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News, Notes, Talk

Here’s 33 writers on why they write.

It’s 2021, but (surprise!) essentially nothing has changed: COVID is still ravaging the United States and no meaningful government aid has arrived. Oh, one thing has changed: a new, more contagious variant of COVID has spread to the U.S . Happy New Year!

During times of crisis, carving out time to write can feel silly, pointless: why do your morning pages when you could be, say, inventing a vaccine? To offer some encouragement, I took a look around the Internet and compiled 33 of our favorite writers’ own words on why they write. You might see some thoughts that can guide you, or you can just take heart in the fact that everybody grapples with this question. Check out their insight below.

Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies :

I started to sense that I was avoiding something about where I came from and who I was . . . And I realized that the best way to respond to this growing awareness was just to be still about it and to see what happened. And at some point, I started to turn and look over my shoulder—metaphorically speaking—to see what I had been running from. And at that point, there was this burst of creativity.. . .

I am trying to write to the universal. That is what I am trying to do. Period. End-of-story. What I hope is that by writing from a particular place—that I know and that I find fascinating and that I have a whole lot of love for and problems with—I can open onto the universal. ( Center Theatre Group )

Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind:

I think [ Leave The World Behind ]’s optimism lies really in that one idea, in communion. The simple, human reality of occupying space together. I’m glad that feels resonant right now. I hope that the novel can be good company in that way. This is a moment that is so baffling and extreme that any insight into the way we are supposed to behave or what we are supposed to do feels really lovely and helpful . . . That moment of interaction with a work of art offers something that even the most comprehensive understanding of the headlines will never be able to provide. It gives us something to hold on to. ( Paris Review )

Hilton Als, author of White Girls :

What I am trying to do for myself, always, is honor the delicacy of complication—the idea that people are not really one thing or the other, that there is this amalgamation of all sorts of nerve endings and truths . . . Wasn’t it Blanche DuBois who said “I know I don’t tell the truth, but what ought to be truth.” That’s kind of a great thing for people to know about themselves, that the truth is not an empirical thing; just as the “I” is not an empirical thing. I think that’s what I love investigating the most—how we put ourselves together. ( The Creative Independent )

Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half :

  Novels simulate the experience of thinking another person’s thoughts. I love television — I watch probably way too much — but when you’re watching TV, you’re not thinking the same thoughts. There’s no other way to do that than reading fiction. As close are you are to people you love, you will never think their thoughts or feel their feelings. That’s something the novel does that other forms cannot. I also appreciate the language of novels, and the fact that novels are a slower way to experience time. In the politically fraught moment we’re experiencing, it’s been refreshing to turn off a screen or step away from a constant influx of insane news.

I don’t want to ignore the moment we’re in, or abdicate responsibility to respond to it, but I don’t even know what a fictional response to Trump would even look like! Writing about black people who have humanity is already pushing back against Trumpism. Just asserting that black humanity matters, black bodies matter, black love matters, and black joy matters. That’s my general project. ( The Millions )

Patty Yumi Cottrell, author of Sorry to Disrupt the Peace :

I have to feel a desire to write. I don’t know if there’s ever an end goal in mind. But I just have to feel like I really want to do it. I have to feel borderline desperate. And then I want to write. That’s what motivates me. Going long periods without writing, where I’m just doing other things, helps create that feeling of wanting to write . . . I’ve said before that writing for me isn’t therapeutic. I didn’t feel a sense of catharsis or anything like that. But I think I was very bothered by something. You know, this question, it was something I’d been thinking about for years. So it was something that was percolating in my mind. And I guess that’s what drove me to do this.

I think writing is an act of generosity and also selfishness at the same time. That’s my understanding of it. It’s selfish in a way of extracting material from your life and using that. For me, sometimes I think of it as a rather self-absorbed and selfish act, but the hope is that it could be seen as an act of generosity in the sense that maybe people will read the book and be moved by it or come to some kind of new understanding of something that they wouldn’t have if they hadn’t read the book. I think it’s both of those things at the same time. Ambiguity is pretty important to me. I think that’s what I’m attracted to in writing. A clear ambiguity. ( The Creative Independent )

Don DeLillo, author of The Silence :

Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals. ( Harper’s )

I write to find out how much I know. The act of writing for me is a concentrated form of thought. If I don’t enter that particular level of concentration, the chances are that certain ideas never reach any level of fruition. ( The Independent )

Natalie Diaz, author of Postcolonial Love Poem :

Why do you think people need stories? We are stories. Even our names are stories. ( PEN America )

Writing is an extension of my body. I am seeking the body on the page, even the broken body, even the ecstatic body—even the broken and ecstatic body. I am looking for a field for the body to run in. I am looking for a field where the body might be struck down. I am looking for a field where the body might rest or hide or flee or reap or build a house or set a fire. The body doesn’t want solace—the body wants to be possible. The page has never solved my troubles, but the page has let me know them better, let me know the body of myself better through those troubles. Maybe. ( Kenyon Review )

Joan Didion, author of Let Me Tell You What I Mean :

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Straits seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind? ( HuffPost )

Akwaeke Emezi, author of The Death of Vivek Oji :

I also wrote [ Freshwater ] for other people who are where I was. I know that feeling of being trapped in the reality that you’re not allowed to think is real, that everyone else tells you is crazy. What ends up happening is that you just have a bunch of really isolated, really depressed, really suicidal people. It’s not fun. So, if I can help people shift realities a little bit into one that gets them a better way of being, a better quality of life, and helps them feel less choked, then hopefully, it’s gonna give to someone else what it also gave to me. ( NYLON )

Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections :

I’m always as a writer interested in the relationship between the personal, the structural, and the really intimate relationship between the personal and the structural. Sometimes that sounds like an abstract or political question, but for me, it’s a question about how we behave and how we make decisions . . .

So, when I’m writing characters, especially when I’m writing women and Black women, I’m aware of people who are aware of power as a thing that has to be negotiated with. I’m aware of people for whom that negotiation informs the most intimate decisions and their most intimate knowledge of self. I’m thinking always about the relationship between that awareness of the world and the way the world works, and the general space of inferiority, the general space of the difference between what we can say or how we feel and what we do. ( Lit Hub )

Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness :

To write a story or a poem or an essay is to make a claim about what we find beautiful, about what moves us, to reveal a vision of the world, which is always terrifying; to write seriously is to find ourselves always pressed against not just our technical but our moral limits. “One beats and beats for that which one believes,” says Stevens. And we do this without any way of confirming the value of what we’ve done, since unlike tobacco farms and coal mines novels and poems have no objective measure of accomplishment; neither the opinion of critics—which is so often wrong—nor our own sense of what we’ve written, which swings wildly by the hour, can offer any sure judgment of what we’ve made. ( Lit Hub )

I wanted to push what I could do in writing about sex . . . Sex seems like such an emotional and moral tangle. I wanted to view it from as many different angles as I could in this book. The different kinds of communication that sex can be, like communicating with a stranger or communicating with a beloved; I wanted there to be a kaleidoscopic surveying of sex as human activity and communication in the book. ( The Millions )

Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood :

If [a question is] important for me to figure it out, I figure it’s important for other people as well. I’m just like everybody. You just also never know where a subject’s going to take you, so I don’t think the magnitude is in the subject. I think the magnitude is in the approach, and how much you care about it . . . I hope that the book lets the reader experience my thoughts and then their own thoughts, and that my thoughts become their thoughts, and then their thoughts become more clear to them. To me, that’s a kind of help. ( The Creative Independent )

Chelsea Hodson, author of Tonight I’m Someone Else : 

I’m trying to say what I mean, without any stylistic interruptions . . .

I’m trying to write something so good, so pure, so perfect that I’ll never have to have children; I’ll have created something that can stand in for me, that can live on after me.

I’m trying to whisper something that can’t be spoken aloud: I still think about you . . .

I’m trying to solve the math of my life, so complex it begins to surpass my abilities—X equals me plus my capacity to imagine minus the way I make people fall in love divided by my true nature, my wildness like the lion that bit the actor’s hand. That’s the kind of viciousness that keeps me alive. How’s that for a remainder? I am survival of the fittest, I am what endures when the Earth ends, I am exoskeleton instinct, alive with my own evolution.

I’m trying to outline all my contradictions . . . ( Lit Hub )

Kazuo Ishiguro, author of Never Let Me Go :

I’m not looking for any kind of clear moral, and I never do in my novels. I like to highlight some aspect of being human. I’m not really trying to say, so don’t do this, or do that. I’m saying, this is how it feels to me. ( HuffPost )

Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man :

Often I’ll have a feeling which is sometimes a sad or desperate or some kind of unresolved feeling, and I’ll marry it to some detail from the world, and those two things combined kind of set me on a course for writing a story. I don’t know what it’s going to be about. For example, I wrote down a few things the woman behind me on the plane said. She was talking about someone who was housesitting for her and the bird had escaped and she was describing how to catch the bird and what to do with it, and just little things she said, like, “Were you watching the house when Gabriel, the dove, escaped?” and it was like these little things which, in and of themselves, it’s like I’m not just interested in people’s dialogue, but that kind of loaned to some really personal thing in myself. That’s kind of where energy comes from for me… Yeah. ( Bookslut )

Raven Leilani, author of Luster :

E.L. Doctorow talked about the way he writes, and it’s like you have a car on the road, and the headlights illuminate three feet of what’s ahead of the car. He writes what’s in those headlights, and he keeps going as he drives. And that is 100 percent how I write. I admire writers who start a project and are like, I’m trying to do this, and I know how this is working—but for me, it’s kind of like an exorcism, in some ways . . . one reason I love writing and painting when I can is that I literally feel like I can disappear for a moment.” ( Elle )

“I wrote [ Luster ] for Black women. I wanted to write a character where room is made for the unruly. I wanted to write against respectability. Every Black woman I’ve spoken to about this book, the thing we end up talking about is, “I fucked up a lot. I was thrown a lot of detours.” I think it’s important to allow Black women leeway to stumble. ( The Rumpus )

James McBride, author of Deacon King Kong :

You write a memoir for the same reason you write a song — to help someone feel better. You don’t write it to show how smart you are or how dumb they are. You’re trying to share from a sense of humbleness. It’s almost like you’re asking forgiveness of the reader for being so kind as to allow you to indulge yourself at their expense. ( Electric Literature )  

Toni Morrison, author of Beloved :

Writing for me is thinking, and it’s also a way to position myself in the world, particularly when I don’t like what’s going on . . . I knew I always was compelled to do it, but I didn’t know how essential it was to me. I wrote the first book because I wanted to read it. I thought that kind of book, with that subject—those most vulnerable, most undescribed, not taken seriously little black girls—had never existed seriously in literature. No one had ever written about them except as props. Since I couldn’t find a book that did that, I thought, “Well, I’ll write it and then I’ll read it.” It was really the reading impulse that got me into the writing thing. ( National Endowment for the Arts )

Ottessa Moshfegh, author of Death in Her Hands :

I think every novel is a rite of passage . . . there seems to be a karmic force in my imagination where even if I threw something away, it would just come back. Like maybe I wanna try to throw this away and not write this, but it would just resurrect itself in a new form. I can’t really get away.

Writing projects feel a lot like if you had a guru and the guru was manipulating you so that you would have to live through certain experiences in order to learn a lesson, but the guru could have also just told you outright, “Here’s the thing you need to learn.” But you wouldn’t learn it unless you spent three years suffering, you know? In a way, I know that I’m the one writing it, but I don’t know if really I’m the one. I believe that there’s a higher power in charge of the imagination.

. . . I feel inspired by the idea that a novel could wake someone up and resonate in a way where they would put the novel down and be like, “Well, shit. How do I go back to lying to myself about X? Because I’ve just seen myself really differently.” That’s what I love about art. ( The Creative Independent )

Haruki Murakami, author of 1Q84 :

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist’s job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories—stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness. ( Jerusalem Prize )

George Orwell, author of 1984 :

My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us . . . [But] all writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. ( Orwell Foundation )  

James Salter, author of Light Years :

Gertrude Stein, when asked why she wrote, replied, “For praise.” Lorca said he wrote to be loved. Faulkner said a writer wrote for glory. I may at times have written for those reasons, it’s hard to know. Overall I write because I see the world in a certain way that no dialogue or series of them can begin to describe, that no book can fully render, though the greatest books thrill in their attempt.

A great book may be an accident, but a good one is a possibility, and it is thinking of that that one writes. In short, to achieve. The rest takes care of itself, and so much praise is given to insignificant things that there is hardly any sense in striving for it.

In the end, writing is like a prison, an island from which you will never be released but which is a kind of paradise: the solitude, the thoughts, the incredible joy of putting into words the essence of what you for the moment understand and with your whole heart want to believe. ( Lit Hub )

George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo :

We all get into [art] for that very grandiose reason of wanting to break somebody’s heart or do some really beautiful thing. Those actually require some radical decision-making at certain points in the process. ( Writer’s Digest )

The result of [the] laborious and slightly obsessive process [of writing] is a story that is better than I am in “real life” – funnier, kinder, less full of crap, more empathetic, with a clearer sense of virtue, both wiser and more entertaining. And what a pleasure that is; to be, on the page, less of a dope than usual. ( The Guardian )

Danez Smith, author of Homie :

I write when I feel called to language. When I haven’t felt called for a while, I show up anyway to see what happens. I used to write every day. Not anymore. I try to touch words, mine or others, every day. That’s often books and poems and interviews. Sometimes it’s writing, sometimes reading, sometimes editing, sometimes listening. As long as I am actively living in or alongside language, I think I am in process. Sometimes the task at hand is to live, to witness . . . [People need stories] because we need to prove that we exist. ( PEN America )

Susan Sontag, author of Against Interpretation :

Obviously, I think of the writer of novels and stories and plays as a moral agent. . . This doesn’t entail moralizing in any direct or crude sense. Serious fiction writers think about moral problems practically. They tell stories. They narrate. They evoke our common humanity in narratives with which we can identify, even though the lives may be remote from our own. They stimulate our imagination. The stories they tell enlarge and complicate—and, therefore, improve—our sympathies. They educate our capacity for moral judgement. ( At The Same Time: The Novelist and Moral Reasoning )

  [Writing] is lunacy. . . You have to be obsessed. People write me all the time, or get in touch with me about “what should I do if I want to be a writer?” I say well, do you really want to be a writer? It’s not like something you’d want to be—it’s rather something you couldn’t help but be. But you have to be obsessed. ( 92 Street Y )

Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain :

Because of my upbringing I felt so much like an impostor that I wrote in secret, and told no one (other than my husband)…Men from the west coast of Scotland are not known for revealing their tenderer feelings. Fiction allows me to make sense of things I am unable to express in other ways. It took 10 years to write the novel because I felt such comfort in the world I was creating. ( The Guardian )

Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life :

You wrote a novel so that people would believe that you knew your own mind . . .

These words you wrote in order to change the character of your life, these words you wrote in order to tear a little hole in your universe so that you might escape through it, these words which you wrote in order to tell a story like the one you’ve always wanted to read. It is not the you that is now. It is a different version of yourself, and so it is a kindness to yourself. ( Lit Hub )

Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was A Girl :

I write primarily to think through my obsessions. ( Lit Hub )

Bryan Washington, author of Memorial :

Having the chance to try and build another world and to occupy it, even if only for a little while, that’s a gift. It’s a challenge to become a photographer of whatever world it is that you’re attempting to recreate, irrespective of whether it’s one that you’ve lived in or maybe one that you’re not so intimate with. But it’s fun. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t do it. ( The Guardian )

Colson Whitehead, author of The Nickel Boys :

I grew up wanting to be the black Stephen King. I think the darkness of the world is terrifying. Some of my books try to find the humor or optimistic avenues we can take to deliver ourselves from the darkness. I also explore things that terrify us—you know, true monsters. For me, a zombie is a person who’s stopped pretending. They look like your loved ones, but they’ve dropped the veil of humanity to reveal themselves to be the monster that they’ve always been. If you look at the kind of brutalities I’m writing about in The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, human beings are pretty terrible. What do you do with that fact? How do you find hope for the future, when so many of us are compelled and driven by our worst natures? Not to be too bleak . . .

I write books because of where I am emotionally, I write books because I have an intellectual question I’m trying to figure out, and it is rare for me to do two books in a row that are directly about racism and our institutional failures. But before that I wrote a book about poker, and now I’m writing a crime novel. So I’m not sure if there’s a trend. I have no idea what the political purpose will be inside of me; I’m trying to fulfill my own artistic needs, and hopefully they will make enough sense to other people that they’re worthy of reading. ( The Nation )

An Yu, author of Braised Pork :

I write because spoken language often fails me. When feelings are said out loud they become less accurate, somehow. I can only hope that some readers feel the same way too. ( Lit Hub )

Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown :

I see someone else, standing on her island. She’s waving at me. Or is she? I don’t know. I’m over here on my island, and she’s over there on hers . . . And now here I am, a little less alone, because I see her over there, and she sees me. I wrote myself out of the room and now I will write myself off of this lonely little island, write more clouds into the sky and pour words into the ocean, and maybe, if I’m lucky, write myself a bridge across that ocean, to that island over there, to meet another person, to tell her the idea I have been holding in my head. ( National Writing Project )

Jenny Zhang, author of Sour Heart :

Whether it’s poetry or short stories, [I’m writing] because I am really consumed with some question or series of questions grouped under the same obsession. I keep writing until I’m sick of exploring that question . . . I think that every writer should have a question they can ask that there is no end to the pursuit of. Every writer should have questions big enough and pressing enough and multi-faceted enough and unanswerable enough that they occupy their entire life, however long or short it is. ( The Creative Independent )

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Online Guide to Writing and Research

College writing, explore more of umgc.

• Online Guide to Writing

Why So Much Emphasis on Writing?

After enrolling in college, you might wonder why many of your classes require a great deal of essay writing. Writing assignments allow you to acquire knowledge and practice many different critical thinking skills. For example, the research process helps you learn how to evaluate information for reliability and relevance. Writing a thesis statement lets you practice summarizing big concepts. Good paragraphing can give you practice in organizing ideas, building arguments, refuting counter-arguments, analyzing data, and many more important thinking skills. Plus, the process of completing a writing assignment can sharpen your project management skills.

Writing assignments are recursive in nature, which means that sometimes you might repeat previous steps with new ideas in mind. For example, research at any stage of the process might cause you to revise drafted pieces of the paper. Or, as you draft a section, you might brainstorm a new idea to include. This is normal and natural, and it should not be a cause for concern unless it keeps you from completing a project on time. 

Click on the arrows below to learn more about the writing assignment process.

Steps in the Writing Assignment Process

Step one: assignment analysis.

This includes a close reading of the assignment so that you understand the reader's expectations and the assignment goals.

Step Two: Time Management

This includes a timeline for research, drafting, feedback, and revision.

Step Three: Brainstorming

This is an idea generation process that might include mind-mapping, free-writing, or other open-ended tasks.

Step Four: Casual Research

Early research is often performed with the simple goal of seeing what kind of information exists on a topic, and it can often help with brainstorming. 

Step Five: Prewriting

Prewriting activities include outlining, note-taking, and organization of ideas with the assignment requirements in mind. 

Step Six: Formal Research

Rather than open-ended and exploratory, this research is designed to find targeted source information to support a paper’s important concepts. 

Step Seven: Drafting

This is the process of writing sentences and paragraphs.  

Step Eight: First Draft

Also called a rough draft, this preliminary paper will usually change in significant ways as the paper is completed. 

Step Nine: Receiving Feedback

This is when a writer shows someone a paper draft with the goal of finding out how to make the paper better. 

Step Ten: Using Feedback

This is when a writer applies feedback comments to the draft with the goal of strengthening the paper. 

Step Eleven: Revision

This is changing a draft to make it better, and it can include large changes in organization and content or small changes in word choice or punctuation. 

Step Twelve: Proofreading

This is the final read-through to make sure everything is correct and complete.

Step Thirteen: Final Draft

This is the paper in its finished form. 

How to Use This Guide

This guide is broken into chapters that loosely correspond to the steps outlined above. You can read through the entire chapter, or you can choose to review the areas that will provide help with specific aspects of the writing process. 

Mailing Address: 3501 University Blvd. East, Adelphi, MD 20783 This work is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License . © 2022 UMGC. All links to external sites were verified at the time of publication. UMGC is not responsible for the validity or integrity of information located at external sites.

Table of Contents: Online Guide to Writing

Chapter 1: College Writing

How Does College Writing Differ from Workplace Writing?

What Is College Writing?

Chapter 2: The Writing Process

Doing Exploratory Research

Getting from Notes to Your Draft

Introduction

Prewriting - Techniques to Get Started - Mining Your Intuition

Prewriting: Targeting Your Audience

Prewriting: Techniques to Get Started

Prewriting: Understanding Your Assignment

Rewriting: Being Your Own Critic

Rewriting: Creating a Revision Strategy

Rewriting: Getting Feedback

Rewriting: The Final Draft

Techniques to Get Started - Outlining

Techniques to Get Started - Using Systematic Techniques

Thesis Statement and Controlling Idea

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Freewriting

Writing: Getting from Notes to Your Draft - Summarizing Your Ideas

Writing: Outlining What You Will Write

Chapter 3: Thinking Strategies

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone

A Word About Style, Voice, and Tone: Style Through Vocabulary and Diction

Critical Strategies and Writing

Critical Strategies and Writing: Analysis

Critical Strategies and Writing: Evaluation

Critical Strategies and Writing: Persuasion

Critical Strategies and Writing: Synthesis

Developing a Paper Using Strategies

Kinds of Assignments You Will Write

Patterns for Presenting Information

Patterns for Presenting Information: Critiques

Patterns for Presenting Information: Discussing Raw Data

Patterns for Presenting Information: General-to-Specific Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Specific-to-General Pattern

Patterns for Presenting Information: Summaries and Abstracts

Supporting with Research and Examples

Writing Essay Examinations

Writing Essay Examinations: Make Your Answer Relevant and Complete

Writing Essay Examinations: Organize Thinking Before Writing

Writing Essay Examinations: Read and Understand the Question

Chapter 4: The Research Process

Planning and Writing a Research Paper

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Ask a Research Question

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Cite Sources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Collect Evidence

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Decide Your Point of View, or Role, for Your Research

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Draw Conclusions

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Find a Topic and Get an Overview

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Manage Your Resources

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Outline

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Survey the Literature

Planning and Writing a Research Paper: Work Your Sources into Your Research Writing

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Human Resources

Research Resources: What Are Research Resources?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found?

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Electronic Resources

Research Resources: Where Are Research Resources Found? - Print Resources

Structuring the Research Paper: Formal Research Structure

Structuring the Research Paper: Informal Research Structure

The Nature of Research

The Research Assignment: How Should Research Sources Be Evaluated?

The Research Assignment: When Is Research Needed?

The Research Assignment: Why Perform Research?

Chapter 5: Academic Integrity

Academic Integrity

Giving Credit to Sources

Giving Credit to Sources: Copyright Laws

Giving Credit to Sources: Documentation

Giving Credit to Sources: Style Guides

Integrating Sources

Practicing Academic Integrity

Practicing Academic Integrity: Keeping Accurate Records

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Paraphrasing Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Quoting Your Source

Practicing Academic Integrity: Managing Source Material - Summarizing Your Sources

Types of Documentation

Types of Documentation: Bibliographies and Source Lists

Types of Documentation: Citing World Wide Web Sources

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - APA Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - CSE/CBE Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - Chicago Style

Types of Documentation: In-Text or Parenthetical Citations - MLA Style

Types of Documentation: Note Citations

Chapter 6: Using Library Resources

Finding Library Resources

Chapter 7: Assessing Your Writing

How Is Writing Graded?

