to a certain sentence or paragraph? If so, write the question(s) down and research your answer(s), then you have more content for your paper. This also lets you catch any typos, grammatical errors, or mistakes in your sources. Once that's all read through, you can make your edits for a second or final draft.

Perhaps music? Music can be helpful with focus, and might inspire ideas.

Not sure if any of that will be of use to you. Thought I'd at least try, though. :] Feel free to hassle me via PMs if ever you'd like more advice, or maybe even someone to bounce ideas off of. I wish you luck in all your improvements, and whatever academic goals you have!

 

[Space Cowboy]

Write immediately.

As soon as you get the assignment, write! Write the damn thing! Even if you're not quite sure where you're going, write something. That helps with writer's block, too.

Also, revise. Revision, revision, revision! Always revise, always have a new draft!


That's all I got for ya.

 

[Kagayours]

Writing out-of-order helps, too. No one said you have to start with the introduction and write every body paragraph in-order. In fact, usually when I write academic papers, I start out with a very loose outline of what I want to talk about, and then start with whatever body paragraph I can manage to write about, and just jump around from there. After I've gotten a good chunk of it written, I often find myself splitting up or combining body paragraphs as well as re-ordering them as I think of better ways to organize my paper and think more about which areas I should focus more on.

Basically what I'm saying is: don't think too much about how to organize your paper and what you should and shouldn't include -- at first, anyway. To start, just write everything that seems important. You can cut out other things later as you realize they aren't important or don't really fit into your paper. But if you just wanna get words down on the page, just write whatever you're most motivated to write and work around from there. Works well for me.

 

[Adelaide]

I very rarely start with my thesis statement when writing academically. I sort of start in the middle and build outwards and then when I've vomited a bunch of quotes and points on the page I figure out what I was going on about and clean it all up. Only then do I make my introduction and conclusion paragraphs. So far, so good (4.0 four semesters running!). I do occasionally employ an outline or something as others have said. Writing in order is rather over-rated. Breaks are good too and procrastinating is bad!

 

[IceChateau777]

I would write out snippets of things that I want to add. These snippets remind me of trailers because of the way they might appear in the piece. One thing that messes me up is the order to write a paper. I have yet to begin on section 1 of my research paper. Academic papers look fun to write, but it takes me longer than everyone else.

I might use the suggested methods. It makes more sense to write out the good stuff.