I have to write a thesis driven paper, and I have started to type right now. In front of me, a black white void surrounded by the instruments of which I shall use in facilitating the creation of my dissertation (Microsoft Office). The bright, white window stares back at me, consumes my mind and instills sweat-inducing worries.

Dammit, anyone else agree the hardest part of typing a paper is actually the very beginning?

I put some words down and erase it, thinking some strange, meaningless fear that I "tarnished" my "canvas." What do you do before you start on your typing journey? I tried listening to music I like, but unfortunately what works for exercising doesn't work when it comes to concentrating in manifesting my ideas in literary form (I start thinking about the words in the song's lyrics). Ambient music works though. I try typing when I'm nice and warm under bedsheets, but that urges me to stay in one spot instead of getting up and collecting sources. Usually a good meal will do, that way I feel "grounded" in a chair. Yeah.

Well, writing this post is just an excuse for me not truly starting my paper. ****, dammit. I almost wish their was a thread just was similar to the work-out log one but just dedicated to writing papers. Like we show screenshots of our work as progress moves in order to somehow "motivate" us in continuing as a group in our quest to not procrastinate. Anyone up for that?

edit: I think "dissertation" is meant for a doctorate. Not doing that.

i've got two papers due by monday night

****

All my essays and papers have to be done in class, Now there aren't exactly as serious as your stuff, but damn it gets annoying not having the internet handy.

Exactly what type of class requires doing papers only in the classroom. I never had a class like that ever; all my papers were done outside on my own time.

English with an extremely batty teacher who thinks if we do it on our own time we will cheat. Shes a pretty good teacher though, and we don't have that many essays, Like i said it's not that serious.

In many high schools English Lit/Lang and History classes will have in-class essays. AP testing also has in-class essays for these subjects + ones for subjects like Econ too.

These aren't really "papers" in the college sense of the word but yeah.

The rationale in these cases isn't so much to "prevent cheating" but rather to stimulate quick and precise/methodical critical thinking.

The hardest part is getting started. I don't always start writing with the beginning of the paper. I used to freeze up when there is a blank page there just glaring back at me. It was even worse if most of my writing was done during a class. There was this blank page and the sound of everyone else typing away. Then I would go beyond just freezing up and would go into full panic attack.

One of my professors made me free write about my subject for my assignment with the monitor turned off during class. It forced me to focus on just starting to write instead of worrying about that big blank page to fill up.

Free writing usually gets me started. It is like thinking out loud. What ever comes to your mind you write. While I'm in free writing mode I don't worry about grammar or spelling, I just write without stopping or giving myself time to judge what I just wrote. It helps warm up my brain gets thoughts flowing.

Sometimes I just start on a paragraph that I have a better idea of what I want to say or at least start typing paraphrases or quotes from sources I know I am going to include in my paper. It at least gets me started.

I guess that's one of the few pluses in engineering. Our papers are always fairly well structured apart from the main body. For that I tend to start to paste in all the data I believe useful and start from there, building up explanations around certain points, writing introductions to concepts, moving data tables to appendices etc. Once that's done, I write my conclusion and then summary and then, after passing out for a bit, I spend several hours working out what my caffeine-addled, knackered brain had typed out while I worked far too late.

It might be worth getting your arguments or data, or whatever it is you're writing about, written down first. Then expand them, improve upon them and edit them from there. At least you'll make a start even if it isn't very efficient.

a paper

Woah man, that took some sweet time.

I usually write the body first, then the thesis, the conclusion. Or I write a really vague half-paragraph for the thesis, write the body, go back and change/finish the thesis, then write the conclusion.

Once I get myself typing, I find that the rest fills in. I tend to do something like this:

Goal: Paper A
Time frame: 2 hours
Reward: Red Bull
Consequence: Failure of class
Distractions: Food, music, telephone

Thesis: Boobs are nice.

1. They are soft
2. They are diverse
3. They are awesome

From there, things tend to pick up. I try to minimize the distraction list as I'm writing it.

This is pretty much how I write every paper, but then my writing process is incredibly inefficient. I jump around from point to point, stop typing in mid-sentence to go work on another part... it's awful, but it's the only way I can write now.

Fortunately I turned in my last paper as an undergrad last quarter, a long research paper that I put off forever, then researched and wrote in three incredibly painful days. This quarter there are no papers, just tests.