How Is Writing Graded?: A General Assessment Tool

The Draft Stage

The Draft Stage: The First Draft

The Draft Stage: The Revision Process and the Final Draft

The Draft Stage: Using Feedback

The Research Stage

Using Assessment to Improve Your Writing

Chapter 8: Other Frequently Assigned Papers

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Article and Book Reviews

Reviews and Reaction Papers: Reaction Papers

Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Adapting the Argument Structure

Writing Arguments: Purposes of Argument

Writing Arguments: References to Consult for Writing Arguments

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Anticipate Active Opposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Determine Your Organization

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Develop Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Introduce Your Argument

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - State Your Thesis or Proposition

Writing Arguments: Steps to Writing an Argument - Write Your Conclusion

Writing Arguments: Types of Argument

Appendix A: Books to Help Improve Your Writing

Dictionaries

General Style Manuals

Researching on the Internet

Special Style Manuals

Writing Handbooks

Appendix B: Collaborative Writing and Peer Reviewing

Collaborative Writing: Assignments to Accompany the Group Project

Collaborative Writing: Informal Progress Report

Collaborative Writing: Issues to Resolve

Collaborative Writing: Methodology

Collaborative Writing: Peer Evaluation

Collaborative Writing: Tasks of Collaborative Writing Group Members

Collaborative Writing: Writing Plan

General Introduction

Peer Reviewing

Appendix C: Developing an Improvement Plan

Working with Your Instructor’s Comments and Grades

Appendix D: Writing Plan and Project Schedule

Devising a Writing Project Plan and Schedule

Reviewing Your Plan with Others

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Writing Anxiety

What this handout is about.

This handout discusses the situational nature of writer’s block and other writing anxiety and suggests things you can try to feel more confident and optimistic about yourself as a writer.

What are writing anxiety and writer’s block?

“Writing anxiety” and “writer’s block” are informal terms for a wide variety of apprehensive and pessimistic feelings about writing. These feelings may not be pervasive in a person’s writing life. For example, you might feel perfectly fine writing a biology lab report but apprehensive about writing a paper on a novel. You may confidently tackle a paper about the sociology of gender but delete and start over twenty times when composing an email to a cute classmate to suggest a coffee date. In other words, writing anxiety and writers’ block are situational (Hjortshoj 7). These terms do NOT describe psychological attributes. People aren’t born anxious writers; rather, they become anxious or blocked through negative or difficult experiences with writing.

When do these negative feelings arise?

Although there is a great deal of variation among individuals, there are also some common experiences that writers in general find stressful.

For example, you may struggle when you are:

• adjusting to a new form of writing—for example, first year college writing, papers in a new field of study, or longer forms than you are used to (a long research paper, a senior thesis, a master’s thesis, a dissertation) (Hjortshoj 56-76).
• writing for a reader or readers who have been overly critical or demanding in the past.
• remembering negative criticism received in the past—even if the reader who criticized your work won’t be reading your writing this time.
• working with limited time or with a lot of unstructured time.
• responding to an assignment that seems unrelated to academic or life goals.
• dealing with troubling events outside of school.

What are some strategies for handling these feelings?

Get support.

Choose a writing buddy, someone you trust to encourage you in your writing life. Your writing buddy might be a friend or family member, a classmate, a teacher, a colleague, or a Writing Center tutor. Talk to your writing buddy about your ideas, your writing process, your worries, and your successes. Share pieces of your writing. Make checking in with your writing buddy a regular part of your schedule. When you share pieces of writing with your buddy, use our handout on asking for feedback .

In his book Understanding Writing Blocks, Keith Hjortshoj describes how isolation can harm writers, particularly students who are working on long projects not connected with coursework (134-135). He suggests that in addition to connecting with supportive individuals, such students can benefit from forming or joining a writing group, which functions in much the same way as a writing buddy. A group can provide readers, deadlines, support, praise, and constructive criticism. For help starting one, see our handout about writing groups .

Identify your strengths

Often, writers who are experiencing block or anxiety have a worse opinion of their own writing than anyone else! Make a list of the things you do well. You might ask a friend or colleague to help you generate such a list. Here are some possibilities to get you started:

• I explain things well to people.
• I get people’s interest.
• I have strong opinions.
• I listen well.
• I am critical of what I read.
• I see connections.

Choose at least one strength as your starting point. Instead of saying “I can’t write,” say “I am a writer who can …”

Recognize that writing is a complex process

Writing is an attempt to fix meaning on the page, but you know, and your readers know, that there is always more to be said on a topic. The best writers can do is to contribute what they know and feel about a topic at a particular point in time.

Writers often seek “flow,” which usually entails some sort of breakthrough followed by a beautifully coherent outpouring of knowledge. Flow is both a possibility—most people experience it at some point in their writing lives—and a myth. Inevitably, if you write over a long period of time and for many different situations, you will encounter obstacles. As Hjortshoj explains, obstacles are particularly common during times of transition—transitions to new writing roles or to new kinds of writing.

Think of yourself as an apprentice.

If block or apprehension is new for you, take time to understand the situations you are writing in. In particular, try to figure out what has changed in your writing life. Here are some possibilities:

• You are writing in a new format.
• You are writing longer papers than before.
• You are writing for new audiences.
• You are writing about new subject matter.
• You are turning in writing from different stages of the writing process—for example, planning stages or early drafts.

It makes sense to have trouble when dealing with a situation for the first time. It’s also likely that when you confront these new situations, you will learn and grow. Writing in new situations can be rewarding. Not every format or audience will be right for you, but you won’t know which ones might be right until you try them. Think of new writing situations as apprenticeships. When you’re doing a new kind of writing, learn as much as you can about it, gain as many skills in that area as you can, and when you finish the apprenticeship, decide which of the skills you learned will serve you well later on. You might be surprised.

Below are some suggestions for how to learn about new kinds of writing:

• Ask a lot of questions of people who are more experienced with this kind of writing. Here are some of the questions you might ask: What’s the purpose of this kind of writing? Who’s the audience? What are the most important elements to include? What’s not as important? How do you get started? How do you know when what you’ve written is good enough? How did you learn to write this way?
• Ask a lot of questions of the person who assigned you a piece of writing. If you have a paper, the best place to start is with the written assignment itself. For help with this, see our handout on understanding assignments .
• Look for examples of this kind of writing. (You can ask your instructor for a recommended example). Look, especially, for variation. There are often many different ways to write within a particular form. Look for ways that feel familiar to you, approaches that you like. You might want to look for published models or, if this seems too intimidating, look at your classmates’ writing. In either case, ask yourself questions about what these writers are doing, and take notes. How does the writer begin and end? In what order does the writer tell things? How and when does the writer convey their main point? How does the writer bring in other people’s ideas? What is the writer’s purpose? How is that purpose achieved?
• Read our handouts about how to write in specific fields or how to handle specific writing assignments.
• Listen critically to your readers. Before you dismiss or wholeheartedly accept what they say, try to understand them. If a reader has given you written comments, ask yourself questions to figure out the reader’s experience of your paper: What is this reader looking for? What am I doing that satisfies this reader? In what ways is this reader still unsatisfied? If you can’t answer these questions from the reader’s comments, then talk to the reader, or ask someone else to help you interpret the comments.
• Most importantly, don’t try to do everything at once. Start with reasonable expectations. You can’t write like an expert your first time out. Nobody does! Use the criticism you get.

Once you understand what readers want, you are in a better position to decide what to do with their criticisms. There are two extreme possibilities—dismissing the criticisms and accepting them all—but there is also a lot of middle ground. Figure out which criticisms are consistent with your own purposes, and do the hard work of engaging with them. Again, don’t expect an overnight turn-around; recognize that changing writing habits is a process and that papers are steps in the process.

Chances are that at some point in your writing life you will encounter readers who seem to dislike, disagree with, or miss the point of your work. Figuring out what to do with criticism from such readers is an important part of a writer’s growth.

Try new tactics when you get stuck

Often, writing blocks occur at particular stages of the writing process. The writing process is cyclical and variable. For different writers, the process may include reading, brainstorming, drafting, getting feedback, revising, and editing. These stages do not always happen in this order, and once a writer has been through a particular stage, chances are they haven’t seen the last of that stage. For example, brainstorming may occur all along the way.

Figure out what your writing process looks like and whether there’s a particular stage where you tend to get stuck. Perhaps you love researching and taking notes on what you read, and you have a hard time moving from that work to getting started on your own first draft. Or once you have a draft, it seems set in stone and even though readers are asking you questions and making suggestions, you don’t know how to go back in and change it. Or just the opposite may be true; you revise and revise and don’t want to let the paper go.

Wherever you have trouble, take a longer look at what you do and what you might try. Sometimes what you do is working for you; it’s just a slow and difficult process. Other times, what you do may not be working; these are the times when you can look around for other approaches to try:

• Talk to your writing buddy and to other colleagues about what they do at the particular stage that gets you stuck.
• Read about possible new approaches in our handouts on brainstorming and revising .
• Try thinking of yourself as an apprentice to a stage of the writing process and give different strategies a shot.
• Cut your paper into pieces and tape them to the wall, use eight different colors of highlighters, draw a picture of your paper, read your paper out loud in the voice of your favorite movie star….

Okay, we’re kind of kidding with some of those last few suggestions, but there is no limit to what you can try (for some fun writing strategies, check out our online animated demos ). When it comes to conquering a block, give yourself permission to fall flat on your face. Trying and failing will you help you arrive at the thing that works for you.

Celebrate your successes

Start storing up positive experiences with writing. Whatever obstacles you’ve faced, celebrate the occasions when you overcome them. This could be something as simple as getting started, sharing your work with someone besides a teacher, revising a paper for the first time, trying out a new brainstorming strategy, or turning in a paper that has been particularly challenging for you. You define what a success is for you. Keep a log or journal of your writing successes and breakthroughs, how you did it, how you felt. This log can serve as a boost later in your writing life when you face new challenges.

Wait a minute, didn’t we already say that? Yes. It’s worth repeating. Most people find relief for various kinds of anxieties by getting support from others. Sometimes the best person to help you through a spell of worry is someone who’s done that for you before—a family member, a friend, a mentor. Maybe you don’t even need to talk with this person about writing; maybe you just need to be reminded to believe in yourself, that you can do it.

If you don’t know anyone on campus yet whom you have this kind of relationship with, reach out to someone who seems like they could be a good listener and supportive. There are a number of professional resources for you on campus, people you can talk through your ideas or your worries with. A great place to start is the UNC Writing Center. If you know you have a problem with writing anxiety, make an appointment well before the paper is due. You can come to the Writing Center with a draft or even before you’ve started writing. You can also approach your instructor with questions about your writing assignment. If you’re an undergraduate, your academic advisor and your residence hall advisor are other possible resources. Counselors at Counseling and Wellness Services are also available to talk with you about anxieties and concerns that extend beyond writing.

Apprehension about writing is a common condition on college campuses. Because writing is the most common means of sharing our knowledge, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we write. This handout has given some suggestions for how to relieve that pressure. Talk with others; realize we’re all learning; take an occasional risk; turn to the people who believe in you. Counter negative experiences by actively creating positive ones.

Even after you have tried all of these strategies and read every Writing Center handout, invariably you will still have negative experiences in your writing life. When you get a paper back with a bad grade on it or when you get a rejection letter from a journal, fend off the negative aspects of that experience. Try not to let them sink in; try not to let your disappointment fester. Instead, jump right back in to some area of the writing process: choose one suggestion the evaluator has made and work on it, or read and discuss the paper with a friend or colleague, or do some writing or revising—on this or any paper—as quickly as possible.

Failures of various kinds are an inevitable part of the writing process. Without them, it would be difficult if not impossible to grow as a writer. Learning often occurs in the wake of a startling event, something that stirs you up, something that makes you wonder. Use your failures to keep moving.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Hjortshoj, Keith. 2001. Understanding Writing Blocks . New York: Oxford University Press.

This is a particularly excellent resource for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Hjortshoj writes about his experiences working with university students experiencing block. He explains the transitional nature of most writing blocks and the importance of finding support from others when working on long projects.

Rose, Mike. 1985. When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in Writer’s Block and Other Composing-Process Problems . New York: Guilford.

This collection of empirical studies is written primarily for writing teachers, researchers, and tutors. Studies focus on writers of various ages, including young children, high school students, and college students.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Writing Too Slowly? The Reason Why and What You Can Do

One simple mind-shift into another gear.

Every day is pain-staking, creaking. Writing your academic journal article, book, or dissertation is coming along so slowly. But it’s not because you’re not trying.

Maybe it even looks like now you’re going to be in big trouble if it doesn’t go faster. It’s getting late.

Or you are starting up and nothing is taking off. You know you have to write. You have a topic. Some material. Even maybe an idea of what you want to say eventually. So why won’t it get going?

Well, I know what it is far more often than not. I’ve had the occasion to observe the process of many academic writers and know what’s going on most of the time. Now, it might not be true in every case, but you have to check. You have to know if this is you, because there is something you can do about it.

Here’s the simple test.

When you start off writing your piece, find out if you basically believe that the words that you are writing are the words the reader will be reading.

This may be a sign that you are writing prematurely.

Of course when we are far along into a piece, or revising or editing, then obviously our frame of mind should include the belief that:

“The words that I am writing are the words the reader will be reading.”

More or less.

But when we are earlier on, drafting, this frame of mind can be the kiss of death.

Yet I find many writers only write in this frame of mind. When they start writing their piece, they actually feel, believe, and/or actually ARE writing the words that the reader will be reading, more or less.

And if this works for you, fine. But if things are painfully slow, then I can almost guarantee one thing:

You are not presently ready to begin writing.

Now that doesn’t mean you don’t have ideas. It doesn’t mean you don’t have material, experience, expertise, knowledge of the sub-literature, etc….

Those are big fat myths of readiness by the way! Those don’t make you ready to write. Many people put off writing because they haven’t mastered those things. But that’s not necessary at all.

And it absolutely does not mean you should not be writing.

What does it mean to be writing prematurely?

“Not presently ready to begin writing” means you haven’t done enough pre-writing to enable you to write under the framework “the words that I am writing are the words the reader will be reading.”

Writing under that belief, and/or fact, is a particular kind of writing . And that writing often requires a lot of pre-writing first to go smoothly.

But many writers skip ahead, and skip over the important step of pre-writing, and begin composing their actual text.

Many writers who write painfully slow do not do the necessary pre-writing. It’s not part of their process.

So when they set out to write something, they are actually writing that thing.

That’s crazy! You have to pay your dues first. No wonder it’s so hard and slow!

Well, of course I have to admit it’s not exactly crazy if it works. It’s not like you can’t make that work. You can. People do. They can write very good things that way. Some great writers have written that way (but more haven’t!).

So we are talking here really about a couple things that have to be true for this to be of help:

• You are writing too slowly and painfully. If you are not writing painfully slow, this doesn’t apply to you.
• And you want it to go faster and easier. You might be writing too slowly, but you don’t want to change that. Which is fine.

But if you want to change, you have to stop writing prematurely, which doesn’t mean not write at all. What it means is that you don’t start writing the actual piece, the article, chapter, whatever, without a lot of prewriting first.

That writing can be outlines and beats. But it should also be tangents, reactions, rants, wording experiments, games, sketches, arguments between opposing points of view, anything, and it could also be essay writing and article writing, with one caveat: although it is in the form of conventional exposition, as you are writing it you have little to no belief that you are writing the actual text that you are going to use.

You are exploring, trying things on for size, seeing how things play out in words.

For some writers this comes naturally. For others it has never crossed the mind to do prewriting. It’s thought that when you start to write, you open the document file, and start writing the introduction, or a different section. That’s how you write.

But many successful writers pre-write for quite a while, days at least, or weeks, and sometimes longer before they start on the real thing.

So why do many other writers not (and suffer the consequences)?

What makes writing so hard and slow?

There’s a simple reason and a deeper reason why some writers skip over pre-writing, and both reasons need to be addressed if you want to change this.

1. The simple reason is that it’s just never been your habit. You’ve always done it one way (and if that’s fine with you, no need to change). And the simple solution to that aspect of it is to start getting more practice at writing in an exploratory mode. Get looser with writing exercises and techniques that rub up against the over utilitarian relation to writing. Join our email list and you can get some help in email and there is a ton more inside our members’ creative writing bootcamp to help with that. Practice your instrument!

2. The deeper reason has to do with a fear of wasting efforts and a belief in a scarcity within you.

Both of these are completely erroneous beliefs and fears.

Of course, the current economic situation in the academic careers doesn’t exactly help put these fears to rest.

But that doesn’t make them any less untrue.

It’s simply not true that investing some time and effort in pre-writing is a waste of time or energy. Instead, it’s setting you up for an easier and faster time later.

And it’s simply not true that your creativity is a limited resource that can run dry. Letting free play with words happen does not exhaust the well, it deepens it.

And if we do try pre-writing, but we judge our pre-writing on the basis of how many pieces of text we can cut and paste and use out of it, we’ve still got it all wrong.

In prewriting, we’re exercising our instrument, and we’re touching into our topic through written words. That’s going to connect with our subconscious, which is going to continue the thinking and the writing in the background, throughout the day, in our sleep even. We are pushing at some things, pulling at others, seeing how it works, what happens, and what can possibly happen, as well as discovering things we definitely don’t want to do.

All of that is making a huge contribution to making things easier later.

The fact is, we can’t know or judge the effects of pre-writing through our normal evaluative processes. In fact, it’s those judgmental processes themselves—trying not to waste, trying to maximize every little bit—that are the thing pushing us into writing prematurely.

We can only know the effects of pre-writing partially, when we look back and see how better things are for us, overall in our process. Some of the reasons why it’s better we can know, some we can guess, and others will remain a mystery.

Some writers are too afraid to let go and do something that does not appear in surface dimensions to be a direct payoff.

Some writers will feel that a few reams of pre-writing are a waste of time because the text in there can’t be imported into their document or doesn’t have direct relation to what will, eventually, be in the document.

And fair enough, to repeat, you can write well without pre-writing. Joseph Conrad, famously, wrote a couple sentences per full day of writing labor.

But other writers, many of them, routinely warm up to writing, warm up to their topic, really grasp it a bit in their hands and take some many days of practice swings before they take a crack at it.

And the reason they are loose enough to do that is because they have no problem just writing for writing’s sake. They trust in writing. They don’t see it a potential waste. Writing helps writing.

Test Yourself:

So, to get into this mindset, at least on occasion, or to just try it out for a while, there is that simple test you can do:

When you write, is it always under the belief that the words that you are writing are the words the reader will be reading?

If so, can you try to write a little, sometimes, without that belief, and push against the fear that it’s a waste?

Or if you do it a little, can you expand that, write in exploration a little more?

You have to try and see.

Trust writing.

Trust writing, just a little, and you will start to see that writing is trustworthy. And then you’ll trust it more.

And that’s when things take off.

To get some writing exercises that will help you learn to pre-write, join our email list and get 5 eBooks sent to you to help with your writing, or join the Creative Academic Writing Bootcamp , if spaces open up.

Why Do We Write? 4 Key Reasons Why Telling and Sharing Stories Matters

by Joe Bunting | 214 comments

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Why do we write? Nonfiction and fiction writing has been an instrumental way for people to connect to one another in the real world.

Stories are about change, and by reading and watching them we, ourselves, can change for the better.

But do people write for different reasons, and are some of those reasons more meaningful than others?

Are you sitting at your computer right now, possibly plunging through your first draft (or much later draft), and debating whether or not a writing career is the one for you?

Do you wonder if the written word is how you'll make your mark on the world—and if it is, is a writing career what you want in life?

Why Telling and Sharing Stories Matters

It's safe to say there are more writers now than at any other time in history.

At the beginning of my writing career, I went to the AWP conference in Chicago, eager to learn and excited to start making connections with other writers. There were 10,000 other writers there. That was one conference years back.

Back when I first wrote this post, in 2012, the amount of creative writing programs at universities had exploded from about 50 in the 1980s to over 300 just in the US. There were over 110 million bloggers running their own blogs.

By now, I'm sure the numbers have only increased.

That's a lot of competition.

Seriously though, why do we write? Why are all of us pursuing writing in the face of the increasingly limited attention spans of the broader public?

It's not like we're making much money at it, if any.

What motivates us to keep going? How does writing make a positive difference in our own life, and in the lives of those around us?

4 Reasons Why We Write

Whether or not we're writing short stories for a high school assignment, finishing novels that we self-publish on Amazon, or writing full-time with the success of notable authors like Stephen King (wouldn't that be amazing?), we write for many reasons.

However, there are four main reasons why I write. I wonder if these will resonate with you:

1. To Be Alive

We write to be fully alive.

Sir Ken Robinson says:

The arts especially address the idea of aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak; when you’re present in the current moment; when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing that you’re experiencing; when you are fully alive.

The act of writing draws us into the moment. We see the blades of grass, hear the sharp chirp of the morning cricket, watch the shade travel from one edge of the yard to the other, seemingly for the first time.

Writing helps us make art out of everyday life, those ordinary moments we might otherwise overlook.

With each piece of writing, we're invited to see the world from a fresh perspective.

We seize an opportunity to ground ourselves in a point of view that can be our own—or that of a new character. One who waits eagerly to teach us something special about ourselves and our potentials.

Writing gives us a surplus of moments to really sympathize with a person, explore a world, and learn from a story in a way that reminds us what really matters in life.

We engender a growth mindset through writing—and writing deeply.

A writing life is rich with truth and adventures that bring our very beings to life.

2. To Make a Name for Ourselves

George Orwell says one motivation to write is sheer egoism, that we write out of the “desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc.”

That's part of it, but I think the motivation goes much deeper than being well-liked in the present moment.

If you're being honest, you would agree that it would be nice to live forever. But if you can't live forever physically, then why can't your memory live forever?

We're still talking about Chaucer, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, and George Elliott long after their deaths. Why not you?

While this might not be the most unselfish of motivations, it's certainly natural. Writers who share their stories build a legacy that will also beyond their lifetimes.

Writing lets us make a mark on the present world and future generations—if writers have the courage to print their stories on paper, and then pass it on to a reader.

And, with some luck, that readers passes that story on to another reader, who passes it on again.

3. To Change the World

People consume now more than ever in the history of the world.

We eat more, we listen to more music, and we consume more information. However, we've also learned enough about consumerism to know it won't make us happy.

Writing gives us a chance to turn the tides on consumerism. Rather than consume more, we can make something.

Instead of fueling destruction, we empower creation. Isn't that exciting?

Every day, when you put your fingers to the keys, you're creating something. And then, with the click of button, you can share it with the world.

Humans have a built in need to make our mark on the world. We want to bring new things to life, to mold things into the image we have in our imaginations, to subdue the earth.

We write not just to change the world, but to create a new world.

And with each new world, new possibilities.

New stories, which not only complete the circle of life but enrich it.

4. To Discover Meaning

The psychiatrist Victor Frankl posited that the main search of mankind is not happiness or pleasure but meaning. “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose,” he wrote in Man's Search for Meaning .

Writers are uniquely gifted to find meaning for themselves and to help others find meaning.

