Anonymous A. answered • 06/28/23
Associate Professor of English
Starting an essay is always the worst part! If you can remember to break the process into smaller parts, though, it won't be quite as painful. First, you have to decide on your topic; even when a teacher assigns a specific prompt, you have to discover how you feel about that topic and what it is you want to argue about it. The best way to do this is to find out about the conversation is already happening. You- hopefully- wouldn't show up to a party and jump into the middle of a conversation with your opinion until you know what they were already talking about- you might embarrass yourself otherwise. So, give yourself time to do research; look for scholarly (peer-reviewed) articles by experts. See what has been said. Then you can jump into the conversation with your well-researched point-of-view.
Once you have an idea of what you think, just write. Don't focus on correcting it as you go, putting it in the right order, or even staying on topic. Sit down for 15 minutes, and just write what pops into your mind. If your thoughts get off topic, that's okay, write that down, too ("I'm really hungry. I wonder if there is anything in the fridge.") but then pull yourself back to the subject. The important thing with this kind of exercise is not to stop writing in order to think. It is the overthinking that freezes you up, so for now, just keep writing what comes to mind while trying to steer yourself in the right direction. This is a messy process and that's okay.
At the end of this exercise, you will have something besides a blank page from which to start. You may end up throwing out a lot of what you just wrote, but you also may have some gems and you should have a better idea of how you want to address your essay prompt.
