Make yourself accountable
Set a writing deadline (aside from the paper’s due date) on your own by simply making an appointment during the Writing Center or telling your TA (or an old TA) that you’re going to provide them with a draft on such-and-such a date. In the event that you create your Writing Center appointment for a number of days before the paper is due, you might be motivated to own a draft finished, in order to make the appointment worthwhile.
Maintaining your work (books, notes, articles, etc.) physically out, in full view, provides you with a reminder that you have been in the center of the paper, or you need to start. Also, it can be helpful to leave off in the middle of a paragraph and leave your ‘tools’ where they are if you write in more than one shift. Whenever you return to the paper, you’ll be able to “warm up” by finishing that paragraph. Starting a section that is new may be more difficult.
Work on improving your writing whenever you don’t have a deadline
Investigate your writing process. To begin with, may very well not think you’ve got a plain thing called a “writing process.” You do—everyone does. Describe your writing process in more detail.
When you can easily see your writing process, then you are able to a choice to change it. But go on it easy with this—only focus on one part at the same time. Otherwise, you’ll get overwhelmed and frustrated—and we all know essay writers where that leads, straight down the procrastination road.
If you aren’t ready to evaluate your writing process completely (and it’s okay in the event that you aren’t), then you might try just listing your strengths and weaknesses as a writer. As an example, maybe you are great at creating thesis statements, you have trouble arguments that are developing. Or, your papers are particularly well-organized, but your argument and thesis tend to fall just a little flat. Identifying these problems will allow you to do a couple of things: 1) When you write, you can play to your strength; and 2) you are able to choose one weakness and make a move about it whenever you DON’T have a deadline.
Now, doing anything once you don’t have a deadline may sound strange to a procrastinator, but bear beside me. Let’s say you’ve decided that your particular writing is just too wordy, and also you desire to work on being more concise. So, a while when you don’t have a paper—but you do have a free hour—you waltz into the Writing Center and inform your tutor, “Hey, I want learn to write more clearly.” You confer, and you come away with a few simple techniques for eliminating wordiness.
Let me reveal why this might make a difference the next time you write a paper, whether or not or not you’ve got procrastinated (again!): You print out your draft. It’s 1 a.m. You go to bed. The next morning, you read over your paper (it’s due at noon). You say to yourself, “Hmmm, I notice I’m being too wordy.” BUT, rather than concluding, “Oh, well, it is too late, there isn’t anything i could do about that,” (as you may have in the past), you are able to choose to employ several of everything you learned (previously, when you weren’t beneath the gun) which will make your writing more concise. You edit the paper accordingly. It is turned by you in.
If your instructor hands the papers back the week that is following there are far fewer cases of “awkward,” “unclear,” etc. in the margins. Voila! You’ve made a positive improvement in your writing process!
What does this have to do with procrastination? Well, making one change that is small your writing process creates momentum. You start to feel more positive about your writing. You begin to be less intimidated by writing assignments. And—eventually—you start them earlier, since they just aren’t as big a deal while they used to be.
Evaluating the strengths and weaknesses in your writing gives you a sense of control. Your writing problems are solvable problems. Taking care of your writing once you don’t have a deadline makes it possible to gain momentum and insight. Soon, writing becomes something which, while you may not look forward to it, you don’t dread quite just as much. Thus, you don’t procrastinate quite as much.
This strategy also makes up the reality that in the past, you aren’t going to give it up right away if you perceive procrastination as having been successful for you
Hone your editing and proofreading skills
Because you don’t like to re-read what you have written, the good news is this: you can learn specific proofreading, revising, and editing strategies if you procrastinate on writing. Like it, you have options if you finish your paper ahead of time, and you re-read it, and you don’t. Writing a primary draft that you don’t like doesn’t mean you’re a terrible writer. Many writers—in fact, i might venture to state most—hate their drafts that are first. Neither Leo Tolstoy nor Toni Morrison d that is produce( brilliant prose the first time around. In reality, Morrison (a big fan of revision) said recently that you don’t have to love your writing just because you wrote it! You may feel more comfortable with the idea of re-reading your papers if you practice some revision and editing strategies. You’ll know that you will), you can do something to improve those areas if you find weaknesses in the draft (and.
Among the best methods to combat procrastination would be to develop a more understanding that is realistic of. Procrastinators’ views of time tend to be fairly unrealistic. “This paper will simply take me about five hours to write,” you believe. “Therefore, I don’t need to start upon it until the night before.” What you may be forgetting, however, is the fact that our time is often filled with more activities than we realize. On the night in question, by way of example, let’s say pay a visit to the fitness center at 4:45 p.m. You work out (1 hour), take a shower and dress (30 minutes), eat dinner (45 minutes), and head to a sorority meeting (1 hour). By the time you get back into your dorm room to begin work on the paper, it is already 8:00 p.m. However now you’ll want to check your email and return a couple of telephone calls. It’s 8:30 p.m. before you finally take a seat to publish the paper. In the event that paper does indeed take five hours to publish, you will be up until 1:30 in the morning—and that doesn’t through the time that you’ll inevitably spend TV that is watching.
And, because it ends up, it requires about five hours to write an initial draft associated with the essay. You have got forgotten to allow time for revision, editing, and proofreading. You get the paper done and change it within the next morning. You know it really isn’t your best work, and you are clearly pretty tired from the late night, and that means you make yourself a promise: “Next time, I’ll start early!”