In fact, this has always been the main task of storytellers. Every story matters to the person living it, and our job is to tell the universal stories, the stories that reveal the story of every person on the earth.

We write to bring meaning to the world.

That goal isn't synonymous with writing a best seller on the  New York Times  list—although, wouldn't that be nice?

You never know whose life your story could change.

That's why, deep down, we, as writers, understand that it's important to not only start but finish what we write.

We All Have Stories to Tell

Regardless of how many copies of a book you sell, stories share meaning and messages with patterns, and those patterns are absorbed and retained by people reaching out to the world for answers.

Each of our lives is a precious story in itself. And each of of us has an unlimited amount of stories to tell.

I hope that you will write your stories down for us. If your goal is to write your dream book in the new year, I hope you'll consider joining our writing community to get the support you deserve. Check out our Pro Practice Community today.  

What do you think? Why do you write, and why are there so many people writing today? Let us know in the comments .

Today, spend some time free writing. As you write, contemplate your motivations. Are they pure enough to keep you going despite everything?

Write for fifteen minutes . When you're finished, post your practice in the Pro Practice Workshop , and be sure to leave feedback on a few posts by other writers.

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Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

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214 Comments

I write to help myself. I have to write or something very important is missing. I write to help others too. That’s it plain and simple. 

It’s interesting to think that is a ton of competition, but I personally think that is a very large audience. We are in this together. Writers read. If you write something Joe, I’ll most likely read it.  

Agreed, Jim.

Thanks 🙂 Although my next post is about how Jimi Hendrix is the most overrated guitarist ever. Shoot.

rapidly clicking unsubscribe..and unfriending… 😉 

I like your thought of a large audience.  

You know thinking of the large audience and thinking of how many writers here I honestly enjoy.  Not only are most writers readers, most of us read more than we write.  Or at least I do.  I wonder if that’s true for most of us.  If I had written as much as I’ve read in my lifetime my hands would have fallen off long ago.  

I agree with you. I think having more writers enter the fray is only a good thing for writers and writing.

Agreed. It reminds me of when I used to work at an antiques store, in a small town on a main street lined with antique stores. The owner of the place where I worked always talked about how all the other stores being around was good for everyone more than it was competition. And they all kind of looked out for each other. Same thing with writers/readers.

I’ll read what you write too Joe, unless you put something bad about J.K.Rowling in the title. I can’t stand writing snobs. I’m way too low-brow for that 😉

I just changed the title of my next post. Why Jimi Hendrix and JK Rowling Are For Musical and Literary Infants Respectively (But Not Respectfully).

Cue the crickets and the silence!

Oh my goodness, too funny! It doesn’t work without the bit in brackets.

I was just thinking to myself the other day…why do I write?  I sat and made a list of a zillion reasons why I do, but when it all boils down, these four categories are why. Although I dream to be published one day, for now, writing is my outlet and my best friend.  Beautiful post!

Thanks, Malia. I’m glad I got them all 🙂

It’s a good question and a hard one to answer simply. I think it’s good for the soul, to write. Like the number pi the soul goes on forever and I think we write because we want our words to go on forever in some way. Plus, for me, it soothes the soul and provides an outlet that keeps me alive and gives release to the voices in my head …

I like the idea that the soul goes on and on like pi! All the more reason to just keep letting the words flow out, because you can never run out!

Hi Joe! Good post (as usual) and good question. Why do I write? Because I enjoy it. I enjoy creating new worlds, placing characters in them, and then seeing what happens. It’s pure entertainment for me and hopefully for my readers. If there is a deeper meaning to my writing, aside from my being a hopeful romantic, it’s subliminal. If that makes me shallow, then shallow I shall be. I read to be entertained and I write to do the same.

This is definitely a good recipe for a lifelong love affair with writing! I don’t think there is anything shallow about creating for the pure enjoyment of it.

 Thank you, Misaralee. It took years for me to realize that writing for my own enjoyment wasn’t wrong and that trying to write in a manner unnatural to my own WAS wrong. Now, I work hard to put down the best effort I can and hope folks like reading it as much as I did writing it.

Hey that subliminal stuff will rise up out of the writing if you keep working.   I took a workshop once and submitted a story about two women with the same name who were very different.  I thought it was just a funny story with funny characters but I got remarks about theme and underlying meaning.  I think it did have some of that but I didn’t know it when I wrote it.  Of course maybe people were just being workshop students who felt they needed to say something that sounded good.  I hope not. 

 True enough, Marianne. Theme is often unconscious and the writer may not discover it until after the piece is complete. I’m sure your fellow workshoppers were sincere. I’m just saying that I’m not a writer on a mission – except to entertain.

There is a filmstrip in my head that will not stop running until I put it down on paper. I must write so I can view the next film in my head.

DO IT! Then post it here. 🙂

I write for the same reason that I bake: I want someone to take a taste and tell me it’s yummy and then I tell them that I substituted wheat bran for white flour and it’s actually very healthy.

I LOVE that, Nora.

Great analogy, Nora. My wife tries to pull that on me occasionally, but I’m on to her.

Love that! Then, you should say to them “BOOM! You just got WHEAT BRAN’D.”

The electricity of words was thought to be expendable and a drain on the central power grid and so the ever logical lizard ordered rolling blackouts centered on that once thriving bohemian village. The residents were given rations in exchange for copy writing and editing work for the central brain corporation, delivering dead fish words to the external overlords who kept the roof over our head and the fridge stocked with hotdogs. The life I had thought extinguished became a refugee, deep where the sharp, sanitizing talons of despair and self-preservation could not liquidate it. But oh bliss, the grid is flooded with excess energy. The words sneak up and surprise my conscious mind with their freedom and the visceral strength of expression. Did I really write that? How could such guttural expression have come from me, the cube dwelling citizen of this plastic empire? I bring myself to tears with the release of emotions and truths I had buried deep in an unconscious place. The lamp of words lightens up my heart and draws out the poison and the passion that had buried itself there. And now I write for sheer joy of playing with words. Building towers and landscapes with strokes of a pen. Eliciting surprised laughter from a friend when I turn a unique phrase in conversation, balancing cliché on its head. I have the smug satisfaction of being the master of blank spaces, giving form to emptiness with ink and pixels. Corralling the world without limitations, without expense or need of materials, only my fingers and the blank space. Signal the engineer to open the flood gates! Make inkblots on the page! The more abstract the better. The more spontaneous and unconscious, the wilder and more beautiful the art is to me.

Wow Missaralee.  That was like poetry.  “the life I thought . .could not liquidate it”. That is amazing.  I think you should clean this up and submit it to one of the very experimental literary journals.  There are some amazing sentences and thoughts in this piece.  

Thank you Marianne, that is incredibly kind! Your comment has encouraged me to keep working on this piece, we’ll see what happens.

I love the imagery!

Thanks Yalí, so glad you enjoyed it!

Oh, cube dwelling citizen of plaztic empire… your piece caught my eye immediately and kept on thrilling me.  Good stuff, Missaralee!

Thanks PJreece! The plastic empire is daily providing new fodder for my cannons 😉

This does read like poetry, especially the line about building towers.  Beautiful work!

This isn’t just an exercise for me, it is a repeating question in my mind the past couple of months.  I’ve come up with a few reasons.

I mainly began to write out loud because I was emboldened by my father’s death in January.  Some deep need in me to make a difference in the the world.  Time slipping through my fingers.  It’s getting away.  What have I done? How have I impacted others?

I write to open my heart and soul to friends and family.  To offer myself in love.  Perhaps to encourage someone.  Maybe connect on some deeper heart level and let them know that they are not alone.  That I am not alone.  

I write to encourage.  Self worth can be elusive as a stay at home mom.  Somewhere I read “If you want to change the world, put pen to paper.”  It has wrapped around my heart.  I hear it when I am struggling to find my identity in the midst of changing diapers, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning.  I know people are running about in the outside world making a difference, running for senate, serving the poor hot meals, standing arm in arm protesting for a belief.  All the while, I am bent over little loves, wiping noses, kissing hurts, and feeding hungry little mouths.  I can’t help but wonder how many other people question if what they are doing “counts.”  If indeed it will make a difference.   

And finally, I write as an artistic outlet.  I may not have the time I crave to put brightly colored oil paint to white canvas as I once did, but I can express myself through this new found art.  Beautiful, challenging, poetic word art.  

Okay, so are we really just supposed to stick to the 15 mins??  I would really like to go back and edit/ change some things.  But for my first exercise I suppose I’ll stick to the rules.

Good to see you here, Ali 🙂

I love that idea, “Writing out loud.” Great image for blogging.

And yes, if you don’t write for exactly 15 minutes you get fired from The Write Practice. 😉 No mostly, it’s a good limit so people can read and give feedback. 

Fired first day.  Rats.

Hey, when will the next “show off contest” subject be posted?  That sounds fun!  And challenging!  Thanks for all the work you have put into this site.  Really great job!

We’ll post the next contest in the first week of August. You should definitely join in. 

Of course, Ali. I don’t know what I would do without it.

Okay Joe, so this community you’ve helped to bring together are super sweet and encouraging.  Awesome.

Just wait. They’re like sirens. They suck you in and then stab you in the back. 

Just kidding community. I love you.

It’s a clock-in, clock-out system isn’t it Joe?

That reminds me: I entered an incorrect punch on my time card. Who do I see about getting a manual override of my time put in?

See el head honcho, numero uno, big boss man, Oz, King Bunting about that Brian. He won’t handle it himself of course. But he can redirect you a thousand times, to the drudges who work in the basement. Hope that helps!

1. You’re a clown, Brian. 2. You’re a munchkin, Yvette. The Oz variety.

Beautifully said Ali.  I like all of it but I like that you said writing is a way to connect on a deeper level with your loved ones. I never thought about it that way but it’s true that we can put on paper and read what others had on paper carefully and slowly.  When people talk it’s so fast and affected by the moment that we may not be able to get what’s real for us out or hear what’s real for others.  Sometimes I feel like I know Virginia Woolf better than I do my sisters, and I definitely know her better than I do acquaintances that I encounter frequently. 

Marianne, I know exactly what you mean!  I love to get inside people’s head through reading.  People are sometimes much more open when no one is sitting in front of them.  The small talk is cut, and the real heart revealed.

This is so encouraging! You are not alone and everything you do counts. In writing you capture those moments of love and care and then you can turn them over in your hands like the precious jems they are, revealing the flashes of multi-coloured light.

Missaralee, thank you for comparing the wiping of noses and other “love and care moments” to “precious jems”.    I’ll try and think of them that way tomorrow.  It will probably make me laugh or smile at some point!  

Ali, you are making a diffence in the world. Being a mom is one of the most important job a person can do. All the things you are doing is important and are part of who you are.

Word art is a part of you also along with oil painting.

Who you are is a creator. A great quality to have.

Thank you BJ house writer.  🙂  It’s nice to hear that I am making a splash in the world, even if God is the only one who can see it most days.   I like thinking of myself as a creator.  That’s fun.  Thanks!

You are a vital influence to the lives of a future generation.  A stay at home mom is priceless.  Your impact on others is seen through the character of your children and the respect of your husband.  

Keep writing.

Thanks for the encouragement Shelley!  A stay at home is priceless!  Not always glamorous, but God is teaching me so much through this process.  And most days I love it!  🙂  

so how do I link my name to my blog address??  hmmm…. help anyone? 

Anne Frank said that paper is more patient than men (and I suppose, women) and I have found that it is true. Writing has helped me through dark times, it has been   an outlet, a way to put order in my head and my heart. 

Right now, I am writing a story about my great-grandparents, whom I never knew, because it is a part of our family history that no one really knows about. I *need* to tell this story, even if half of it is made up. The same goes for other stories; I just *need* to tell them.

I do the same for my family.  It helps to tie things together I think.  

I love that idea about paper being more patient than men! I always long to be able to say outloud, exactly what I would write in the moment, rather than the spit-flecked word jumble that usually tumbles out.

Strange as it may sound to say, I write because I have to.  I feel an urge to tell stories and would do so whether people listened or not.

I agree, I think writers write because they have to, whether anyone’s listening.

You’re not alone, RD. 🙂

This is true. I had an art professor in college who once talked about how creative people get cranky if something’s keep them from being creative. If I don’t write, make art, do something creative, too many days in a row, I become a straight up crumb bum.

The fuchsia blossoms of a crept myrtle floated on rain water that had fallen into two large terra cotta saucers.  A black and white chicken pecked at the water.  It was what’s called a Wyandotte, the feathers were white edged in black, resulting in a chicken dressed in lace, a chicken bride.  She bent to drink from the terra cotta saucers. Dale sat cross legged on the porch in a plastic chair with metal legs, a sketch pad in her lap, a colored pencil in her hand, a fuchsia colored pencil.  The farm was a jumble of broken things, cars, bathtubs, refrigerators, and assorted boards and pieces of siding.  Ivy and honeysuckle grew over the junk but new junk appeared. 

To Dale’s left iris and a bird bath grew with more chickens pecking for bugs.  In the concrete birdbath a bright green trailing plant flourished.  To the right was another garden.  That garden of marigolds and rock roses marked the grave of an old gun dog who had guarded the farm for his lifetime.  Dale wanted to draw the scene or part of it because she wanted to remember the great beauty here, that sprang forth in summer to cover the rusted, grey discarded things on the old farm.  It was a place that told the true tale of life and death to Dale.  She felt in adequate to the task. 

There was an arch of ivy growing between two trees that stood on either side of a trail that led away from the house.  She saw her niece there in a wedding dress beside her wife.  They would be married here because no one would have them in town.  They will have to be married in the summer – thought Dale – the winter here is too depressing, and she wondered what would be summer and winter for them, those two young girls?  How would they get through?  She worried. 

The hen pecked at the water in the saucer.  A dog was watching her. 

“You can’t keep chickens and dogs like that,” Dale had told her. “Once a dog kills a chicken it will kill more, no matter how much you train it not to.”

“No she just did that because she was an adolescent,” said Dale’s sister, talking about the dog.  “She knows better now.”

Dale lifted the pencil and began again on her drawing of fuchsia blossoms floating in terra cotta saucers.  

The chicken with her lacy wings pecked and then stood in the saucer with her big three toed feet that looked reptilian like the feet of a dragon.  

The dog lay in the sun and watched for a while, then it slept.  

Sorry for the bad punctuation in that piece.  I want to edit it but I’m not able to go back into it and fix it.  I wrote it straight off the top of my head from something I saw in the paper.  

It’s a lovely piece, Marianne. Thanks for sharing it!

I love the image of the dog and the chicken. Did you draw inspiration from a real place? 🙂

Yes It started with a real place and I saw the terra cotta saucers weight the crepe myrtle blossoms floating in them and the chicken.  The marriage of the two women came from an article I read in the newspaper this morning.  The drawing was from thinking about what  and why we write.  It just all got mushed together in my brain and came out like that I guess. The dog killing the chickens is real too and I thought about how society might kill the two girls maybe because the chicken was in a lacy dress.  It was fun.  I haven’t actually written anything in a while.  I’ve been reading a lot though.  

that should say “with the crepe myrtle blossoms”. I don’t’ know what’s wrong with me and my proofreading today.  Embarrassing.  

Lovely.  And I have chickens, too.  I agree about the feet.  All week I’ve been taking them frozen watermelon and ice water to keep them going in this heat.  I guess I kind of love them.

I enjoyed the image of a ramshackle place where plants grow wild here and there and everywhere, reclaiming the broken objects. Also the chicken bride.

Thanks Missaralee. I posted it too quickly and am seeing errors all over the place. Oh well to late now.  

Marianne, great job. I could really envision this rustically beautiful scene. It was full of real life and redemption.

You do such a good job at describing the scenery Marianne. I got such a pretty picture in my head.

Thanks Anna 

The chicken with the reptilian feet of a dragon and yet the dog just lay in the sun and watched her for a while. Pure magic Marianne, as always!

Thank you Yvette Carol.  They do have really awful looking feet.  

I write for a lot of reasons but the biggest one I think is because I love to read, I love literature!

Joe… as serendipity would have it… I have just posted an item called “WHY WE READ”.   I found your piece and the comments valuable… and I’m going to copy the whole shebang into a file for future reference.  Cheers.

Last week I introduced myself as a writer. As the words left my mouth a little thrill shot down my spine and my heart skipped! I’ve never publicly called myself a writer before. 

I wondered why? Maybe until this point I hadn’t been sure that I was. Part of me was waiting for permission, but I’m not sure from whom. This day was different, I realized I didn’t need permission. It would be like asking for permission to identify myself as a woman or a brunet. 

I am a writer because I was born with something to say. Just ask my mother! Apparently before I was fully delivered my head emerged screaming! 

Whether I ever write a book that becomes a best seller, receive an award, or finally win a “Show Off” contest, I’m a writer. I was born to communicate, and to deny that would be to deny part of who I am. 

I am a writer.

My motivation shifts from year to year, season to season. At any given time there’s a mixture of each of the four reasons. I’ve been contemplating my motivation again recently as I finish up my novel and begin looking for an agent. 

Why do I write? Does the world really need another novel, another blog post, another e-book. Yes and no. The entire world may not need to hear what we need to say, but our sphere of influence does. Words of hope, words of healing, words of wisdom or challenge, words of joy, of meaning, of beauty, they are our gift to the hearts of those around us. Loved ones and strangers alike. Our hearts long to connect and words allow us to do just that. 

I write because I love to. I do see the world differently when it flows from my fingers. I write to find meaning, to add value. I’m embarrassed to say that once in a while I do write with the delusion of fame and recognition, but that’s truly the least satisfying. Mostly I write to be a part of transformation. I’m most gratified when the words I write resonate in the heart of a reader and we both grow into better people.

*** Great thought provoking post Joe. I agree, sometimes the amount of ‘competition’ is overwhelming. I’m incredibly grateful my writing isn’t required to feed my family and I have the freedom to just enjoy. 

Wow Beck, I really connected with the idea that “the entire world may not need to hear what we need to say, but our sphere of influence does.” It made me think of writing for the young women in my life, women I want to see floorish into confident, joyful chasers of passion! I will think of this from now on when I’m blocked and when I don’t feel I have anything new to say.

Whenever I think my voice doesn’t matter, or I will never be the next ____ (fill in the blank), I think of the women who have written to me or commented because a blog post has encouraged them. It helps to write for a smaller audience, if it translates into a larger one great, but a smaller, personal one is more compelling and manageable I think. Anyhow, I’m glad you connected with that idea! I’m sure there are women who are better because you share your words!

I love the idea of writing for your sphere of influence as well.  That whole paragraph is just brilliant.  Words allow us to connect to the ones we love…absolutely true.

Thank you Rachel! I think seeing our audience, regardless of how small, as worthy to receive the gift of our words is inspiring. 

Beck – You do indeed have something to say.  I find your writing unique and uplifting.  I don’t think you need to feel embarrassed to say you think sometimes of fame and recognition.  I think that just goes along with feeling that you are telling a truth that others need to hear or with wanting validation.  Either way I find it hard to believe that anyone who puts things into a public forum like this doesn’t want to be read by others (which kind of equals being published).  Why else would the post here? You are young and very lively and positive and you are very good with creating images.  I still remember a the person finding the letters in the attic that were written to a man other than her grandfather. That was a very memorable story. You will get there IMO. 

Thank you Marianne! I do want to be read. Joe once said without an audience a writer is just someone who journals. I don’t want success to be what compels me though. I find it tarnishes my creativity and compassion. 

I’m tickled that you remember the love story about the letters. I was just thinking about that story today and wondering if I could use it in my next novel!  I so appreciate your encouragement!

Hey Beck, I resonated with your entire post. I especially liked, “I do see the world differently when it flows from my fingers.” I feel the same way. I am able to express myself more thoughtfully and honestly as I write.  I also appreciated your admission (or is it admittance?) to sometimes writing for the fame and recognition. It is so true that this motivation is the least satisfying. I know that I use writing (and The Write Practice) to get feedback and attention when I’m feeling particularly insignificant.

Thanks for your comment Tom. I’ve found when I hold the golden cow of fame or acceptance up as my goal of writing the joy and even creativity are tarnished. My best writing comes when I’m honest and selfless, but that’s a hard place to stay. 

I thought the same thing about people laughing at me! I assumed I couldn’t say I’m a writer because they’ll ask me, “what have you written?” And I can’t say, a blog! But then I realized I spend more hours writing than doing just about anything, so what else would you call that?! Keep practicing and growing more comfortable with who you are as a writer and the easier it will be to embrace, and admit! At least that’s what I tell myself!

Congratulations on coming out of the literary closet Beck!! Stay out here in the sun girl 🙂 Well done.

Thanks Yvette!

I would like to see your blog. I liked this post.

Thanks Sandra. Here is a link to my original blog. I haven’t written in quite some time due to a broken computer, a new job, and my husbands loss of a job. But this blog is a good archive of some of the best of what I’ve written. http://beckfarfromhome.blogspot.com/?m=1

alright I will look at it. 🙂 Thanks.

Joe, this piece was exceptional. You made it into my Great Quotes file for the first time, not once but twice, with one post! Don’t you think, that it’s more like everyone has always secretly wanted to write (or nearly everyone). I know that throughout my life, whenever I’ve mentioned to someone — anyone — that I write, the reply has usually been a variation of ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book’. The only difference these days, is that the means to ‘publish’ one’s writing has come within easy reach. 

I’m so honored, Yvette. Thanks!

I definitely think it’s true that most people want to write, and it makes sense. We all want to be fully alive. We all want to be loved and respected, not just in our lifetimes but for forever. We all would like to make the world a better place. And if Victor Frankl is right (and I think he is), we all want to experience meaning. Everyone wants to write because those are four amazing things writing offers.

I’m reading Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” right now. Great read. Great blog, btw, Joe!

Awesome, Tom. Isn’t he amazing?

“What is the meaning of all this?” came her voice from the other room. One of the kids was obviously in trouble, I could tell by the tone. I continued pecking away on my computer. I was in the midst of writing a pivotal scene for my novel when my wife poked her head inside the door of my office. “I said, what is the meaning of all this?”

I swiveled around in my chair and faced the doorway. “Oh, were you talking to me?” I asked.

“Um, yes! I want to know what’s the meaning of this right here!” She pointed her angry finger at an open page in a spiral notebook. It took her a moment as she moved the notebook back and forth like she was playing an invisible trombone.

“’I’m feeling lost and alone. I have no one to turn to and I feel I’m drowning,’” she read. “Did you write this?”

“Are you reading my journal?” I asked in a shocked and accusatory tone.

“Wait, that’s not all. ‘How can I ever be happy again with all this guilt and shame? Why did I ever agree to meet up with her?’” My wife shook my exposed journal in my face as if she was trying to empty it of the hurtful words and then placed her clinched hands on her hips. “Can you explain to me the meaning of all this?”

“I’m going to ask you the same question, sweetheart! Why the hell are you reading my journal? That is my own private writing and it’s none of you damn business!”

“None of my damn business? If you’re cheating on me, then it’s certainly my damn business!”

“Cheating on you? I’m not cheating on you!”

“Then who did you “meet up with?” She accompanied her snarky tone with air quotes.

I quickly grabbed my journal out of her fist and stormed out of the room. I grabbed my keys and headed toward the garage. I could hear her crying in the room where I left her. My face felt hot and the back of my neck felt chilled. Beads of sweat ran down my cheeks. Or was it tears? My stomach was gurgling acid and I could hear my heart pounding inside my ears. I grabbed a pen sitting on the counter on my way out and slammed the door behind me.

