#not to geek out and go full english major but i miss writing argumentative essays

[lesbianfreyja]

hey do u have any ways u force urself to write. i need to write this fucking faulkner paper and like ik i can and itll be good once i do it i just need to Do It its already like 900 years late. im loving yahfhskjd law so so so so much btw i rlly love ur characterization for den and the whole fic is just so endearing and enjoyable like theres heaviness to it but its not like overbearingly angsty and its just rlly fun to read

i have some advice but it might not be universal or healthy (lol) and it differs heavily based on what i’m writing

fic writing is for fun, and that’s why i try to remember when i’m doing it. sometimes it becomes obsessive (because i have ocd, and because i love validation, and that’s quite the line to tread lmao) but ultimately i do it because i love it/i have shit to say/stories drum in my fingers until i get them out, even if it takes time. i’m glad you love it!!!! if people didn’t i’d get demoralized way more often! with fic writing, usually i can’t force myself to do anything until i know the basics of what i want down - right now i’m stuck on a scene b/t charlie and mac because i know what i want them to get out of it, but i have no idea what the outside context of the overall conversation will be. usually in that case, i just have to wait it out.

inspo will come to me when it comes, maybe from binge watching the show, maybe from watching smth else, maybe from a convo i have irl or a dream or what have you. in the meantime i write as much around it as i possibly can. i’ve currently written every single scene for the next chapter that either came easily or at least didn’t come extremely difficultly, and once i have part of a scene down i usually let the characters’ voices follow me through the rest of it…sometimes you just have to let them run free. writing fic for me is often a solid push and pull of me nudging the characters down the path i want them to take, but mostly i just sit there and imagine them talking, and see what they say. i have to parse apart exactly how i think they’d say it, but i can get a fair amount of their tone and message just from listening to them have the convo in my head. not to be extremely embarrassing on main but when i was obsessed with twilight, stephenie meyer basically said this in her faq and it really resonated with me lmao. this applies to original fiction btw too. that’s why its often easy to finish a scene once i’ve begun it, if i can get a piece of the convo than usually i can build outward - give me a snippet of a convo and i can begin to see their location, what started this convo, and their motivations. i’ll have to trim it down to fit their tone/how often they lie/how difficult they find it to express themselves later, but after i get it all out, it’s easier to cut away the ooc parts until you’re left with glances to convey what used to be a paragraph and what have you

can’t write a sex scene? have a drink or two and write it all spelling errors and all, it’s usually way dirtier than i intended too but you can clean ALL that up and make it in-character in editing

academic writing was never nearly as difficult for me, especially once i got to college. pretty much everyone i know used adderall to write essays, and i sat down a few times expecting to do that myself, but i ultimately never ended up needing it. in high school i was smart enough to more or less make shit up to get through it (i always say the only thing i learned in high school is how to bullshit effectively) but in college you get to pick your research topics, or they’ll hand you a book and tell you to pick whatever part of it you want to write about, so i usually latched on to one snippet of interest and expanded from there (many of my essays were about how the characters were secretly gay or more or less feminist than they should be, as you can imagine)

i was never much for formal outlines, and i DON’T subscribe to the 5 paragraph essay format, but i usually made a basic outline in my notebook so i’d remember to hit all the points i wanted to make/be able to steer myself back on course when i started rambling abt something. usually i have an overarching point, and like 2 supporting arguments that i go into HEAVY detail about and probably have some supporting arguments about them within themselves. make an outline that lists your thesis and your 2 or 3 main points. if you CAN easily, write down some supporting arguments for those main points, but don’t get caught up on it.

how do i start? just sit down and fuckin start. deadass. tell yourself that if you finish before 8pm you can smoke a bowl or something, then smoke a bowl after you’re done regardless of the time. then sit down and just start typing, WHEREVER your mind wants to begin. let it, it’s way easier to follow your motivation than try to corral it, you’ll just end up giving yourself writer’s block

intros are easy. don’t worry too much about starting them; you can come up with a catchy first sentence way later (same with a catchy ending sentence; i still CANNOT write last lines for the life of me). for your intro literally just say: These 2 or 3 things are connected, actually, and I think they connect in a specific way to prove [thesis]. you can bulk out the intro later, but MOVE ON. that’s not the important part of the essay, at all. if your thesis can’t be turned into a question THAT YOU THEN ANSWER, then it needs to be bulked out. you should be able to make it a question, for example: Why is Emily Dickinson a lesbian? becomes “Dickinson’s lesbianism is the driving force behind her decisions to do x, y, and z” in which x y & z are the main points of your essay.

don’t worry too much about sources or quotes. i can’t tell you how many times i just made arguments in essays and then put in brackets [find a throwaway quote about x to support this later], then highlighted the text so it’d stand out and i’d remember to get back to it later. then MOVE ON.

don’t get caught up in anything, not grammar, not specifics, not finding the perfect segue between paragraphs. just try to get down everything you have to say FIRST, or you’ll bog yourself down and lose steam. sit there until you’re done making your points, then take a break

conclusions are easy. scroll back up to your intro. what does it say? put that back down, exactly, and bulk it out a little by referencing some points in the main paragraphs of your essay. if your intro just said “x y and z is true” then your conclusion should say “her woodcarving shows x is true, the fact that the moon was full that day is why y is true. these two things make z true”

go back and find sources/quotes to plug into all the times you wrote [find a throwaday quote]

TAKE AS LONG AS POSSIBLE OFF. if you try to edit and expand immediately, you WILL fail to catch things. if you’re a little unfamiliar with your own writing, you’ll be able to catch things like spelling errors, things that make so little sense you have no idea what you were trying to say, times you forgot to plug in a quote, or when a transition sounds a little like a record scratching instead of playing smoothly

if you’re really pressed for time: just fucking send it in without doing a second reread, because FUCK IT. getting it done is more important than perfectionism; fixing those last straggling spelling errors gets you +2 points whereas being a day late loses a letter grade

most importantly: WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU CARE ABOUT. if you’re only getting specific prompts, try to twist it as best you can until you give a fuck about it, it’s WAY easier to write about shit that matters to you. i LOVED twisting prompts until suddenly this boring ass white boy book is secretly about this minor female character that appeared on 2 pages, and after awhile i got really fucking good at it.

just sit down and start writing. you’ve got to start somewhere, even if you end up erasing and rewriting the starting point later. at least you’ve got the ball rolling.