Writing Tip: Break it Up!

This concept applies to much of life, but it certainly applies to writing.  Whenever you have a large project like a term paper, you want to break it up into manageable chunks.  Now I like to take each clump and write it on a to-do list, so I commit myself to following through with each step of the process.  This is good for time management and organization.

The following "clumps" are the steps I've taken when writing term papers.

When I had a research project, my first step was to choose a general topic I wanted to study further.  Then I gathered all of the resources I could find:  Google or Google Scholar, my school's online library resources, and Amazon are all great ways to see what's out there.

Before I could write a word, I needed to see what was already written.  Remember:  good papers are like conversations.  You want to learn about what's being said and prepare to enter the conversation with your own ideas and perspectives.  Research is the essential first step of that process.

I should add a few things about research here:  Expect to do more research later.  You'll get to a point while you're writing where you'll realize you don't know as much about a topic as you should.  The flipside of this is that you can't possibly read everything that's ever been written on a subject.  Eventually, you'll have to stop reading and start writing.  This is the part I've always struggled with the most--and continue to do so.

After I concluded my research, I looked for "a way in."  I looked for an angle that's never been taken before.  A "new"way of looking at a work of literature (or whatever I'm researching).  This is what scholarship is all about.  This is how we add to the "conversation."

Once I figured out my angle, I built off of the previous "conversations."  Those made up my citations and paraphrases.  The rest of the paper essentially "wrote itself."  I had a foundation and a direction in which I wanted the paper to go.  It was just a matter of getting it there.

In short, manageable clumps make large projects much less painful.