What was the meaning of all this?

I like the way this escalates so quickly, the way arguments do.  I like the description of her waving the notebook like a trombone.  I would like to know what happens. The dialogue is great here like it always is in your writing.  

The first line said so much! Well-chosen words can convey time, era, personality even class. Immediately I had an image of who this lady was 🙂

I like how you used that last sentence. Well done.

I originally wrote this on paper, so this is a little bit edited (not much though).  Also, I couldn’t stop at 15 minutes, so it’s pretty long…sorry about that.

Joan Didion said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.  What I want and what I fear.”  I know where she’s coming from.  Blogging can be difficult for me because I start off intending to write about one thing and by the time I’m finished I find I wrote about something completely different.  I have an idea, but in the process of writing about it I discover other thoughts and feelings I never knew I had, but that I want to share and I follow those down the rabbit hole.

For most of my life, writing has been a mostly personal endeavor.  I’ve had a blog for eight years, but for most of that time the only people who read it were close friends and family and it was just random thoughts about what was going on in my life.  And even then, I always had a journal with me to capture things I didn’t want to post.  In fact, most of my writing is really just journalling – processing things I’ve seen and read and heard and been a part of.

As a child, I was a sporadic journaller (is that a word?  I guess it is now).  I read many books where people discovered old diaries and read them, so I had a very specific idea of what a journal should be – lots of particular details, dates, etc.  I tried to do that, but my childhood was essentially boring and I never really knew what to write.  I just did it because the characters I loved did it.

In high school, a friend of mine began creating notebooks.  They were vibrant colors and included song lyrics and pictures and funny stories, all done artistically in bright markers.  You never saw Kristen without her notebook.  I thought this was fantastic and started carrying my own notebooks.  I lacked Kristen’s artistic vision and talent, however, and tended to listen to the same songs over and over, which meant I had a hard time coming up with new song lyrics to doodle during class.  I kept these notebooks for a few years, but they were never really more than a way to keep from falling asleep during class.

And then for high school graduation I received a Moleskine notebook.  It was beautiful.  So clean and professional looking, not flowery or girly (I am neither and most of the journals I had been given were).  It was exactly the kind of notebook I pictured college students and great thinkers using (I was aided in this fantasy by Moleskine’s self-description in the back pocket, of course).  I was a great thinker, a philosopher, a collegian, and this was where I would record my brilliant life.

From that point forward, I have always had a Moleskine close by.  It feels a little pretentious sometimes, a little too hipstery, but it’s a habit now.  Some have lasted me a few months, some have taken me almost a year and a half to fill.  Just last week I began my ninth one, although I am writing this in a journal that was a gift from a friend.  It feels a bit like a betrayal.

And now I found that I’ve gone down the rabbit hole again and have given you the history of my notebook preferences instead of talking about why I write.  But looking back at it, I can see my motivations.

I guess I started writing because other people – both fictional and real – did.  And then because I wanted to look cool.  And then because I wanted to look cool and mysterious, as if always having a notebook with me would make people want to know more about me and ease the transition to college.

And now?  Now I think I write because I cannot imaging myself not writing.  Because I cannot deal with my emotions without it.  Because I do not know what I think if I do not put it into words.

And, if I’m honest, a little bit because I hope I look cool and mysterious over here, scribbling in my notebook.

I love your writing style. I find myself going on bunny trails all the time.

Thank you!  I’m working on getting my bunny trails to at least lead back to the main trail eventually.  I’m glad some people can follow my weird brain  🙂

Journaling is so important.  I didn’t start writing until I was almost forty (when I first got a word processor that would check spelling since I cannot spell) and I wish I had at least tried to get things down before then because I can’t remember them.  I like your Moleskin remark.  A good notebook needs to be filled. That’s a good reason to write too.  

Thanks Marianne!  And filling a good notebook is definitely a reason to write  🙂

I just started journaling, yesterday.  I love Joan Didion.  Her words could have been mine.

At the moment, my blog is mostly read by close friends.   Combined with journaling, I’m writing more than ever.  Over time, I want my writing to take on a life of its own.  “Because I do not know what I think if I do not put it into words.”  

That’s why I write.  To see who I am.

Thanks, Shelley!

i write because i have ideas. i have always had ideas but i never “knew” that i could write them down. i am like all those people you talk to; you know, the people who see you scribbling in your notebook, and ask “what are you doing?” and you say “writing” and then you have a conversation, and then they say, “i have ideas too, but (insert excuse).” yeah i used to be one of those people, but then i realized that i COULD. 

ok yeah i want to be famous too…. but if i , or any of my manuscripts, even get *accepted* then i will feel awesome because SOMEONE at least ONE PERSON will read what i have to say… hopefully i write well enough for them to see my point of view,  and maybe even change their own POV to what I think is the better version. yeah… pretty selfish reasons, eh? but… seriously? it’s like being a doctor. most people go into it to help people, but they want to be treated fairly in their compensation. it’s the same  thing, i think, at least. 

I think you’re right.  There are lots of reasons for doing things and lots of ways to be compensated.  Writing is a lot of effort to go to for nothing.   

Been a long time since I posted a practice. Hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I had fun writing the piece. 🙂

The number one rule was to never stop walking.

Snow rained down hard on us and the wind blew restlessly, it pierced through our thick clothing and into our skin and into our bones, sapping away what little strength we had left. But we continued on walking. To stop was death.

We shuffled along in a straight line with the captain leading the group. I was positioned in the middle. Home. That’s where we were all headed. But will we be able to reach home? We started out as twenty strong men, a week passed us by and only half remained. Two were taken by hunger, one succumbed to injury, and the rest fell into the wraiths’ hands.

They were there. Lurking at the edge of our senses. Never stop walking. To stop was death. To stop was to be with the wraiths. They were the faint voices whispering to you at the edge of your hearing. You could smell their scent with each passing of the winter wind. They smelled of death and decay. You could see them at the periphery of your vision. Sometimes they looked like a friend you have back home, other times they looked like one of our dead brethren, there were rare times when they looked like themselves—demons of the mountain.

I placed one foot forward, followed by the other one. Each step seemed to be my last, but I pushed on. I pushed on. Then I heard her voice. We all did. It was faint at first but it grew louder with each step I took.

“Keep moving! Do not look at them!” The captain shouted. We moved on.

She was calling me to come to her. She was calling me home. She was calling me to rest. I felt myself crying. My heart wanted to go to my wife but my mind knew it was a lie of the wraiths. I felt so tired. I just wanted to stop and for everything to be over. I closed my eyes.

“I’m sorry captain! It was an honor to fight alongside you.” I raised my voice loud enough to be heard over the howling of the wind.

“Keep on walking, boy!” The captain replied. “Your wife’s dead! It isn’t her!”

I stopped. The ones behind me passed me by, their faces hidden by thick hoods. I looked to my side and there she was. She smiled at me and beckoned me to come closer. I did. I grabbed her in my arms.

From some far off place, I heard someone shouting. Shouts of pain and agony mixed with the winter wind. He had the same voice as mine. He was shouting for help. He sounded like he was in some great pain. I didn’t bother looking who it was. I was home.

Very eerie. It shows how much we miss someone who’s already gone but still is more important than life itself.

Great JB.  The “faint voices whispering to you at the edge of your hearing”, the occasional glimpses of the wraiths in the peripheral vision.  Those are good images. It’s easier to imagine a tired man being called to his death by his wife than being called to fight some more obvious source of evil.  It’s pretty spooky and I got a very clear image even though you didn’t spend a whole lot of time on description.  I can see the line of men moving though the snow in a dimly lit landscape. 

Thanks Marianne! Glad I was able to project the scene I desire. 🙂

It’s pretty sweet the way you always write something different, with new tonalities and shades. A wide-ranging imagination you have there JB,

Thank you Yvette. I love to experiment with new stuff 🙂

This reads like a classic “Twilight Zone” episode. Just to be clear, I mean that as a compliment. I love that show.

Thanks! Wouldn’t take it as an insult. Don’t worry. It’s super amazing for you to liken my story to one of Rod Serling’s. Thank you Brian 🙂

You’re welcome!

I’ve to agree with Orwell. I think all of us, we do the things we do because we want to be remembered. Some do it by writing, some through their movies, some by painting. We all want to be remembered in one way or another.

What you posted today is true I believe in all writers. We write because we have to even if it just taking notes on something we read.

Some write for fame and money and to be remembered.

Others like myself write because I love to share what I read and also hope that I may help some find out facts and events that are going on around them.

Blogging is a way to write, having your writing in print. Some people are writers but maybe not writing a full book is there thing. But rather just a short story.

Writing is a way to preserve what is going on in our time period.

Penny squeezed her knees as tight as she could. The darkness in the cave didn’t scar her. It calmed her. Here she was alone. Here she could think. They would be looking for her soon. He would be looking for her soon.

Why did Lord Peter insist that he knew what was best for her? Did he not realize that her roots had been grown in Oppannivol? She had no need for all the finery of being a Lady. She’d rather stay a nurse maid.

She heard shouting. They were shouting her name. Should she answer? She wanted to.

Suddenly, she herd footsteps on the cave floor. They were coming toward her. The heavy breathing was defiantly a mans. She could sense the other person right in front of her. He sat down and let out a sigh.

“Well Penny, how long of a time do you need before I tell them where you are?”

“Go away Peter.”

He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “You ought to be more respectful to someone thirteen years your elder.”

“You ought to give a girl her own choice when it comes to where she lives.”

“No, not to a girl, but to a woman, yes.”

She let a moment pass by. “I hate it when you are right.”

“I this case, I hate it as well. I wish you were old enough to make the right choice, so I would not have to force it on you.”

I like the dialogue and I assume this is a WIP and that the characters would make more sense if I read the the whole thing. It seems like Penny is Peter’s ward or maybe he has kidnapped her and then some other bad people are looking for her too.  

I could almost feel the snow falling on me. 

Living fully and discovering meaning are the top two reasons I write.  I try to write everyday, even if it’s just one sentence (that maybe takes me 10 minutes to get just right).  But a lot of time writing for me is emotionally draining, and I have to stop (or maybe rest) for a little while to get the strength to keep on going.  Writing can be such a physical and psychological effort, but yet I can’t help myself.  Gotta write!

Bathsheba in a Hot Tub – Free Writing Exercise

I pretend I’m Bathsheba, stepping into my hot tub instead of an ancient pool, which I’m sure Bathsheba would have done if she’d had the chance.  The man who watches me, and I know he watches me, across the field in a house with a three-car garage, is my snake-hipped version of King David.

Tonight I’m wearing my pink kimono that hits me just above the knee and little silver kitten heels.  My husband Joey is watching Pawn Stars, and he’s talking back to the TV so loud I think he’s calling me.  But he’s not. He treats me the same way you do a lizard in a terrarium. He taps on the glass every once in a while to make sure I’m alive, and beyond that I’m pretty much on my own.

So this guy, my King David, is about all I have. I met him once, at TelStar Market in the meat department, when we both reached for a chuck roast. He let me have it, which says a lot, I think, about his character.

I could have gotten his name then, but I wasn’t able to utter a word. He was wearing Levis, the real deal Levis – Joey wears Wranglers – and this T-shirt that read, Just Listen, which I found to be both mysterious and a little profound.

At night, King David sits on his deck, alone.  He looks toward my house, which Joey lights up like a carnival, so I know he can see me.

At first I watched from my kitchen window. And then six weeks ago and joined a gym where they teach classes that will either kill you or make you look like a movie star.  I haven’t been mistaken for Scarlett Johansen yet, but my jeans are saggy in the butt, so there’s still hope.  Anyway, since I’m looking better, I go out on the patio, take a glass of wine and sit in the porch swing every night about nine o’clock.

Joey’s in bed by nine-thirty and snoring by a quarter til.  And I’m left alone under the stars, so close to King David that I can feel his power.

Tonight I set down my wine and pull the cover off the hot tub.  Warning: there’s no sexy way to do this.  And then I climb the three steps real slow, kick off my heels, right foot, left foot, and drop the kimono.  I have on a swimsuit, although it’s tan, so I hope from this distance I look like I’m in my altogether, and I step into the hot tub that gurgles like a brook.

I am sinning, I can tell you that much, not in any fleshly way.  But sinning nonetheless.  And you know how it feels?  It feels like that moment just before the big-haired girl reads the lottery numbers on Channel 8. That moment when your life might turn, and you might be able to quit dying your own hair and put your mama in a better home and fly to Vegas first class.

I drop into the water, chest deep. My hair is up, a whip of a pony tail that I flip over the edge of the hot tub.  I can feel my cheeks, hot as August, and my heart is racing.  I look up toward King David’s house and he’s standing now, the long line of his body seems to glow from the porch light behind him.  I stand up too, and water races down my chest. We stand like this, half than a quarter mile apart, my King David and I, for what seems forever but can’t be more than two minutes, and in that time I know we’ve struck a deal.

He raises his hand to me, and I lift mine to him.  A cloud shifts across the half moon.  King David turns his porch light on and off, on and off, a signal, I think, for me to run to him. I step out of the tub and into my kimono, in the whispering space between fidelity and desire.

Bathsheba, I think, how much did you know of love and fate? How much did your husband care?

Oooh, I like it! This is great fiction, I would love to read a little novella continuation of this style…

Thank you so much Missaralee.  I may just try that.

Great exercise for personal application! I used teach my students to do similar exercises.  You’ve given new light on an age old problem many of married couples experience, and that everything is a choice.  Great job!

Thanks ShelleyD!  It was fun to write.

“Hey: We need to talk.”

Jared’s dad dropped the box onto the kitchen table.

“What are you doing with that?” Jared went to grab it back. Dad placed his hands on it so it wasn’t going anywhere.

“So you just went into my room and took that? You do that often?”

“You know what, Jared? No, I don’t. But honestly–it’s my house, and I CAN do it whenever I want. If you don’t like that, well, I’m sorry. So, you want to tell me about what’s in there?”

“Why? You already know what it is.”

“I just want to know how you got started with this. Was it your friends? Was it Will? I don’t like that kid, by the way.”

“God, Dad, it wasn’t Will! And it wasn’t Steve, it wasn’t Joel, it wasn’t Amanda…any other friends of mine you hate you want to blame this on?”

“Jared, I–”

“WHAT? You WHAT, Dad? You’re just looking out for me? Or, or, what–you just want to be a ‘cool Dad’ and say, “Hey, no problem, do whatever you want, just be safe about it.’ What Dad? What words of wisdom do you have for me?”

“I just…I saw what you did, and…I liked it. I don’t understand why it’s such a huge secret. I mean, in a cigar box under the bed?”

“I don’t know, it’s personal, and…you like it?”

“Yeah, I used to do it myself, back in the day. But then, I don’t know, I got a job, and…I don’t know. Yeah, I like it.”

Dad loosened his grip on the box. Jared slid it towards himself and opened the lid.

“So…what part did you like?”

“I like the antagonist. You can never go wrong with a good bad guy.”

Jared took his composition book out of the box.

“I mean, I noticed some stuff: Minor things, like some subject-verb agreement stuff, but–”

“Well, it’s not finished, it’s not even a first draft. That’s why I wasn’t sharing it.”

“No, that’s fine. What I’m trying to say is, if you need an editor…”

“Oh.” Jared looked at the book, then looked at his dad. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Oh, and here’s a quick tip: If you’re hiding something from us, maybe you don’t want to put it in a cigar box.”

Jared laughed.

“I’m just saying: What was the thought process there? ‘I don’t want mom or dad to find this, so I’ll hide it in here. That way, they’ll think I’m just smoking Dutch Masters in my room and they won’t think anything of it’?”

“Shut up…” Jared and Dad laughed. Dad put his arm around him and Jared took his book and the box back upstairs. It was almost writing time.

Oh man did I ever get a good laugh over the cigar box hiding place! I love this piece for so many reasons.

Thank you very much! I used to keep Matchbox cars in a Dutch Masters box when I was little. The worst part about it was having to smoke all those cigars in order to have an empty box for my cars. Just kidding–I don’t know where that box came from and it just struck me as being a weird thing for a kid to have.

Loved this piece, I used to have those cigar boxes to put all sorts of secret stuff as well. Think they came from my grand dad. They were the perfect size and depth for the many thing I treasured. And decorating them was the best part.

Wow, I love this.  So funny and great.

Ha!  Two entries today in which journals had been read without permission.  That was funny though.  You were really leading us on.  Thanks!

I know, right? Right after I posted my piece, I scrolled through the others and read them. As soon as I started reading Tom’s I was like “Well, what do you know about that?” I loved his take on the “someone reading another’s journal” idea…and was relieved mine didn’t turn out to be a rip-off of his!

Thanks! I appreciate it.

Oh, the fine line between snooping and caring.  Your dialogue is so natural.  The characters fall so naturally into place.  Good teaching material for newbies like myself.

Thank you! It’s good to know all the talking to myself that I do pays off.

Fantastic, though I can’t get the old commercial out of my head: “From you, OK? I learned it by watching you!”

HA! That commercial’s a classic. And seeing as how they make movies based on board games and theme park rides, someone should make a big-budget feature-length movie based on this commercial. I’m thinking Zac Efron as Distraught Kid and George Clooney as Hypocrite Dad.

Putting the writing in the cigar box was funny.

I had to go back to the beginning to make sure it works. Because, you know, on first reading it leads to assuming it’s another anti-drugs public announcement ad. Does that make me a born editor?

this was so awesome!

I suppose I write for self-discovery and for the journey.  I feel that I can express myself better in writing than I do verbally.  I hope to hear words of encouragement because of my writing.  Something to the effect of “I really like what you’ve written, or that made me think, or that’s exactly what I’ve been going through.”  Knowing I’ve connected with someone on a personal level is encouraging to me. 

Yesterday, I read a post about journaling by Michael Hyatt.  He shared a journaling app that I just had to try.  This is my 15 minute journaling entry from this morning.

ON EXERCISE

The morning is almost over. Sadie got her run and I got mine, two miles in fact. That made me proud. It was quite an accomplishment. Had it been a bit earlier while the air was still cool, I might have done three. In any case, I can see my ability improving.

While I was running, I thought about my body. “They say” you should think about how your body works when you exercise. I try to focus on my breathing first. Breath in through my nose and out through my mouth in short puffs. I’ve got that down pretty well. Next, I try and focus on my abdomen. Taking big breaths into my lungs and forcing out slowly from my diaphragm.

All I can think of is an article I read years ago about what happens when our lungs age. Like any other muscle, it becomes less effective. It looses its elasticity and become brittle. It’s important to keep our lungs in good working order by taking in deep breaths and getting the oxygen generating through our bodies and to our brains. Jogging does this for me.

My knees are in pretty good shape. My left one has a little bit of twinge inside the knee cap. I tend to think it’s because my quads aren’t strong enough. Maybe by the end of the summer, I’ll sign up at the fitness center (again). I could run every other day and do leg lifts on the alternate days. The outer part of my right leg gives me a little problem. It might be from my broken leg I experienced two years ago. That atrophied quite a bit. I’m sure, overtime, the muscle will build back up.

Which brings me to my feet. DH says I throw my right foot in really bad. I don’t think I was ever aware of that before. Could that also be a result of my break? I tried to lengthen my stride rather than speed up my pace (or, are they the same?). It was obvious, I wasn’t ready for that. I’ll just take each morning as it comes and do the best I can for that time.

I’m so glad I started. It gives me that time to think about my writing and reflect on what I’ve accomplished so far.

(I posted this earlier today, but it didn’t show up in the comments section.  Not sure why.)

“I feel that I can express myself better in writing than I do verbally.”

Definitely. I know that’s true for me.

I’m glad I’m not alone on the verbal issue.  I find that I hold back and end up feeling inadequate or just saying nothing at all.

A lot of people say they get inspired while walking or running.  Your writing is clear and kept me running along with you.  

Thank you, Marianne.  

My gosh, I was right there with you.  I love the way your thoughts skitter. Beautiful.

Thank you, Marla.  Skitter.  I like that.

So, I’m the only one writing solely to achieve world domination and crazy mad cash? No one else? No?

For real, though, I write to get noticed, I’ll admit that. My creative abilities are one of the weapons in my arsenal that make me stand out. Lord knows it’s not rugged good looks, lots of money, or athletic ability.

But I write to discover meaning and “change the world”, too. It means the world to me when someone likes or gets something from what I’ve written, not just for the ego boost, but because I feel like I’ve contributed to the dialogue. I’m participating, not just standing by.

Love your honesty!

Thanks! I try to keep it real.

I guess I must agree with Victor Frankl, I write to express what thought are current and hope to draw in those who may be in the same place or have been there for one reason or another. Just last night, i found myself lost in dark place and I knew I had to get it out. The only way I knew to do this was to simply write it down and share it, in hopes that someone would get it, as I reached out, unashamed of what I was feeling, I needed to reveal the darkness that has been twisting me inside and out. I wrote “standing in the mirror, not looking ahead, no desire to see who it is, only wishing to vanish within the dust in the air. always afraid of the monster that lies in waiting, feeding off of the guilt and voices from within, ushering in the chilling thoughts of failure and overloaded burdens that are just too much. loneliness takes its victim to the slaughter as the passion for life is smothered by the silence in the dark. is there a home for the lonely? will God embrace failure? will anyone notice the void? my thoughts carry on, like the silent jagged edged blade of a slow and painfully hidden cry in the abyss. my flesh weakens with time, my ghost wanders, searching for a home as the angels weep”. mlhatcher.blogspot.com

I’m addicted to language, the way words strung together by ordinary people telling everyday stories can turn into poetry.  In the car I listen to talk instead of music: NPR, Canadian Radio, BBC.  In interviews you can hear a cadence sometimes, a rhythm that thrums through the airwaves and surrounds you. 

Once, at one of my best friend’s father’s funeral, I slipped a pencil out and took notes on the program – I’m not really proud of this – because he’d been a Mason, and these country men, their Southern accents heavy, recited the service they’d been taught, an oral history passed down generation after generation.  It’s not supposed to written down.  One of the men, dressed in white gloves too small, and a Mason’s white apron, called on the “Great Pontificator,” and my heart soared.

And once, while interviewing a man who woke from a fitful sleep to the knowledge he’d been called to perserve one of Arkansas’ oldest cemeteries, said this when I ask him why he loved the place. “Look around,” he said.  The pines there were so tall they blocked the sun and the monuments were mostly statues: angels, obelisks, and a few markers that were only sandstone, heavy pieces of rock without any markings.  “Look,” he said.  “We’re standing in a piece of time frozen.”  And then he pointed with his cigarette, “And my mother’s buried over there next to the Confederates.  I bring flowers every week.”

Just this past weekend, I found this in the personal ads of our local paper.  It’s GOT to be a story.  “LOOKING for a slim sexy blond lady to have an intimate relationship without sex. A lady that likes guns, no smoker or drinker. Lady between 25-30. Christian a must. Hey Girls’s can you bait a hook, cause I’m quite a catch.”

It’s everywhere, this music we call language, and in the South you still hear the great old sayings like, “I’m busier than a one-legged rooster in a two-story hen house.”  I am blessed beyond measure. I just wish I could write faster.

Hearing the cadence in language is precisely how I see it, as well.  When I was learning Japanese, sometimes I would just sit and let it wash over me without making an effort to grab every phrase and word.  You could hear the music within.  It was beautiful.

A few years ago someone told me “Don’t ever stop writing, Suzie” I laughed it off. Truth is I can’t stop writing, some of it is dire, some passable, hopefully one day it will be more than that. Practice, practice, practice.

Twenty five roller-coaster years, how do we celebrate that, honey?” “I dunno babe, maybe a trip, do we have any tokens?”

“Let me check. Wouldn’t you think we’d be above coupon clipping after all this time,” Jenny spoke as she rifled through the coupon drawer.

“Hey, don’t start with me! You know why I never took the promotions, I didn’t plan on any of the stuff that’s happened,” Phil countered becoming more defensive with each word.

“Honey, cool it, it was just a throw-away. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You’re right, and Philip Solomon, I would not change one thing about our life. Imagine if we wrote it down sometime?”

“Aha, that would be like ‘War and Peace’, there’s our two families for starters, then the kids. Nothing prepared us for having children with disabilities. We could write a book for each child and a three volume treatise on your mother!”

“Phil, don’t be mean, I have been healed of my past, I might still have the physical scars but the emotional ones are gone. What about a tv series like ‘Shameless’ for your siblings,”

“Ha, ha, ha, oh Jennifer Lynn Solomon you are going to be ticked some for that, C’m here!”

The two, should know betters, fooled around, jumping over the sofa and chairs, chasing each other whilst laughing at each other acting like newly weds instead of approaching fifty.

To be better understood, and to understand ourselves better.

I am, by profession, a writer.

Laypeople, hearing this, tend to think I write novels. I imagine they reach back to their memories of The Shining or Misery (strange how many novels King wrote about writers) and try to pigeon me into that authorial hole. 

Some even seem disappointed at my appearance. I’m not dishevelled or wild-eyed. I only drink whiskey when I’m trying to impress someone. I don’t even own a typewriter; a device that, at least in the Bay Area, seems deemed more essential to poetic credibility than the ability to write.

But I’m not a writer writer. I’m a copywriter.

And when I think about my motivations—why I spend agonizing hours aligning word to word, why I measure time by campaigns and fire sales—the first thing that comes to mind is money.

And I wonder… When did it stop being about creating something meaningful? And how do you find your voice—your true voice—when you’ve spent a lifetime speaking for others?

I have a friend who is a copywriter.  I’m amazed at the way he thinks.  I know what you do is hard work.  It takes a certain type of person to be successful in this area.  I admire good copywriters.

Mmm… I felt this. 

Can you have both? Can you make copywriting an art?

This is a great post!  I definitely write for all four of those reasons.  The one that stood out to me the most was the fourth.  Writing to find meaning!  That is usually where I live.  I write to understand and find meaning in life. Writing allows me some control over the things that are beyond my control.

Aspie Writer http://www.aspiewriter.blogspot.com

Why I Write: Because I feel a release with each word. Because once you put to words to paper they stop pounding around your chest like a ping pong ball. Because I want to know which stories are important. Because maybe other people won’t make the same mistakes I did. Because I stutter. Because I can never find the right words when I say it out loud. Because some words are too heavy for the air, they need something solid to rest on. Because nothing I write is ever incorrect. Because my experiences and opinions can’t just disappear when I die. Because a piece of paper will always listen. Because emotions crawl out with the words down my neck, across my arms, and out of my fingers. Because “I love you” sounds cheap when you say it outloud. Because I want to make other people laugh. Because I want to capture something. Because my sisters and I always made stories growing up, but none of us wrote them down. 

Joe- I find your site to be like an expensive department store window, I don’t pass it often, but every once in a while I make a point to detour and drool through the windows.  So I find it odd that today while browsing I came across this particular entry.  And it just so happens that this was my focus this week.  This week I discovered that I write because it is the only way to find sanity and reason in the mess that I call my head.  And so that was my blog theme this week- a small exercise I attempt weekly (www.scissortailsongs.blogspot.com).  Thanks for your faithful entries.

Hello, I have always written stories from the young age of 14. I am now a senior lady writing a novel that takes place in the year of 1946: there is a time warp within my novel that brings the reader to the present year of 2012. Many twists and turn. I am just about half way through and loving every minute. Noel 

I personally write for several reasons. I write to release,I write to clear my mind and to share my thoughts with the world…I could go on and on but I write for a lot of reasons. This article os extremely true and even thought he didn’t hit every single reason,he did make an excellent point. Good Job!!!!! ^_^

Good answer, Joe. I was just pondering this question and googled it. It has become for me like exercise. If I don’t do it for a few days, I get cranky. I want to make a mark, change the world. Perhaps there is more inside me that wants to come out and be heard. Perhaps there is a message that people need to hear. I’ll never know unless I speak and write it out. Maybe I don’t have to understand. Maybe like Nike says “Just do it!”

I’m actually writing 400-500 word short stories every fifteen minutes. I literally cannot stop writing, and it’s so much fun! I have, ever since I was eleven, wanted to write for a living. Writing is liberating, and knowing full-well that I can create a world all of my own is wonderful. Don’t you guys think the same about writing?

I am not a writer.But i have this story that people need to read.And it has to be a real good story before they will put it in the papers.I would do it but myself but my spelling isn’t to good and i wouldn’t know how to start a story

I write to get the stories out of my head and make room for new ones to form. I write to share my love of writing with others, helping them to become better writers and (hopefully) write to support themselves.

Totally, Angie. 🙂

It didn’t always open. Some nights the clock would strike twelve and no door would blossom out of the southwest corner of her living room.

But tonight it did. And Maura tucked the beginning rows of her crochet project into a purple project bag, grabbed the plum fleece hoodie off the back of her favorite chair, slipped into her well-worn flats, and walked through the open door.

Sometimes the door opened to a hospital room, sometimes into a stranger’s home, and sometimes to the space underneath a bridge. Maura had no way of knowing where in the world the door would take her, but one thing she knew to expect. In every place she found someone who was dying alone — who had either minutes or a few hours left of life. And she stayed with her host until the end, no matter what he said to her, and no matter where his soul seemed to be headed.

Sometimes they exchanged words. Sometimes Maura would remain close, praying silently as her host faded by the minute. She trusted that everything counted, that in the space between conscious life and death the soul’s encounter with its Creator would be influenced by her small presence and her quiet prayers. Sometimes there was little else to do.

And sometimes her host wanted nothing to do with her.

Through long minutes with poisonous words, the last rebellious ventings of a tortured soul at the brink of oblivion, Maura stayed and waited, holding her tongue if she had nothing to say, or if the words that came to mind would have only added to her host’s bitterness.

These encounters changed Maura as much as they did those whom she attended. Her mother noticed it, as did her brother and sister and her co-workers at the library.

So did a particular patron of the library: a gorgeous, if slightly unkempt, forty-something college professor who always seemed happy to see her.

The only one who didn’t remark on the changes was a man who sometimes visited the same places she did on the other side of the door. He lived on the other side of the world, but a door opened in his home, too, though not at the same hour, and sometimes he found Maura already there with their host. Sometimes, not.

At first, it was awkward finding someone else there with the one dying. Maura didn’t feel as free to either speak or to silently pray with one hand resting on the shoulder of her host. Nick (Nicolai ____) felt similarly inhibited, though less so.

They soon grew accustomed to each other, though. Nick found himself hoping Maura would be there. Maura was more changeable. Sometimes she hoped he wasn’t there, but some nights she actually prayed he would be.

Wow, this is so good Sarah. So imaginative. I’m fascinated and wondering where this all leads!

Thanks, Joe! It’s taking shape as I work on it. Your response to the beginning encourages me. Have a great day and weekend! 🙂

That is such a great question, every time I get frustrated with a writing project and stop I ask myself why do this, why am I compelled to write… The other day as I was working on the rough draft of my next book, it came to me- I’m an artist. My writing long hand and making the strokes with my pen or pencil to create words is like an artists brush strokes which will create a picture. Writing is rhythmic,when my fingers glide over the keyboard it’s like a dancers graceful moves on the dance floor…. To be alive is to be creative and to be creative is to be me.

Yeah! Love this. Thanks Debra.

I guess mine falls under, “to feel alive.” This isn’t grammatically correct, but my brain always thinks: I CAN’T NOT WRITE. It’s whom I am. Thanks for sharing, Joe.

I can relate to that. Thanks Marcy!

Not a ‘writer’ but do write casually and recently did a post, at a new site, on this same subject, with several different reasons – http://www.shouldyouwrite.com/four-reasons-why-we-write/ Thanks for what you do…

You’ve touched on some hotspots there, Sir.

I think you pulled it off right here: “We write to be fully alive. Writing draws us into the moment. We see the blades of grass, hear the miniscule chirp of the morning cricket, watch the shade travel from one edge of the yard to the other, seemingly for the first time.”

Powerful stuff. Thanks, Mr. Joe.

Good one there it is true..that if a man doesn’t read (write)he dies so many deaths before they actually die.

Why I write I search for “significance”. I find it and I have the urgent need to share it. I want other people to be touched as much as I am.

I am sitting infront of a window seeing the most amazing landscapes, action and moments. Through my window I see time and many other things unseen.

My inner eyes look, search and look again until I find that which moves me, hoping it will move you too.

why do people write let me know guys

The Night You Died

The night you died A part of me went with you The night you died My heart sank into my stomach The night you died My world collapsed The night you died My life fell apart The night you died I lost my best friend The night you died I lost my hero The night you died I lost my father

I wrote because my children did not believe that no other white girl had grown up as a “Slave Girl” as I did. I never learned anythng that young girls should know. Plantation live was fun for me with nothing but 7 older brothers to play with as a three year old. Later, it was demanded, because I was good at it all. There were 70 to 80 hired hands on the plantation. I did it all. Did I learn to cook, sew, bring books home from school or read for fun? NO!

Raised in a culture that seemed as though the depression was never over, I clawed my way out of the darkness of naivete to find and experience a world I had never known. Writting this was harder than anything I ever did after going through seven years of college.

They made me do it! “They Called Me Jo: A White Slave Girl” By: Jacqi Fromauex

I love freewriting. I did the exercise yesterday morning and I think it’s one of my better posts of late.

You can find it published here: http://www.justinwheeler.net/what-to-write-about-when-you-dont-know-what-to-write-about/

It’s the second time I have done this exercise in my latest attempt in becoming a daily blogger. 16 days and counting so far!

we write to make our own little changer in the world. To make a name for our self to show the world what we want them to see. My parents always told me that if I ever wanted to make a change in the world we had to start some where. And if we didn’t like something and we did not try and changer it that we had no room to criticize about it.

I write because it makes me feel like I have a purpose. On my worst days, I feel absolutely terrible about myself. I try to channel that into my writing, this feeling of having no power and no hope. After a while, when I read back of what I’ve written, it makes me smile. Even on my worst days, I can dive into my imagination and create something beautiful.

I write not ’cause I can I write ’cause I must Every day I skip Seems a total bust.

I write because I hear Rolling syllables in my head Which I must capture Lest they go dead.

I write to entertain To pull forth a laughter Or to paint a picture To sustain peace after.

I write to show the me That otherwise I hide To open up the depths That lay on the inside.

Lastly I write To pull the strings of your mind Hoping to give a perspective You otherwise might not find.

Three years later, this is still as true as every.

I write because it helps with my depression. I can find some normality out of something that feels crazy and scary.

‘Write your Memoir: The Soul Work of Telling your Story by Allan G. Hunter.

I never knew why I wanted to write. Years ago I read a great book by an English lady writer who’s name I only remember as Marion. A quote from her book was, ‘write if you must’.

I’ve gathered from that, she meant something along the lines of, ‘you are in for a rough trot, fella!’ And it has been. However, I’m finding that the more I get into it and do my journal work, my practice work, all the ‘yadder-yadder-yadder’ that sounds like two marbles rattling round in a tin, seems to get knocked into a little bit more tolerable thinking processes. It also irons out a bit of stress also.

It appears that the desire to create is much stronger in some compared with others. And I think that actually has to be addressed; inasmuch as it needs to be qualified just why one wants to write. If there is no definite purpose writing, then, ‘you are in for a rough trot, fella!’

A young boy’s father had an apple orchard and he worked there during his school holidays. One day the foreman got the boy to assist in the irrigation of the trees.

The gate of the channel was opened and the water flowed in the general direction to where the boy stood. However, the water began to go all over the place and he was in a quandary as to what to do. The foreman came over and took the shovel out of the boy’s hands, and, with a few swift strokes of the shovel made a channel that sent the water in the required direction.

The foreman said, “If you want the water to stay on course; you’ve got to have somewhere for it to go.”

Right now unfortunately my writing has stalled and I dont know why… when I cant or dont write I find myself angry and mad about everything…. yet when i do write I am right with the world. it really doesnt make sense. I feel like I’m stuck in quick sand that wont pull me under or spit me back out to dry land. And I’ve tried other things like volunteering, coloring painting , and nothing is working… Suck a frustrating time.

I never know what to write about! I truly love writing and I want to improve it but I let anxiety hold me back. The fear of being bad at something I love doing. The fear of people thinking I am weird. The fear to make mistakes. I recently got contacted by someone on tumblr who asked me to write for their website. I literally waited for weeks to write them and email. Just because I was scared. Yes, I am only 15. Yes, I don’t have any experience. Yes, English isn’t my first language. But does that mean that I shouldn’t take the opportunity to improve and learn? No, I shouldn’t. I wrote them an email 5 minutes ago and I sat looking at my screen for 20 minutes doubting if I should send the mail. I did but I doubted for a long time. I always find myself writing when I am either hurt, broken or empty. When things go better a couple months ago I just stopped writing. I think I wrote 4 pages in the past 4 months. That’s bad. I have to keep practicing and learning. Improving my writing style, broaden my vocabulary. But I don’t, it’s like I’d rather feel lazy and like a failure because I don’t writing anymore. Every time I have to write an essay for school I am reminded of my love for language and words. I love to just ramble on for hours. I love to write silly things, bad poems, stupid teenage crap. I remember how great I feel after I put down the pen. How great I feel when I find something good between all the crap I’ve written. I’d love to be a writer someday and I hope I one day will finally do what I love all day long. I’d love to learn to write about my happiness, about the way I fall in love with little things every day. I don’t want to keep describing my empty chest and the struggle of getting back up because that’s not my life. I can be very happy and I can be very sad. I should learn to appreciate both of them. Learn to express myself in more ways and to keep practicing. I hope the website gives me a chance to improve, learn and get to know myself more.

Behind the Eyes of Gustaf

As I now look back, I realize that I had been a ready victim, but little did I realize it at the time, for after all it was spring, a time so unlike any other time of the year–a time that held promise of budding things to come. It had held promise for me as well. But like most promises, not all were meant to be fulfilled. Had I only known.

I shall never forget that spring day when I first met Gustaf. He was sitting on a wooden bench that appeared terribly uncomfortable; yet, he didn’t seem to mind, as he’d continued to laugh and talk with those young men who had gathered around him, and who had seemed to hang onto his every word.

He looked up just as I had cleared the very last stair. Our eyes met, and we each had the strangest expression on our faces.

Oddly enough, it was an expression that we had previously met, that we had been close friends, and that we had been reunited at long last, which struck me as rather odd, as I had never before met this man, for if I had, surely, I would have recalled.

As I stood staring and thinking, a most peculiar feeling began to surge within me, and recognizing it for what it was I blushed, caught my breath, and tried desperately to still my fast-beating heart. For I knew immediately what had caused me to feel so peculiar. In the strangest sort of way, I was simply drawn to this man.

I felt emotionally nude, as I stood there before him, while noticing his full smile at my obvious discomfiture. For under his penetrating gaze, I felt a sense of powerlessness, intrigue, and danger. But these were but a few of the things I was to feel and experience under his sell, as his masculine charm was indeed overwhelming.

Suddenly, I felt myself walking toward him, and just as suddenly I stopped. For although he’d said nothing to dissuade me, I felt that he had, as I was positive he’d said no, not now, later.

To be sure I had understood, I searched his face for confirmation. But there was none, except for the smile that had given way to a frown of annoyance which mean I had been dismissed.

Ever confused, I lowered my eyes as though I’d been chastised. I turned and walked reluctantly away, but ever determined to meet tis fascinating man again, a man who’d said so much, but who had actually said nothing.

In the strangest sense, Gustaf didn’t seem to belong to the world. Rather, the world seemed to belong to him, and oddly enough this was one of the most interesting aspects about him.

I sensed, too, that he’d never actually loved, but had been loved, which really didn’t seem to matter, as I doubted he was aware of this obvious flaw, since he seemed on a different plane, from a different time, if such a thing were possible.

Everything about him had attracted my attention. But at first, it was his voice and his laughter, which were so distinct, so different from anything I’d heard before, as there was gaiety for certain in his seemingly ever-deepening voice. But there was also an unmistakable tone of seriousness that I found quite interesting and most disturbing.

Gustaf didn’t seem to care about anything or anyone, which made him that much more desirable, and because of this he seemed terribly lonely, spent, and even somewhat distant.

There was also a discernible, ascetic quality about him–a detachment. For he seemed a traveler, never staying too long in any place, never establishing firm roots. I sensed, too, that he needed me most desperately, and because I had always needed someone it was ever refreshing to find someone who was in need of me.

His hair was closely cropped–neatly trimmed–and his skin appeared tanned. But it was his eyes that had been most arresting, as they’d seemed to hold some type of mystery, a genius untapped, a knowledge to impart. He seemed a teacher, but at the same time a student.

It was true Gustaf was strangely handsome, but there was an unsettling melancholy about his features which had immediately interested me, although this was not so apparent as it was to become later. For indeed, it was everything about him that was alluring, but at the same time contradictory. And it was this, I think, that made him unique, if not dangerous.

Readily, I admit Gustaf excited me and, at the same time, terrified me. I was to realize, however, that he held me firmly in an ever-tightening grip. But I wouldn’t have had it any other way, even though I had sensed the presence of evil in his company.

And although the encounter had been brief, I knew within my heart that he and I were destined to be together, but in what capacity I dared not guess, for this was to be in spite of my better judgment and my being overly pragmatic, because just this once I was to follow my foolish heart.

So it was. Whenever I think of spring, I’m ever reminded of Gustaf, and strangely enough, as spring comes and goes, so it was to be with him, for he suddenly came into my life, and he just as suddenly departed.

But unlike spring, however, Gustaf was not to return, at least, not as I had come to know him.

I came here for lesson ideas for my 10th and 11th grade English classroom. I have loved writing all of my life and wish to pass that love on to others, but there are some that just don’t “get” it. There is a divine spark in some that are able to express themselves through writing, just as everyone has a spark for different things. For those students for whom writing isn’t their “thing,” I can offer them at best a formulaic approach to writing. It will get the job done. They will pass the test, and they will be able to present themselves intelligently to the world. I miss being a student, though. I miss the search for approval from my English teachers and the accolades I would receive on my papers. Writing for me was a very rewarding experience. I understand that not everyone has that experience, though, and so I try to encourage each student in their own way. “Search for the good,” they say. You will usually find whatever it is you are looking for. I miss writing, though. These days it seems I spent much more time reading other people’s (usually horrible) writing than getting to write on my own. I hope that I am not losing my gift. I hope that I am not becoming hardened with time. Writing is an art, it is not a science. Therefore, when an inexperienced writer takes some tip or “rule” that was meant to help in an inappropriate way, they become confused when I tell them that it does not work in this case. There are nuances to language; not all language rules are set in stone. I would like to write a book, eventually. Problem is that I don’t know what to write about! Sounds silly, but it’s true. When I took a creative writing course in high school I could write about anything, as long as I was given a prompt or topic. Now that I am an adult and on my own, the possibilities drag on like an infinite horizon in front of me. There are no paths carved out; I am all lost and alone in the magnitude of it all. My motivation for writing is to make my voice heard in the din, but to also speak for those who have no voice. I am a very observant person and would like to think that I can feel what other’s are feeling. I believe that the best writing builds empathy for others in its readers. I would like to write a book called “What It Means to be Human” about how easy it is to fail in this world. Perhaps it would be a tragedy, since the purpose of great tragedies is to build sympathy for the protagonist, but I do not think I could kill anybody off. I would want my hero to succeed in the end. The idea of being sympathetic for those who fail is an idea that is completely lost in our current society. We are told from a young age that success comes from hard work. But what is success? And what is hard work? I am sure the waitress working sub minimum wage works her tail off, but is she considered successful? Yes, I know… for every success story there is a “picking yourself up by your bootstraps” story of one’s rise from poverty to greatness. However, there are a great many other factors in these stories than simply hard work. One could spend their entire lives putting their nose to the grindstone, but if they have to purpose of goal, it will be wasted energy. So much of success is knowing the right people and being in the right place at the right time that it is impossible to simplify it down to simply hard work. That is what privileged people say to make you believe that they earned their privilege.

I want to write to make my audience feel something. I want to write something beautiful that will make my readers pause and feel like it is wonderful to be alive. I have felt this way about other works that I have read, works that opened my mind to the possibilities of our universe, such as Madeline L’Engle as a child, and I have felt this way upon reading the perfect explanation of a human emotion, such as Kate Chopin just this past summer. There are forevers in our feeble forms, eternities in our mortality. I wish to explore the unending depths of existence.

I want to write to be remembered and to leave a legacy for family and friends.

I´M GIVING A WRITING COURSE AND I´M SHOWING THIS WEBSITE TO MY STUDENTS. THEY ARE HAPPY TO READ YOU. THEY WERE ASKED TO START WRITING IN A BLOG. NEXT WEEK, THERE ARE HOLIDAYS IN MEXICO AND THEY´LL START DOING IT.

I AM HAPPY TO HAVE FOUND YOUR SITE.

GREETINGS FROM MEXICO CITY.

If you have been typing “ do my assignment online ” for last few days, then you should take help from our experts. We offer the best price in the industry. Our rates will not make a hole in your pocket.

I always live in some story of my own creation. I have been thinking to write a book. But, I feel low that whether I can. I fail to articulate the feel that I experience in thoughts into words or texts. Please, try to suggest me. Thank you.

Yeah, I really like this article. I write to make a name of myself.

Thanks for sharing this post. Strategy and Planning Assignment Help

Why do we laud and honor some writers? Why do we consider their writings so great? We quote, and quote, and quote. What makes those writers so noteworthy, or should I say quote-worthy? I read an article that quotes some famous person, and wonder why that person is given such credence. What makes their thoughts so great? Why is their opinion any better than an opposing opinion? Maybe we quote someone just to back up our opinion. I am of the opinion that all writings are opinion. Even the Bible is opinion. It’s God’s opinion, so I value it more than any other. Perhaps that’s the answer! Who’s opinion do you value? I value opinion that rings true. “Prove all things. Hold fast that which is true.”

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The art and life of Mark di Suvero

Photograph of light on water by Aayugoyal . Licensed under CC0 4.0.

I encountered Joan Didion’s famous line about why she writes—“entirely to find out what I’m thinking”—many times before I read the essay it comes from, and was reminded once again to never assume you know what anything means out of context. I had always thought the line was about her essays, about writing nonfiction to discover her own beliefs—because of course the act of making an argument clear on the page brings clarity to the writer too. She may have believed that; she may have thought it a truth too obvious to state. In any case, it’s not what she meant. She was talking about why she writes fiction :

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means … Why did the oil refineries around Carquinez Strait seem sinister to me in the summer of 1956? Why have the night lights in the Bevatron burned in my mind for twenty years? What is going on in these pictures in my mind?

These pictures, Didion writes, are “images that shimmer around the edges,” reminiscent of “an illustration in every elementary psychology book showing a cat drawn by a patient in varying stages of schizophrenia.” (I know these frightening psychedelic cats, the art of Louis Wain, very well—I saw them as a child, in just such a book, which I found on my parents’ shelves.) Play It As It Lays , she explains, began “with no notion of ‘character’ or ‘plot’ or even ‘incident,’” but with pictures. One was of a woman in a short white dress walking through a casino to make a phone call; this woman became Maria. The Bevatron (a particle accelerator at Berkeley Lab) was one of the pictures in her mind when she began writing A Book of Common Prayer . Fiction, for Didion, was the task of finding “the grammar in the picture,” the corresponding language: “The arrangement of the words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement.” This is a much stranger reason to write than to clarify an argument. It makes me think of the scenes that I sometimes see just before I fall asleep. I know I’m still awake—they’re not as immersive as dreams—but they seem to be something that’s happening to me, not something I’m creating. I’m not manning the projector.

Nabokov spoke of shimmers too. “Literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him,” he said in a lecture in 1948. “Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story, there is a shimmering go-between.” In this view, it seems to me, the writer’s not the wraith who can pass between realms of reality and fantasy. The art itself is the wraith, which the artist only grasps at. Elsewhere, Nabokov writes that inspiration comes in the form of “a prefatory glow, not unlike some benign variety of the aura before an epileptic attack.” In his Paris Review interview, Martin Amis describes the urge to write this way: “What happens is what Nabokov described as a throb. A throb or a glimmer, an act of recognition on the writer’s part. At this stage the writer thinks, Here is something I can write a novel about.” Amis also saw images, a sudden person in a setting, as if a pawn had popped into existence on a board: “With Money , for example, I had an idea of a big fat guy in New York, trying to make a film. That was all.” Likewise for Don DeLillo: “The scene comes first, an idea of a character in a place. It’s visual, it’s Technicolor—something I see in a vague way. Then sentence by sentence into the breach.” For these writers that begin from something like hallucination, the novel is a universe that justifies the image, a replica of Vegas to be built out of words.

William Faulkner wrote The Sound and the Fury five separate times, “trying to tell the story, to rid myself of the dream.” “It began with a mental picture,” he told Jean Stein in 1956, “of the muddy seat of a little girl’s drawers in a pear tree.” He couldn’t seem to get it right, to find the picture’s grammar, or hear it. (According to Didion, “It tells you. You don’t tell it.”) This was part of the work, this getting it wrong—Faulkner believed failure was what kept writers going, and that if you ever could write something equal to your vision, you’d kill yourself. In his own Paris Review interview, Ted Hughes tells a story about Thomas Hardy’s vision of a novel—“all the characters, many episodes, even some dialogue—the one ultimate novel that he absolutely had to write”—which came to him up in an apple tree. This may be apocryphal, but I hope it isn’t. (I imagine him on a ladder, my filigree on the myth.) By the time he came down “the whole vision had fled,” Hughes said, like an untold dream. We have to write while the image is shimmering.

There is often something compulsive about the act of writing, as if to cast out invasive thoughts. Kafka said, “God doesn’t want me to write, but I—I must.” Hughes wondered if poetry might be “a revealing of something that the writer doesn’t actually want to say but desperately needs to communicate, to be delivered of.” It’s the fear of discovery, then, that makes poems poetic, a way of telling riddles in the confession booth. “The writer daren’t actually put it into words, so it leaks out obliquely,” Hughes said. Speaking of Sylvia Plath, in 1995, he added, “You can’t overestimate her compulsion to write like that. She had to write those things—even against her most vital interests. She died before she knew what The Bell Jar and the Ariel poems were going to do to her life, but she had to get them out.” Jean Rhys also looked at writing as a purgative process: “I would write to forget, to get rid of sad moments.” Some reach a point where the writing is almost involuntary. The novelist Patrick Cottrell has said he only writes when he absolutely has to. “I have to feel borderline desperate,” he said, and “going long periods without writing” helps feed the desperation. Ann Patchett, in an essay called “Writing and a Life Lived Well,” writes that working on a novel is like living a double life, “my own and the one I create.” It’s much easier not to be working on a novel—I sometimes hear novelists speak of a work in progress as an all-consuming crisis—but the ease of not working, after a while, feels cheap: “this life lived only for myself takes on a certain lightness that I find almost unbearable.”

Some writers write in the name of Art in general—James Salter for instance: “A great book may be an accident, but a good one is a possibility, and it is thinking of that that one writes. In short, to achieve.” Eudora Welty said she wrote “for it , for the pleasure of it .” Or as Joy Williams puts it, in a wonderfully strange essay called “Uncanny the Singing that Comes from Certain Husks,” “The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve … something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness—those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings.” Is that somethingness the wraith, the shimmering go-between? Or a godlike observer? “The writer writes to serve,” she writes, “that great cold elemental grace which knows us.”

Though Faulkner felt a duty toward the work that superseded all other ethics (“If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies”!), he also found writing fun, at least when it was new. David Foster Wallace, in a piece from the 1998 anthology Why I Write , edited by Will Blythe, agrees: “In the beginning, when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavor’s about fun … You’re writing almost wholly to get yourself off.” (He’s not the only writer in the volume to describe writing as physical, almost sexual pleasure; William Vollmann claims he would write just for thrills but also likes getting paid, “like a good prostitute.”) But once you’ve been published, the innocent pleasure is tainted. “The motive of pure personal fun starts to get supplanted by the motive of being liked,” Wallace writes, and the fun “is offset by a terrible fear of rejection.” Beyond the pleasure in itself, the fun for fun’s sake, writing for fun wards off ego and blinding vanity.

For every author who finds writing fun there is one for whom it’s pain, for whom Nabokov’s shimmerings would not be benign but premonitions of the suffering. Ha Jin said, “To write is to suffer.” Spalding Gray said, “Writing is like a disease.” Truman Capote, in his introduction to The Collected Works of Jane Bowles , and perhaps a particularly self-pitying mood, called writing “the hardest work around.” Annie Dillard said that “writing sentences is difficult whatever their subject”—and further, “It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick . So you might as well write Moby-Dick .” (Annie Dillard says such preposterous things—“Some people eat cars”!) It’s fashionable now to object on principle to the idea that writing is hard. Writing isn’t hard, this camp says; working in coal mines is hard. Having a baby is hard. But this is a category error. Writing isn’t hard the way physical labor, or recovery from surgery, is hard; it’s hard the way math or physics is hard, the way chess is hard. What’s hard about art is getting any good—and then getting better. What’s hard is solving problems with infinite solutions and your finite brain.

Then there’s the question of whether the pain comes from writing or the writing comes from pain. “I’ve never written when I was happy,” Jean Rhys said. “I didn’t want to … When I think about it, if I had to choose, I’d rather be happy than write.” Bud Smith has said he’s only prolific because he ditched all his other hobbies, so all he can do is write—but “people are probably better off with a yard, a couple kids, and sixteen dogs.” Here’s Williams again: “Writing has never given me any pleasure.” And then there’s Dorothy Parker, simply: “I hate writing.” I love writing, but I hate almost everything about being a writer. The striving, the pitching, the longueurs and bureaucracy of publishing, the professional jealousy, the waiting and waiting and waiting for something to happen that might make it all feel worth it. But when I’m actually writing, I’m happy.

Didion borrowed the title of her lecture “Why I Write” from George Orwell, who in his essay of this name outlined four potential reasons why anyone might write: “sheer egoism” (Gertrude Stein claimed she wrote “for praise,” like Wallace in his weaker moments); “aesthetic enthusiasm” or the mere love of beauty (William Gass: “The poet, every artist, is a maker, a maker whose aim is to make something supremely worthwhile, to make something inherently valuable in itself”); “historical impulse,” or “desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity”; and finally “political purpose.” This last cause was what mattered to Orwell. “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936”—he was writing this ten years later—“has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it.” He considered it “nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects.”

I’m unsure if Orwell meant that avoiding moral subjects was an unthinkable error, or a true impossibility, in the sense that one can’t escape the spirit of the age. Was any post-war novel, any novel written or even read in 1946, a war novel ineluctably? Kazuo Ishiguro has said he never writes to assert a moral: “I like to highlight some aspect of being human. I’m not really trying to say, so don’t do this, or do that. I’m saying, this is how it feels to me.” But having a moral, a didactic lesson, and being moral are different. Writers might try to avoid an argument and fail, even if it is less a thesis than an emergent property, a slow meaning that arises through cause and effect or mere juxtaposition. Ishiguro’s novels, in the course of unfolding, do triangulate a worldview. John Gardner would say, if the work is didactic, that means it’s too simple: “The didactic writer is anything but moral because he is always simplifying the argument.” (He also said, hilariously, “If you believe that life is fundamentally a volcano full of baby skulls, you’ve got two main choices as an artist: You can either stare into the volcano and count the skulls for the thousandth time and tell everybody, There are the skulls; that’s your baby, Mrs. Miller. Or you can try to build walls so that fewer baby skulls go in.”) The book can also stand in as an argument for its own existence. Toni Morrison wrote her first novel to fill what she saw as a treacherous gap in literature, to create a kind of book that she had always wanted to read but couldn’t find—a book about “those most vulnerable, most undescribed, not taken seriously little black girls.” Her ambition was not to make white people empathize with black girls. “I’m writing for black people,” Morrison once said, “in the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me.”

Only one writer in the Blythe anthology, a magazine writer named Mark Jacobson, claims he does it “for the money.” (“What other reason could there be? For my soul? Gimme a break.”) No one in the book claims they do it for fame, though the luster of fame is tempting, distracting. In a TV documentary about Madonna that I saw many years ago, she said she always knew she wanted to be famous, and didn’t really care how she got there—music was just the path that worked out. This is not so different from Susan Sontag, who was also obsessed with fame from an early age. Plath too made such confessions in her diary. Capote often said he always knew he would be rich and famous. I think the wish for fame is reasonable, since practically there’s not much money in writing unless you are famous. For most the rewards are meager. As Salter writes, “So much praise is given to insignificant things that there is hardly any sense in striving for it.” The thing about success, good fortune, and maybe even happiness is this: You can see that there are people who “deserve” whatever you have as much as you do but have less, as well as people who “deserve” it less or equally and have more. So, at the same time, you want more and feel you don’t deserve what you have. It’s a source of anxiety, guilt, and resentment and troubles the very idea of what one “deserves.” In the end I believe you don’t deserve anything; you get what you get.

I’ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it. I love reading writers on writing. I love writers on their bullshit. During the first year of the pandemic, I started listening obsessively to interview podcasts. At first this was strategic. I had a book coming out, and I thought of them as training; I thought they would help me get better at talking about my own book. But I was also lonely. I wasn’t going to readings or parties, and I missed writers’ voices. The practice has diminishing comforts. After a while most writers sound the same, and some days, after bingeing on writers, I can start to feel pointless, interchangeable. Faulkner said he disliked giving interviews because the artist was “of no importance”: “If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, all of us.” (And yet he named himself as one of the five most important authors of the twentieth century; there are limits to humility.) Some days I think the very question is banal, like photos of a writer’s “workspace.” They’re all just desks! Why write? Why do anything? Why not write? It’s the same as the impulse to make a handprint in wet concrete or trace your finger in the mist on a window. What you wrote, as a kid, on a window was the simplest version of the vision. Why that vision? Why that vision, and why you?

Tillie Olsen, in her 1965 essay “Silences,” called the not-writing that has to happen sometimes—“what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)”—instead “natural silences,” or “necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation.” Breaks or blocks, times when the author has nothing to say or can only repeat themselves, are the opposite of “the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.” The unnatural silence of writers is suppression of the glimmer. This is Melville who, in Olsen’s words, was “damned by dollars into a Customs House job; to have only weary evenings and Sundays left for writing.” And likewise Hardy, who stopped writing novels after “the Victorian vileness to his Jude the Obscure ,” Olsen writes, though he lived another thirty years—thirty years gone, gone as that novel in the apple tree. She quotes a line from his poem “The Missed Train”: “Less and less shrink the visions then vast in me.” And this same fate came to Olsen herself, who wrote what she wrote in “snatches of time” between jobs and motherhood, until “there came a time when this triple life was no longer possible. The fifteen hours of daily realities became too much distraction for the writing.” I read Olsen’s essay during a period in my life when stress from my day job, among other sources, was making it especially difficult to write. I didn’t have the energy to do both jobs well, but I couldn’t choose between them, so I did both badly. Like Olsen, I’d lost “craziness of endurance.”

James Thurber said “the characteristic fear of the American writer” is aging—we fear we’ll get old and die or simply lose the mental capacity to do the work we want to do, to make our little bids for immortality. Of late I’ve been obsessed with the idea of a “body of work.” I’ve gotten it into my head that seven books, even short, minor books, will constitute a body of work, my body of work. When I finish, if I finish, seven books I can retire from writing, or die. But how long can the corpus really outlast the corpse? I heard Nicholson Baker on a podcast say his grandfather, or maybe some uncle or other, was a well-known writer in his day and is now totally unknown. Unless we’re very, very famous, we’ll be forgotten that quickly, he said, so you might as well write what you want. I think about that a lot. Since I don’t have children, I have more time to write than Tillie Olsen did. But I don’t have that built-in generation of buffer between my death and obscurity. At least I won’t be around to know I’m not known. DeLillo again: “We die indoors, and alone.”

That year when I walked so much while listening to writers that I wore clean holes through my shoes, I kept asking myself why I write—or more so, why my default state is writing, since on any given day I might be writing for morality, Art, or attention, for just a little money. (I can’t go very long without writing, though I can go for a while without writing something good.) I think I write to think—not to find out what I think; surely I know what I already think—but to do better thinking. Staring at my laptop screen makes me better at thinking. Even thinking about writing makes me better at thinking. And when I’m thinking well, I can sometimes write that rare, rare sentence or paragraph that feels exactly right, only in the sense that I found the exact right sequence of words and punctuation to express my own thought—the grammar in the thought. That rightness feels so good, like sinking an unlikely shot in pool. The ball is away and apart from you, but you feel it in your body, the knowledge of causation. Never mind luck or skill or free will, you caused that effect—you’re alive!

Elisa Gabbert is the author of six collections of poetry, essays, and criticism, most recently Normal Distance, out from Soft Skull in September 2022, and  The Unreality of Memory & Other Essays. She writes the “On Poetry” column for the New York Times, a nd her work has appeared recently in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and The Believer.

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How Much Should You Write Each Day; and When Should You Stop Writing?

Kirk McElhearn  /  15 MAY 2024

When you’re writing a novel or another long project, it’s a good idea to have a daily target. How many words should you write, and when should you finish your writing session?

When you’re writing a novel or another long work, it’s like running a marathon, not a sprint. You won’t finish it in a few days or a week, and you have to work at a rhythm that allows you to remain creative and achieve the appropriate word count over time. Slow and steady writing will eventually get you to your goal.

How much should you write each day?

If possible, it’s a good idea to write every day, even if you can’t write very much each day. You can set a target, which isn’t a hard goal, but which is something to aim for. Some writers are happy with 500 words a day, others with 1,000 words, and some, who write full time, may even strive to write 2,000 words a day. If you do the math, even if you only write five 500 words a day, that comes to 130,000 words in a year. That means you can write the first draft of a novel - with room to spare - in twelve months, if you remain consistent.

Many writers can’t write every day, so they set aside a couple of days a week to write. If you plan to write 1,000 words a day for two full days a week, that’s more than 100,000 words a year. The key is consistency and maintaining your momentum.

How do you decide how many words to write a day? A lot depends on how experienced you are, and what your writing rhythm is. In On Writing , Stephen King says, “As with physical exercise, it would be best to set this goal low at first, to avoid discouragement. I suggest a thousand words a day, and because I’m feeling magnanimous, I’ll also suggest that you can take one day a week off, at least to begin with. No more; you’ll lose the urgency and immediacy of your story if you do.“

Anthony Trollope had a day job at the General Post Office, but he would write before going to work . “It was my practice to be at my table every morning at 5.30; and it was also my practice to allow myself no mercy. [...] It had at this time become my custom, and it still is my custom, though of late I have become a little lenient to myself, to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour.“ This meant that he could write up to 3,000 words each morning, and this is how he wrote dozens of novels and other works.

Scrivener has useful tools to help you set and meet targets . You can view the word count of your current document in the app’s footer, and you can view the total word count of your project by hovering your cursor over the Quick Search box in the toolbar.

You can also get detailed statistics of your project by choosing Project > Statistics:

And you can set and view targets for each writing session, and for your overall project.

When should you end your writing sessions?

So when should you stop writing? Should you set an alarm, time yourself, or write precisely for one or two hours? If your target is a word count, should you stop once you hit that number, or keep going if you feel the juices flowing?

Some writers push on to reach their daily sessions, but this can be counterproductive. When you’ve lost your mojo, there’s no point trying to force it. Sometimes, you just can’t meet your target.

Other writers may choose to end their writing session when they finish the chapter or a scene. The fact of completing something, even if you haven’t hit your session target, can be very satisfying.

However, some other writers like to end their writing session in the middle of a scene, paragraph, or even a sentence. Ernest Hemingway said , “The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck.“

And consider Anthony Trollope, who, if he finished a novel by 8:30 would immediately start writing the next one. This is probably not practical for most writers who need to work on multiple drafts to finish a novel. Trollope was immensely prolific, and, in his time, novels were not revised extensively, so he could easily move on to the next one at will.

It’s up to each writer to determine how much they should write and when they should end. Many factors influence this decision: how much time you have to write, how many days you can write, and what your writing goals are. It's a good idea to develop a rhythm, and you can take advantage of Scrivener’s features to set session and project targets to help you meet your goals.

Kirk McElhearn is a writer , podcaster , and photographer . He is the author of Take Control of Scrivener , and host of the podcast Write Now with Scrivener .

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Why Students Struggle With Essay Writing

Published by Alaxendra Bets at August 19th, 2021 , Revised On August 23, 2023

Writing comes naturally for some of us. Students with good essay writing skills have words flow into  sentences , sentences,  paragraphs , and paragraphs into an essay  or  dissertation . However, for many students, writing is tedious work they want to avoid.

If you are struggling with  essay  or  dissertation writing , rest assured you are not the only student facing this problem. But it’s important to understand the reasons for your essay, coursework, exams, or dissertation writing failures to put your academic life back on track.

Here, we discuss and attempt to figure out the causes as to why are so many students struggling with essay writing.

In the unfortunate event that you have already failed coursework, dissertation, essay, or exam, we have compiled comprehensive guidelines  on what you could do to improve your situation.

Reasons Why Students Struggle with Essay Writing

Before we shed light on the obscure causes of students finding it hard to deal with essay and  coursework writing , let us look into the more apparent causes. Research studies have confirmed that writing and reading are reciprocal processes. Apart from providing professional writing guidelines to students, we also provide professional writing services , i.e. essay services , coursework writing services and dissertation writing services .

If you read regularly enough, your writing will improve by leaps and bounds. Likewise, your writing improves your reading significantly. Many students apprehend the importance of this relationship as they read complicated transcripts and texts to improve their writing abilities.

But not all students can comprehend this relationship between reading and writing, and eventually, writing becomes a continuous struggle for them. Debbie Lee, in her article published on Educator Community (2017), states that;

“To write, we use many parts of our brain at the same time as well as the kinesthetic process of writing. For many students, especially those with language or fine motor skill delays, the task of writing is challenging.”

Poor Mechanical & Content Skills

In the same article, Debbie argued that students with poor processing and poor content and mechanical skills often struggle with essay writing. The most notable processing skills that many students would often lack include fluent development of ideas, language formulation and ideation, and active working memory.

Content and mechanical skills that are essential for any student to be good at writing are as follows;

• Expressing ideas
• Organising ideas
• Punctuation
• Capitalisation
• Basic Spelling & Vocabulary
• Automatic Letter Formation
• Clarity of Expression
• Use of appropriate grammar in essay
• Different styles of essay writing
• Flexibility in the writing process
• Understanding the viewpoint from the text in books
• Lack of enthusiasm and passion

Want to know what essay structure and style will work best for your assignment?

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When you consider all of the above underlying skills that students should master to become proficient writers, you can understand how frustrating it can be. Perhaps, it also explains why most students prefer not to write their papers and  get experienced writers to write .

No Right Answers When You Are Inexperienced

Unable to find what the right answer to a particular  problem question is? Many students end up scratching their heads around the basic question they must answer as part of their essay  or  dissertation  assignment.

While every other skill student learns the right way to do it, it can be hard to figure out the correct way to write an essay  because most of us approach writing naturally and emotionally.

But let it be clearly stated here that the right or correct way of writing an essay does exist if your supervisor or tutor is not teaching the  essay writing structures for different types of essays , dissertations, and research papers, you are not getting the help you deserve, and the confidence needed to jump into an assignment writing task.

To produce a high-quality essay paper, you need to learn to be good at brainstorming, writing the essay outline, and developing the rough draft and the final copy because that is how you will improve your writing skills.

ResearchProspect provides the tools, and they help students need to have their essays written to the highest possible academic standard.

Fear of Failure

Have so many questions in mind before writing even a word of your assignment? What is the  question I need to address ? What is the objective of this assignment? Which academic sources should I use as reference material? What should be the structure of the essay ? What abilities and skills will I be graded on? What writing style must I follow?

These questions and many more could swarm around in your mind. Don’t worry, Don’t Panic. Don’t Be Overwhelmed! It’s normal to have so many questions. It’s completely normal to fear failure, especially if you haven’t had much writing experience in your previous academic years.

If you haven’t been taught about the writing and structuring processes (yes, a range of writing structures and styles exist), it can be pretty hard to get going. The fear of failure will stay with students if they do not provide help on creative writing rules and the  different types of essay writing structures .

For example, this is an article on how you structure a dissertation paper.

Also read: Sociology Essay Writing Service .

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Helping Students Who Struggle with Essay Writing

The world we are living in is changing rapidly. With texts, tweets, posts, snaps, and Insta around us, it’s no wonder students don’t want to get in struggle with writing. This is particularly frustrating for teachers and students alike, as students scrap to express their thoughts and views clearly in the traditional fashion their schools expect them to.

But the world of academia has remained pretty much unchanged over centuries, with universities expecting students to become good researchers and capable writers . We will never replace essays , assignments, research , dissertation , and analysis with tweets, Instagram posts, and Facebook stories in universities.

Your teachers will not be delighted with you if you eagerly indulge in social media postings but struggle with basic essay writing tasks. A study conducted by ResearchProspect concluded that as many as 3 of every 5 students lack proficiency in writing – a number that cannot be ignored.

Our Essay Writers

ResearchProspect writers  know the writing rules and are proficient in all types of writing structures and styles.

Our essay writers understand that essays aren’t going anywhere, and so they have mastered the art of presenting their expression, arguments, and analysis through their writing. They love sentence diagrams and grammar drills because it is their job to do so.

Contact us via telecom, email, or mail to discuss anything regarding your essay. Our staff is always there to help!

Have a last-minute essay to finish? Don’t panic! Please fill out  our online order form  and get your essay paper delivered to your email address promptly. Any subject, any deadline, any complexity – we promise 100% plagiarism free and 100% confidential service.

The essay writing tips in this blog post aim to help readers establish why they struggle to write a first-class essay or dissertation paper that meets academic expectations. The post directly aims to help students experiencing writing difficulties in achieving the grade they desire despite their writing limitations.

View some  essay writing samples  here!

Learn  how to write an essay with a bang!

Helping Students Succeed Since 2011!

ResearchProspect is the UK registered essay writing website helping students across the globe since 2011. Our writers hold master’s to Ph.D. degrees from reputed educational institutes. No matter how urgent or complex your requirements are, our services have helped thousands of students over the years at a time when they needed them the most. So stop struggling with essay writing and get essay writing help from our professional essay writers . View our essay services here  or view our  full range of services here.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many students struggle with essay writing.

Many students face challenges with essay writing due to various factors such as lack of effective strategies, time management issues, language barriers, and unfamiliarity with academic conventions. Support and guidance can help mitigate these struggles.

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What I’ve Learned From My Students’ College Essays

The genre is often maligned for being formulaic and melodramatic, but it’s more important than you think.

By Nell Freudenberger

Most high school seniors approach the college essay with dread. Either their upbringing hasn’t supplied them with several hundred words of adversity, or worse, they’re afraid that packaging the genuine trauma they’ve experienced is the only way to secure their future. The college counselor at the Brooklyn high school where I’m a writing tutor advises against trauma porn. “Keep it brief , ” she says, “and show how you rose above it.”

I started volunteering in New York City schools in my 20s, before I had kids of my own. At the time, I liked hanging out with teenagers, whom I sometimes had more interesting conversations with than I did my peers. Often I worked with students who spoke English as a second language or who used slang in their writing, and at first I was hung up on grammar. Should I correct any deviation from “standard English” to appeal to some Wizard of Oz behind the curtains of a college admissions office? Or should I encourage students to write the way they speak, in pursuit of an authentic voice, that most elusive of literary qualities?

In fact, I was missing the point. One of many lessons the students have taught me is to let the story dictate the voice of the essay. A few years ago, I worked with a boy who claimed to have nothing to write about. His life had been ordinary, he said; nothing had happened to him. I asked if he wanted to try writing about a family member, his favorite school subject, a summer job? He glanced at his phone, his posture and expression suggesting that he’d rather be anywhere but in front of a computer with me. “Hobbies?” I suggested, without much hope. He gave me a shy glance. “I like to box,” he said.

I’ve had this experience with reluctant writers again and again — when a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously. Of course the primary goal of a college essay is to help its author get an education that leads to a career. Changes in testing policies and financial aid have made applying to college more confusing than ever, but essays have remained basically the same. I would argue that they’re much more than an onerous task or rote exercise, and that unlike standardized tests they are infinitely variable and sometimes beautiful. College essays also provide an opportunity to learn precision, clarity and the process of working toward the truth through multiple revisions.

When a topic clicks with a student, an essay can unfurl spontaneously.

Even if writing doesn’t end up being fundamental to their future professions, students learn to choose language carefully and to be suspicious of the first words that come to mind. Especially now, as college students shoulder so much of the country’s ethical responsibility for war with their protest movement, essay writing teaches prospective students an increasingly urgent lesson: that choosing their own words over ready-made phrases is the only reliable way to ensure they’re thinking for themselves.

Teenagers are ideal writers for several reasons. They’re usually free of preconceptions about writing, and they tend not to use self-consciously ‘‘literary’’ language. They’re allergic to hypocrisy and are generally unfiltered: They overshare, ask personal questions and call you out for microaggressions as well as less egregious (but still mortifying) verbal errors, such as referring to weed as ‘‘pot.’’ Most important, they have yet to put down their best stories in a finished form.

I can imagine an essay taking a risk and distinguishing itself formally — a poem or a one-act play — but most kids use a more straightforward model: a hook followed by a narrative built around “small moments” that lead to a concluding lesson or aspiration for the future. I never get tired of working with students on these essays because each one is different, and the short, rigid form sometimes makes an emotional story even more powerful. Before I read Javier Zamora’s wrenching “Solito,” I worked with a student who had been transported by a coyote into the U.S. and was reunited with his mother in the parking lot of a big-box store. I don’t remember whether this essay focused on specific skills or coping mechanisms that he gained from his ordeal. I remember only the bliss of the parent-and-child reunion in that uninspiring setting. If I were making a case to an admissions officer, I would suggest that simply being able to convey that experience demonstrates the kind of resilience that any college should admire.

The essays that have stayed with me over the years don’t follow a pattern. There are some narratives on very predictable topics — living up to the expectations of immigrant parents, or suffering from depression in 2020 — that are moving because of the attention with which the student describes the experience. One girl determined to become an engineer while watching her father build furniture from scraps after work; a boy, grieving for his mother during lockdown, began taking pictures of the sky.

If, as Lorrie Moore said, “a short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage,” what is a college essay? Every once in a while I sit down next to a student and start reading, and I have to suppress my excitement, because there on the Google Doc in front of me is a real writer’s voice. One of the first students I ever worked with wrote about falling in love with another girl in dance class, the absolute magic of watching her move and the terror in the conflict between her feelings and the instruction of her religious middle school. She made me think that college essays are less like love than limerence: one-sided, obsessive, idiosyncratic but profound, the first draft of the most personal story their writers will ever tell.

Nell Freudenberger’s novel “The Limits” was published by Knopf last month. She volunteers through the PEN America Writers in the Schools program.

clock This article was published more than  7 years ago

Why so many college students are lousy at writing — and how Mr. Miyagi can help

There are a lot of students who enter college as lousy writers — and who graduate without seeming to make much, if any, improvement. It is true in the arts as well as the sciences, anecdotally evidenced by some of the blog post submissions I get from a wide range of people whose jobs would suggest they can communicate well in writing but, as it turns out, not so much.

How can someone get out of college — any college — without being a decent writer? And what can we do about it? Those are the subjects of this post, by John G. Maguire, who has taught writing for decades at a half dozen New England colleges, including Boston University. He developed his first-year Readable Writing course while at the Berklee College of Music, and he blogs on the subject of writing pedagogy at readablewriting.com .

What happened when one school banned homework — and asked kids to read and play instead

By John G. Maguire

The failure of many of today’s college students to write decently, even after years of instruction, became headline news not long ago when a well-researched study of college student learning was published as a book under the title “ Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses .” Its authors, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, found that 45 percent of 2,300 students at 24 colleges showed no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years. Experts in education were shocked. Bill Gates said, “Before reading this book, I took it for granted that colleges were doing a very good job.”

Those who were paying closer attention than Gates have known for some while that many colleges are terrible at teaching writing. Millions of young men and women sit in freshman composition classrooms each fall semester, but if the Arum report is right, nearly half will write just as badly in their junior years as when they started college. There are “legions of college graduates who cannot write a clear, grammatical sentence,” says Natalie Wexler of The Writing Revolution, an educational nonprofit group focused on the reformation of writing pedagogy.

Why aren’t they learning? There are multiple causes. One is that schools admit students who can’t write and then pack them into comp courses taught by adjuncts. But the main problem, I think, is that the colleges are not really trying to teach students to write clear sentences. Not anymore. First-semester writing courses now cover rhetorical strategies, research, awareness of audience, youth civic activism — everything except the production of clear sentences.

“The college writing profession has made a conscious decision not to teach style,” says Phillip Mink, an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Delaware. “If you review the scholarly literature, which I have done, you will find virtually nothing about student prose at all.” To the full-time professionals who publish in journals, Mink says, “the quality of student prose is nothing more than an afterthought.”

We could wring our hands and ask how we got to this pass, but it makes more sense to decide what to do going forward.

What the modern world has forgotten about children and learning

I propose that we redesign our college writing courses from the ground up, and fast. We have to stop kidding ourselves that students can write sentences when they enter college — because many cannot — and start teaching them how to do it. We need to revise writing courses and directly teach style — the readable style.

Strunk & White’s “Elements of Style” might be a good place to start, but it’s not enough. We need a real theory of what constitutes readable writing so we can build a course on that theory. I’d recommend going back to “ The Art of Readable Writing ” by Rudolf Flesch and teaching from that. (I have in fact developed Flesch’s ideas into a course.)

Professional writers and editors, such as those at The Post , know readability can be learned. They have learned how to be vivid and interesting, what to do when a sentence is screwed up by a bad verb, and why one controls sentence length. Why not teach these skills to college freshmen?

The composition profession evades the teaching of writing, I think, because the job seems impossible these days, especially in 14 weeks. How can you get them to write well when half the students in your classroom can’t find the subject and verb in a sentence? Much easier just to talk about rhetorical strategies.

But redesign the courses so they focus only on readability of style and we might get somewhere, even in one semester. First we figure out what makes a readable style, working from Flesch and Strunk & White, and then we reward students for doing it.

Myself, I’d consult with Kesuke Miyagi, the karate master played by Pat Morita in “The Karate Kid” (1984).

Everyone, even today’s students, remembers how Mr. Miyagi insists, “Wax on, wax off,” to the kid, who is sure he is being enslaved and abused — but then later discovers that the waxing and fence-painting motions are foundation skills for karate, and he’s grateful. I’m a teacher, and I know what Mr. Miyagi did — he tricked the kid into learning . He got him to do important behaviors first, and didn’t reveal where they fit into the overall skill until later.

Colleges should teach the important writing behaviors first, one at a time, in sequence. They should offer new writing courses that assume students know nothing about sentences and train new sentence behaviors from the ground up. Be repetitive and tricky — fool the kids into doing the right thing. Create muscle memory. Think “w ax on, wax off.”  The kid’s goal was to win the karate contest. The student writer’s goal should be mastery of the readable style. Period.

What happens when young kids are forced to sit too long in class

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“Why This College?” Essay Examples

May 17, 2024

As you apply for college, you’ll notice that there are several different essay writing genres you’ll need to familiarize yourself with. There’s the Common App Essay , of course, along with many specific supplemental essays like the Community Essay and the Diversity Essay that will be required by particular schools. In particular, there is the “Why This College?” Essay. The “Why This College?” Essay can be an important component in your college application, as it’s an opportunity for you to describe why you specifically would be a good fit for a particular school. It’s a popular requirement for many colleges and universities and in this article, we’re going to show you a few “Why This College?” Essay examples, and share some tips and tricks for how to write a “Why This College?” Essay.

As you peruse these examples and tips, remember that there’s no one perfect way to write a “Why This College?” Essay. Rather, there are important generic conventions you can work with and build upon to craft an essay that is unique to you as a specific college candidate. Think of a novel. You can expect a novel to have a title and chapters and contain a fictional story. At the same time, novels are written across a plethora of genres, have characters that are as different as Vladomir Harkonnen and Elizabeth Bennet, and can be short reads or thousands of pages long. It’s the same in this case. As you learn how to write a “Why This College?” Essay, you’ll see that some elements of the essay will be fixed, while others will be entirely up to you to create!

What Kind of Prompts Are There for the “Why This College?” Essay?

Many schools require some form of the “Why This College?” Essay for their supplemental application materials, and the prompts can be general or specific.  Take these extra general ones from Yale and Dartmouth , for instance:

• What is it about Yale that has led you to apply?
• In short, why Dartmouth?

These open-ended prompts can feel like both a blessing and a curse. Without particular guidelines, you might feel freer to describe your particular fit within a university and it might be easier to brainstorm about the content you’d like to highlight in this essay; however, beware of open prompts: they can make it tempting to veer into generality!

In other instances, the “Why This College?” Essay prompt will be specifically tailored for many schools, and this specificity can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Take, for instance, these two examples from Northwestern :

• Community and belonging matter at Northwestern. Tell us about one or more communities, networks, or student groups you see yourself connecting with on campus.
• Northwestern’s location is special: on the shore of Lake Michigan, steps from downtown Evanston, just a few miles from Chicago. What aspects of our location are most compelling to you, and why? [i]

“Why This College?” Essay Examples (Continued)

The positive side to specific prompts like these is that they’ve given potential applicants a couple of springboards to begin diving from as you write – you can immediately begin detailing your specific interests and likes about Northwestern that make you an ideal candidate for the school. A potential downside is that you’ll honestly need to do research here before you can even begin brainstorming about either of these questions authentically! Specific prompts may also mean that you’ll need to totally start from scratch with each “Why This College?” Essay (for these Northwestern prompts, you certainly couldn’t plug in a different “Why This College?” Essay where you’ve written about your dream of editing for the Harvard Crimson or your hope to network in nearby New York City!).

So, with prompts like these, how to even begin writing a “Why This College?” Essay? Check out our tips and “Why This College?” Essay examples next!

Also, check out our list of college application essay topics to avoid .

Tips on How to Write a “Why This College?” Essay

Regardless of the prompt, your response needs to be specific. This is possibly the most important thing to remember as you learn how to write a “Why This College?” Essay.

First and most importantly of all, focus on fit. Remember that this is your opportunity to showcase why you’re specifically a good match for a college – not why a college is a great general choice for anybody. Ultimately, this is an essay about your potential relationship with a school. If you were writing an epic love poem, you might obsess over your beloved’s hair, eyes, etc. – but obsession isn’t a relationship! On the other hand, if you were asking someone out, you might want to focus, instead, on why you’d have a great time together because it’s more persuasive (and that’s ultimately what you’re trying to do: persuade this school’s admissions committee that you belong there!).

Here are a few tips on specificity that we’ll review below as we analyze a few “Why This College?” Essay examples:

• Before writing your “Why This College?” Essay, do your research on each school to which you’ll apply. This means finding particular programs of study you’ll pursue, looking up course titles you’d like to take and even professors you’d like to study under. It means researching clubs and extracurriculars you’ll partake in, internship programs you’ll apply for, and details about the school that will further your goals as a student there.

At the beginning of your “Why This College?” Essay, you can include a brief anecdote or bit of personal information that will make your essay stand out. As with any college application essay, this is an opportunity to brag about yourself! For instance, if you’re going to mention a particular club or extracurricular you’d like to join at a university, you can use this anecdote to briefly remind your reader that you were the president of that extracurricular at your high school (especially if that detail doesn’t appear elsewhere in your application materials). NOTE: Including a personal anecdote like this is sometimes dependent upon word length. For longer “Why This College?” Essays, it’s a great choice. For shorter ones, this hook may be a feature you’ll have to reduce or skip altogether.

Don’t linger on the general features of the school, or on school qualities that apply to everyone. Don’t focus on the school’s reputation, rankings, or student-to-professor ratios. The school knows this stuff already! Everybody paints the rock at Northwestern and paints the fence at Carnegie Mellon and these schools’ admissions counselors have read about these sorts of traditions approximately a billion times. Avoid general features and focus, rather, on detailed aspects of the school community that are particularly compelling to you .

Details about campus culture or school location are okay to write about, but remember that you’re not trying to be John Keats here. Don’t just talk about the beauty of the leaves changing in the fall or the way the palm trees sway on the school’s tropical campus. Rather, focus on what the school’s location can do for you as a scholar . Is there something particular about the school’s locale that can further your scholastic goals? Perhaps it’s situated in a region known for a particular area of study, with the best professors in the field nearby (e.g. Silicon Valley for computer science). Or maybe its setting can provide ample internship opportunities for a student with your major (e.g. Washington, D.C. for political science majors).

Edit for details. As you write your thousandth college application essay, it can be so tempting to simply copy-paste and go through the motions of writing unique drafts. While it’s okay to have a little carry-over between essays, it’s essential that you don’t have any major bloopers (like getting the school’s colors or motto wrong) in a “Why This College?” Essay.

Honesty is the best policy! It’s better to write something authentic to you than something you think the school wants to hear. After all, no matter how prestigious a school or program might be, if you can’t think of why you’d fit in there, you may want to reconsider whether a school is meant for you!

“Why This College?” Essay Examples

Below, we’ve included three fictional “Why This College Essay?” examples. The first two are good examples, along with commentary on what makes them strong and what these authors might improve upon to make them even better. The third essay is an exceptionally poor one, designed to help you see common pitfalls within this essay genre so you can think about how to avoid them yourself (or even how to correct mistakes you’ve already made in drafts!). Think of this third, poor essay as a way to test how well you’ve familiarized yourself within the genre.

Good “Why This College?” Essay Example 1:

As current Editor-in-Chief of my school magazine The Clarion , I’d like to pursue a Journalism major at the College of Northeastern Ohio, where I will deepen my experience in writing and design through classes such as “Reporting with Visual Journalism” and “International Writing.” Additionally, CNO’s Amanpour Journalism Project will give me hands-on experience as a journalist working in a newsroom. There, I’ll explore aspects of journalism such as digital storytelling and broadcasting, along with elective courses like “Feature Interviews” and “Documentary Television.”

My love for writing and communication stems from my multilingual upbringing. In high school, I explored Latin America on a study abroad trip to the Dominican Republic, where I relied on my Guatemalan heritage to further my Spanish-speaking skills. Through CNO’s International Language Studies program, I hope to attain a Spanish minor and explore Spanish-speaking countries in their study abroad program while immersing myself in international media.

With the interdisciplinary emphasis at CNO, I’ll additionally have the flexibility to study politics through a Political Science double major. I’ve written many articles on global communication for The Clarion , and I hope to further my writing on political communication with the Amanpour Project’s “Writing in Conflict Zones” class and other interdisciplinary classes with Professor Joan Walters. CNO’s robust communications offerings give me the opportunity to specifically study my interests in writing, politics, and Spanish simultaneously with the resources of multiple departments.

This essay does a great job of both showcasing the writer’s unique experiences and exploring how the college will specifically help her pursue her major and career goals. Additionally, the author has done a dynamite job researching particular classes and programs within the university that she’d like to take, listing several by name and course/program details.

How we might fix it up:

This essay primarily focuses on academics. Since academics are usually the most important reason why you’d want to attend a particular university, this definitely isn’t a major problem! However, the writer could potentially explore other extracurriculars or campus offerings that might make her a great fit for this university.

Good “Why This College?” Essay Example 2:

Data. From our politics to what we binge on Netflix, data collection and information systems have become part of the fabric of our lives. But when we think about sports, we don’t always think about numbers – and I want to do just that. The Massachusetts Institute of Stanford Mellon offers a top-ranked Data Science and Information Systems major, which will provide me with transferable skills that can be applied to my dream career path: sports marketing and data analytics.

I would like to go to a university where I can immediately participate in research. In high school, I created an algorithm that helps me predict how much fans will spend on team gear, based on their previous purchases and levels of engagement with games, betting, and online searching. The MISM Data and Numbers Lab allows undergraduates to access their databases and start conducting research right away (without having to wait until grad school!) and courses like “Analysis of Algorithms” and “Marketing and Numbers” provide the tools to conduct research on issues like sports marketing. At MISM, I hope to study with mentors like Professor Bill Jobs, whose work on information systems and regional spending might facilitate my own independent research. Additionally, MISM has alumni networks that facilitate internship and job placement in both Silicon Valley and with major sporting equipment stores like Rick’s Sporting Depot.

Finally, MISM offers a variety of extracurriculars that I would love to join, particularly the Little Pucks program, which provides community outreach to aspiring hockey players with physical disabilities. Since my sophomore year, I’ve volunteered at our local rec center, volunteering with kids who have special needs and helping them learn about and play sports. As I pursue a career in sports marketing and data analytics, I want to make a positive impact on companies and consumers alike. I’d love to live up to MISM’s motto: “Knowledge for service.”

Again, this writer does a fantastic job showcasing his own strengths and specifically demonstrating how this university has particular offerings (courses, labs, professors, extracurriculars, etc.) that will help him in his chosen major and career path. The generalities of this essay (like the school motto) are also used for a purpose: to illustrate how the writer hopes to use his education to give back to the community.

This is a great draft. To make it even better, we might consider how this essay focuses a lot on what the school can do for the writer. The writer might want to consider: how will I, in turn, contribute more to the campus community?

Poor “Why This College? Essay” Example:

When I took a campus visit at Princevard University last year, I was sure to stop at the Wishing Fountain in the middle of the quad. There, I threw in a penny and recited Princevard’s motto, “Veritas in vota” – “truth in wishes” and made my wish: that I will get accepted into Princevard this fall. I’ve known that I wanted to attend Princevard ever since I was a little boy and found out that my Great Uncle Howie graduated from there in 1965. At Princevard, I would study in their English program so that I could pursue my dream of becoming a novelist and a teacher when I graduate.

Ranked at #7 in the nation, Princevard’s reputation is another reason why I would like to attend; a degree from Princevard will open up doors to jobs and internships that many other schools could never open. Finally, I hope to join one of Princevard’s fraternities because the school offers more Greek organizations than any other university on the East Coast.

Well, it’s a start. If you’ve written a similar draft to this one, which breaks many of our “Why This College?” Essay writing rules, don’t despair! Instead, use this draft as a springboard for your next one.

How we might fix up this essay:

You’re probably familiar enough now with the genre conventions of the “Why This College?” Essay to think of a few reasons why this essay is a poor one. Now, let’s see how we can take even a poor first pass and turn it into a viable essay:

Our main goal with a draft like this is to turn all of this generality into an essay that specifically tells the school why this student would be a good fit there. Hint: avoid the sentiments about ranking and general location!

While this essay begins with a personal anecdote, it doesn’t tell us anything about this particular student. Instead, it focuses on a vague campus tradition. Remember that personal anecdotes serve as an opportunity to hook your reader and tell them something unique and positive about yourself.

There’s not much need to mention that a family member attended a university unless a) you are such a strong legacy there that your name is literally on a building (in which case, you should probably have a donating family member make a call on your behalf to the admissions department) or, b) your family history is somehow relevant to your future career and attendance at that school (e.g. your mother went to law school there and you want to become a lawyer and join her firm). If the latter, be sure you’re using this detail as a vehicle to demonstrate why this university is right for you.

While it’s great to talk about your major and career aspirations, be specific! Most schools have English departments so it’s not super useful to point this generality out. Writing that “Princevard University offers a unique dual English program with concentrations in both Creative Writing and Literary Theory, which would enable to me to pursue an ultimate graduate degree in literary and cultural studies while honing my craft as a novelist,” on the other hand, is a much more useful and detailed statement that demonstrates fit and brags a little about the applicant’s writing aspirations!

Similarly, many universities have Greek life organizations. If you’re going to mention an extracurricular, name which ones and why. Perhaps a particular Greek organization on this campus is affiliated with your major; maybe a chapter is politically motivated with a cause you’ve previously championed; maybe a fraternity is historically associated with your ethnicity or race and you’d love to take part in that community.

Closing Thoughts on the “Why This College?” Essay

As you write a “Why This College?” Essay, remember that this essay is perhaps the first conversation you’ll have about your relationship with a university – a relationship that, if you’re accepted, will be a formative one for the rest of your life. Good luck!

[i] “Completing Your Northwestern Application,” Application Materials: Undergraduate Admissions – Northwestern University, 2024. https://admissions.northwestern.edu/apply/requirements.html

• College Essay

Jamie Smith

For the past decade, Jamie has taught writing and English literature at several universities, including Boston College, the University of Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon University. She earned a Ph.D. in English from Carnegie Mellon, where she currently teaches courses and conducts research on composition, public writing, and British literature.

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ChatGPT vs. ChatGPT Plus: Is a paid subscription still worth it?

When  GPT-4  was OpenAI's most powerful artificial intelligence large language model (LLM), paying for a subscription to ChatGPT Plus --  which costs $20 a month  -- made sense. But now that OpenAI announced the availability of GPT-4o, I'm not so sure. 

With this latest update, OpenAI revealed an omnimodel that makes GPT-4-level intelligence available for all, so you won't need a Plus subscription to access it. What's more, free users can now access features that were previously reserved for paid subscribers, including GPT Store access to use custom GPT bots; the Memory feature to give their conversations a sense of continuity; uploading photos and documents to discuss them with ChatGPT; browsing the web to give more current context; and advanced data analysis. 

Also: 6 ways OpenAI just supercharged ChatGPT for free users

These changes can make it hard to determine who will find free ChatGPT adequate and who should spring for a Plus subscription. As a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, I'll explain below in exactly which cases you should use one or the other. Once GPT-4o is widely available, I'll test it to see how it performs for free users and ChatGPT Plus subscribers and report if any further differences arise.

You should use ChatGPT Plus if...

1. you use chatgpt a lot more than the average user.

With GPT-4o giving free users many of the same capabilities that were only available behind a Plus subscription, the reasons to sign up for a monthly fee have dwindled but are not completely gone. Free ChatGPT users will be limited in the number of messages they can send with GPT-4o, depending on usage and demand; however, OpenAI doesn't specify exactly what that limit is. 

Also:  Microsoft Copilot vs. Copilot Pro: Is the subscription fee worth it?

OpenAI says ChatGPT will switch automatically to GPT-3.5 when free users reach their limit. ChatGPT Plus subscribers have five times the capacity of free users. Paid users will be able to ask GPT-4o five times as many questions as free users and will still have access to GPT-4 when they exceed their limit. We expect OpenAI will increase the limits for GPT-4o for both free and paid users. 

2. You can't wait

OpenAI says it is beginning to roll out GPT-4o to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and ChatGPT free users today, with Enterprise users coming soon. During the Spring Update live stream, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati announced that the new GPT-4o model and the rest of the updates will roll out iteratively to customers over the next few weeks. This means that only a fraction of ChatGPT users currently have access to the new features, with this number increasing shortly.

Also:  How to subscribe to ChatGPT Plus (and why you should)

If you don't want to wait until you get the new update in your account to use Plus features as a free subscriber, you can get a Plus subscription now to stave off the excitement. Note that you can cancel the subscription whenever you want.

ChatGPT Plus users also still get early access to new features that OpenAI rolls out, including the new ChatGPT desktop app for macOS. Soon, this early access will include the new Voice Mode that rolls out over the coming weeks. OpenAI also will launch a Windows version of the app later this year.

You should use free ChatGPT if...

1. you don't want to pay a monthly fee.

When GPT-4o is available, ChatGPT users will no longer need a Plus subscription to access most of the features that initially attracted subscribers. OpenAI is making GPT-4o available to all users, whether they are paying or not. 

ChatGPT free users will be able to access the multimodal GPT-4o with GPT-4-level intelligence, get responses from the web, use advanced data analysis, upload files and photos to discuss with the chatbot, access custom GPTs in the GPT Store, and have more helpful experience with Memory -- all of which used to be ChatGPT Plus benefits.

Although it's unclear whether free users can generate images natively in GPT-4o (OpenAI did not disclose this during the event), free users will have access to GPT bots in the GPT Store. If DALL-E access remains a Plus feature, free users can still access the DALL-E bot in the GPT Store. 

2. You're a casual ChatGPT user

There is no need to upgrade to a ChatGPT Plus membership if you're just a casual user who doesn't reach the usage limits of GPT-4o. The new GPT-4o model is rolling out to ChatGPT free users with usage limits beginning today, but OpenAI hasn't specified this limit. Plus users will have a message limit that is five times greater than that of free users, with Team and Enterprise users getting even higher limits.

Also:  ChatGPT vs. Bing Chat vs. Google Bard: Which is the best AI chatbot?

If you're a free user who doesn't use ChatGPT often and stays within the usage limit, you wouldn't get much benefit from a ChatGPT Plus subscription now. I expect OpenAI will amend the subscription benefits or the price as time passes and GPT-4o becomes widely available.

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Graduate Profile: Sama Shah, MTS '24

Favorite Class or Professor 

There are too many courses and faculty to list! Professor Jocelyne Cesari challenged my writing and analytical abilities; she pressed me to think deeply about Islam, politics, violence, and peacebuilding. Professors Jacqueline and Homi Bhabha at the Kennedy School and FAS, respectively, gave me the theories and practical knowledge to pursue my own research on gender and migration post-graduation. Professor Muhammad Habib took my broken and shy Arabic and turned me into someone who can confidently hold a conversation with a native speaker.  

Finally, to Diane Moore, Atalia Omer, Hilary Rantisi, and Salma Waheedi – taking Narratives of Displacement and Belonging in Palestine/Israel was a blessing. I have never felt so heard and held by a teaching team. Thank you. 

Message of Thanks  

My mother – If I have done any good in these two years, if I have known any measure of success, it is due to her constant prayers and deep love. 

My husband – I could not have done half of what I did if I did not have the love and support he provided at home.  

My siblings and friends for the ways in which they have pushed me, carried me, and brought joy to my life. The HDS DIB Office – Melissa, Steph, and Matt – for witnessing me in all my chaos and supporting me through it all. The HDS RPL Office, and especially Diane Moore, Hussein Rashid, Hilary Rantisi, Susie Hayward, Judy Beals, and Atalia Omer, for possessing the kind of intellectual and personal bravery this university so needs. Ann Braude, my advisor, who approved my course plans no matter how insane they started looking. Katie, who has held and sustained us with much more than just food (although the food was always appreciated). The HDS Muslim community for all its diversity and poetry and dance and pride in our beautiful tradition. 

All Harvard students in solidarity with Palestine – what an honor it has been to know you. 

What I Hope to Be Remembered By 

Oh my gosh, I’ll be happy if I am remembered at all! I feel like I spent most of my time in class or studying. If anything, I hope I am remembered as someone who was intellectually curious, introspective, and kind. 

Future Plans 

This summer, I’ll be working with Al-Haq through RPL’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative. Then, in September, I’m headed to Amman, Jordan, to begin a nine-month research fellowship on gender and migration with support from Harvard and the Refugees, Displaced Persons, and Forced Migration Studies Center at Yarmouk University. 

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Controversy follows Gov. Kristi Noem as she is banned by another South Dakota tribe

FILE - South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2024, at the National Harbor, Feb. 23, 2024, in Oxon Hill, Md. Noem is now banned from entering nearly 20% of her state after two more tribes banished her this week over comments she made earlier this year about tribal leaders benefitting from drug cartels. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is now banned from entering nearly 20% of her state after another tribe banished her this week and the leaders of a sixth tribe recommended taking that action over comments she made earlier this year about tribal leaders benefitting from drug cartels.

The latest developments in the ongoing tribal dispute come on the heels of the backlash Noem faced for writing about killing a hunting dog that misbehaved in her latest book. It is not clear how these controversies will affect her chances to become Donald Trump’s running mate because it is hard to predict what the former president will do.

The Sissteon-Wahpeton Oyate tribe banned Noem earlier this week. Then Friday the leadership committee of the Yankton Sioux Tribe recommended that Noem be banned, but that tribe’s general council must vote on it before Noem could be banned from their land in southeastern South Dakota. The Oglala, Rosebud, Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes had already taken action to keep her off their reservations. Three other tribes haven’t yet banned her.

Noem reinforced the divisions between the tribes and the rest of the state in March when she said publicly that tribal leaders were catering to drug cartels on their reservations while neglecting the needs of children and the poor.

“We’ve got some tribal leaders that I believe are personally benefiting from the cartels being there, and that’s why they attack me every day,” Noem said at a forum. “But I’m going to fight for the people who actually live in those situations, who call me and text me every day and say, ’Please, dear governor, please come help us in Pine Ridge. We are scared.’ ”

Noem’s spokesman didn’t respond Saturday to email questions about the bans. But previously she has said she believes many people who live on the reservations still support her even though she is clearly not getting along with tribal leaders.

Noem addressed the issue in a post on X on Thursday along while posting a link to a YouTube channel about law enforcement’s video about drugs on the reservations.

“Tribals leaders should take action to ban the cartels from their lands and accept my offer to help them restore law and order to their communities while protecting their sovereignty,” Noem said. “We can only do this through partnerships because the Biden Administration is failing to do their job.”

The tribes have clashed with Noem in the past, including over the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock and during the COVID-19 pandemic when they set up coronavirus checkpoints at reservation borders to keep out unnecessary visitors. She was temporarily banned from the Oglala Sioux reservation in 2019 after the protest dispute.

And there is a long history of rocky relations between Native Americans in the state and the government dating back to 1890, when soldiers shot and killed hundreds of Lakota men, women and children at the Wounded Knee massacre as part of a campaign to stop a religious practice known as the Ghost Dance.

Political observer Cal Jillson, who is based at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said this tribal dispute feels a little different because Noem seems to be “stoking it actively, which suggests that she sees a political benefit.”

“I’m sure that Gov. Noem doesn’t mind a focus on tensions with the Native Americans in South Dakota because if we’re not talking about that, we’re talking about her shooting the dog,” Jillson said.

Noem appears to be getting tired of answering questions about her decision to kill Cricket after the dog attacked a family’s chickens during a stop on the way home from a hunting trip and then tried to bite the governor. Noem also drew criticism for including an anecdote she has since asked her publisher to pull from the book that described “staring down” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a private meeting that experts said was implausible.

After those controversies, she canceled several interviews that were planned as part of the book tour. With all the questions about “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward,” no one is even asking anymore about Noem’s decision to appear in an infomercial-style video lavishing praise on a team of cosmetic dentists in Texas who gave her veneers.

Jillson said it all probably hurts her chances with Trump, who has been auditioning a long list of potential vice-president candidates.

“I think that the chaos that Trump revels in is the chaos he creates. Chaos created by somebody else simply detracts attention from himself,” Jillson said.

University of South Dakota political science professor Michael Card said that if it isn’t the vice-president slot, it’s not clear what is in Noem’s political future because she is prevented from running for another term as governor. Noem is in her second term as governor.

She could go after U.S. Senator Mike Rounds’ seat or try to return to the House of Representatives, Card said.

This story was first published on May 11, 2024. It was updated on May 13, 2024, to correct the name of a tribe to Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, instead of Sisseton-Wahpeton Ovate.

This story was also updated on May 14, 2024 to correct that Noem has not been banned by the Yankton Sioux Tribe. That tribe’s leadership committee recommended that Noem should be banned from the Yankton Sioux Tribe’s reservation, but the tribe’s general council must vote on that recommendation before Noem would be banned.

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Calculate for all schools, your chance of acceptance.

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12 Effective “Why This College?” Essay Examples

What’s covered.

• Essay 1: UPenn Nursing
• Essay 2: UPenn
• Essay 3: UW Madison
• Essay 4: Northwestern
• Essay 5: NYU
• Essay 6: NYU
• Essay 7: Boston University
• Essay 8: Boston University
• Essay 9: Tufts
• Essay 10: Tufts
• Essay 11: Georgia Tech
• Essay 12: Georgia Tech

Where to Get Your Essays Edited

The “ Why This College?” essay is one of the most common supplemental prompts. These school-specific essays help colleges understand if you’re a good fit for them, and if they’re a good fit for you.

In this post, we’ll share 12 “Why This College?” essay examples from real students and explain what they did well, and what could be improved. Read these examples to understand how to write a strong supplemental essay that improves your chances of acceptance.

Please note: Looking at examples of real essays students have submitted to colleges can be very beneficial to get inspiration for your essays. You should never copy or plagiarize from these examples when writing your own essays. Colleges can tell when an essay isn’t genuine and will not view students favorably if they plagiarized.

Essay Example #1: UPenn Nursing

Prompt: How will you explore your intellectual and academic interests at the University of Pennsylvania? Please answer this question given the specific undergraduate school to which you are applying (650 words).

Sister Simone Roach, a theorist of nursing ethics, said, “caring is the human mode of being.” I have long been inspired by Sister Roach’s Five C’s of Caring: commitment, conscience, competence, compassion, and confidence. Penn both embraces and fosters these values through a rigorous, interdisciplinary curriculum and unmatched access to service and volunteer opportunities.

COMMITMENT. Reading through the activities that Penn Quakers devote their time to (in addition to academics!) felt like drinking from a firehose in the best possible way. As a prospective nursing student with interests outside of my major, I value this level of flexibility. I plan to leverage Penn’s liberal arts curriculum to gain an in-depth understanding of the challenges LGBT people face, especially regarding healthcare access. Through courses like “Interactional Processes with LGBT Individuals” and volunteering at the Mazzoni Center for outreach, I hope to learn how to better support the Penn LGBT community as well as my family and friends, including my cousin, who came out as trans last year.

CONSCIENCE. As one of the first people in my family to attend a four-year university, I wanted a school that promoted a sense of moral responsibility among its students. At Penn, professors challenge their students to question and recreate their own set of morals by sparking thought- provoking, open-minded discussions. I can imagine myself advocating for universal healthcare in courses such as “Health Care Reform & Future of American Health System” and debating its merits with my peers. Studying in an environment where students confidently voice their opinions – conservative or liberal – will push me to question and strengthen my value system.

COMPETENCE. Two aspects that drew my attention to Penn’s BSN program were its high-quality research opportunities and hands-on nursing projects. Through its Office of Nursing Research, Penn connects students to faculty members who share similar research interests. As I volunteered at a nursing home in high school, I hope to work with Dr. Carthon to improve the quality of care for senior citizens. Seniors, especially minorities, face serious barriers to healthcare that I want to resolve. Additionally, Penn’s unique use of simulations to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world application impressed me. Using computerized manikins that mimic human responses, classes in Penn’s nursing program allow students to apply their emergency medical skills in a mass casualty simulation and monitor their actions afterward through a video system. Participating in this activity will help me identify my strengths and areas for improvement regarding crisis management and medical care in a controlled yet realistic setting. Research opportunities and simulations will develop my skills even before I interact with patients.

COMPASSION. I value giving back through community service, and I have a particular interest in Penn’s Community Champions and Nursing Students For Sexual & Reproductive Health (NSRH). As a four-year volunteer health educator, I hope to continue this work as a Community Champions member. I am excited to collaborate with medical students to teach fourth and fifth graders in the city about cardiology or lead a chair dance class for the elders at the LIFE Center. Furthermore, as a feminist who firmly believes in women’s abortion rights, I’d like to join NSRH in order to advocate for women’s health on campus. At Penn, I can work with like-minded people to make a meaningful difference.

CONFIDENCE. All of the Quakers that I have met possess one defining trait: confidence. Each student summarized their experiences at Penn as challenging but fulfilling. Although I expect my coursework to push me, from my conversations with current Quakers I know it will help me to be far more effective in my career.

The Five C’s of Caring are important heuristics for nursing, but they also provide insight into how I want to approach my time in college. I am eager to engage with these principles both as a nurse and as a Penn Quaker, and I can’t wait to start.

What the Essay Did Well

This essay has many positive aspects, but the most impressive one is the structure. Utilizing the Five C’s of Caring to discuss Penn’s offerings was a genius way of tying in this student’s passion for nursing while also making their essay exciting and easy to read. Beginning each paragraph with the respective adjective helped focus the paragraph and allowed the student to demonstrate how they exemplify each quality without explicitly stating it. The student wasn’t afraid to think outside the box and add creativity to their essay structure, which really paid off.

Another positive is how specific and specialized the Penn resources and opportunities the student mentions are. This essay did not fall into the trap of name-dropping professors or programs. In every paragraph, there was a connection to something the student wants to do at Penn to further themselves in the respective characteristic they were describing.

Not only did this student mention a resource at Penn—whether it was a professor, a class, or a club—in every paragraph, but they elaborated on what that resource was and how it would help them achieve their goal of becoming a nurse. The what and how is what sets this essay apart from other supplements that just name-drop resources for the sake of it. The amount of detail this essay went into about some of these resources makes it clear to the admissions officers reading the essay that this student has seriously looked into Penn and has a strong desire to come to campus and use these resources.

What Could Be Improved

One thing this essay could do to make it stronger is improve the first paragraph. The student does a good job of setting up Sister Roach and the Five C’s, but they don’t mention anything about their desire to study or pursue nursing. The first paragraph mentions both Sister Roach and Penn, but left out the student. This could be fixed by simply adding something along the lines of “I can’t wait to embody these values as a nursing student at Penn” to the paragraph.

Essay Example #2: UPenn

Prompt: Considering the specific undergraduate school you have selected, how will you explore your academic and intellectual interests at the University of Pennsylvania?  For students applying to the coordinated dual-degree and specialized programs, please answer these questions in regard to your single-degree school choice; your interest in the coordinated dual-degree or specialized program may be addressed through the program-specific essay. (300-450 words)

I always loved watching the worms when it rained. I used to put my little raincoat on, sit on the doorsteps, and watch them move toward the puddles. My younger brother, forever intent on destroying the world around him, would try to stomp on the worms, and I would run after him screaming. In my imagination, the brain looked like a pile of squiggly worms. However, my neuroscience curiosity has since grown beyond a worm’s habits.

For example, my mother thought that I was insane when I wanted to watch American Murder: The Family Next Door . To her immense relief, I was interested in the psychology of the criminal rather than the crime itself. Although neuroscience is my primary interest, I also hope to learn more about the intersection between law and medicine at the UPenn College of Arts and Sciences. I’ve been able to explore this topic through various projects at school such as presentations on juvenile crime and the death penalty.

At the University of Pennsylvania, I look forward to taking classes like Forensic Neuroscience (BIBB 050) as well as Neuroscience and Society (PSYC 247) both of which directly combine my two interests. Hopefully, the Take Your Professor to Dinner program resumes as I would make sure to talk to Dr. Daniel Langleben about his research on forensic functional brain imaging over a meal of Philly cheesesteaks.

I also hope to participate in the Race, Science, and Society Program where I can discover how race biases and neuroscience go hand-in-hand and contribute to the fight against racism. The Beyond Arrests: Re-Thinking Systematic-Oppression Group immediately caught my attention while looking at Penn’s opportunities to engage in relevant dialogue. My fascination with the criminal system began with reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment , and Penn will both fuel that curiosity as well as introduce new questions about the world of justice reform.

As an eight-year Latin scholar and a five-time reader of the Percy Jackson franchise, I would like to take classes in the Penn Classical Studies department where I can learn more about the impact of ancient cultures on society today. Classes such as Greek and Roman Medicine (CLST 271) would intersect my interests in medicine and classical civilizations.

Although I do harbor a deep love for Philly cheesesteaks and enjoyment of running in strange places like the Woodlands Cemetery, the range of programs to support my diverse interests and unmatched opportunities to put learning into action make me confident that the University of Pennsylvania is the best university for me to succeed.

The real strength in the essay lies in the sheer number of details this student is able to include in a short space, without sacrificing style and flow. The first two paragraphs really have nothing to do with Penn, but the inclusion of them makes this response feel like an essay, rather than a list of offerings at Penn. Striking the balance is important, and the anecdote at the beginning ultimately humanizes the writer.

From the three unique courses to the specific professor and his research to the race and criminal justice programs, this student has clearly done their homework on Penn! The key to this essay’s success isn’t just mentioning the offerings at Penn that excite the student, but the context that explains how each opportunity fits into the student’s academic interests.

Adding book titles like Crime and Punishment and Percy Jackson to support their passion for the criminal justice system and classics are extra details that help us learn more about how this student pursues their passions outside of the classroom. Finding little ways to humanize yourself throughout the essay can take it from good to great.

One area of improvement for this essay is the structure. It follows a very traditional “ Why This College? ” framework—start with an anecdote, then discuss classes, and then extracurriculars and programs—that gets old quickly for admissions officers.

A great way to add some spice to the format would be to use a sample schedule for the day. This essay mentions three different classes, two different groups, and a Take Your Professor to Dinner opportunity. Together, that’s the recipe for a full day at UPenn!

There are a few ways to play around with an essay that follows a typical day-in-the-life. Maybe each paragraph starts with a time and explains what they do during that hour. Maybe they narrate walking through campus on their way from one class to the next and what they just learned. However they choose to go about it, adding in a playful spin to the traditional essay structure is one of the best ways to instantly set an essay apart from the crowd. 

Essay Example #3: UW Madison

Prompt: Tell us why you decided to apply to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition, please include why you are interested in studying the major(s) you have selected. If you selected undecided, please describe your areas of possible academic interest. (650 words)

Essay – # Day 117

7:30 am… As I open my eyes, I look at the pinboard in front of my bed. Written in red block letters are two of the many goals of my life: “Make life better and more independent for the Visually impaired; Inspire kids to explore the field of STEM, making them the future problem solvers.“

Keeping these goals afresh in mind, I freshen up and prepare for the first class of the day, ​ECE 533 Image Processing. As the professor explains the Applications of Image Processing in Computer Vision, a light bulb sparks in my mind. I can modify the head contraption of PERIPHIS to identify objects in peripheral vision and alert the wearer via an earpiece using Text to Speech (TTS). 

After the class, I see Professor Mohit Gupta at the WISION Lab, where he shares his insights from the Block World Cameras system, which helps to geometrize 3D Man-made environments. We brainstorm ways we can implement this system on PERIPHIS.

Deep in the discussion and intrigued by my curiosity, he asked me where my interest in this niche field sparked during high school, and then I recount the incident from 9th grade: 

“In Hindi – Agar aaj mere paas paise hote to ye din na dekhna padta” (If I had money, I would not have had to see this day.) 

These were the words of Aadiya, a glaucoma patient, who couldn’t help but cry in despair as she injured herself in an accident just because she couldn’t sense the incoming traffic. During my visit to “Baroda Association for Blind (BAB)” for a survey, I saw and experienced firsthand how hard and inaccessible it is for an underprivileged visually impaired to locomote without anyone’s assistance. 

What happened next was my first adventure into the world of Computer Science and Engineering. I dedicated the next four years to find an affordable solution to a pressing problem. It was called PERIPHIS, a smart wearable that helps alert the visually impaired wearer of impending danger while locomoting.

When I finally presented this device to Aadiya, the smile on her face made me realize how big an impact technology can make in one’s life.

11:00 am… As I head to the Engineering Hall to complete my assignments of COMP SCI 570

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction, I crossways with my roommate from the Chadbourne Residential College, who is also interested in researching applications of Computer Vision in real life. We fix a time to chat later. 

1:20pm… After a quick bite, I head to Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory. I expand my knowledge on different applications of Computer Science to make human life better than I found. I get fascinated when I see a few students building a child-friendly humanoid robot to teach kids the principles of Coding and AI. I hop in and share insights from my experience of being the President at AiGoLearning and kindling interest in STEM for young children. I explain how crucial the UI is when it comes to technology for the young.

5:00pm… To blow off some steam and socialize, I meet up with my fellow countrymen and artists at the Indian Graduate Students’ Association. We discuss and plan the upcoming Diwali Night Music at Shannon Hall. I feel proud to share my national identity while bringing out my musical self by contributing as a Tabla player at the student organization. 

As I close my day, I reflect and think of the most unique resource at UW. It is not the labs, research facilities, classes, but the people, including the professors and students, all aligned to a single goal: “Solving problems to make society a better place.”

10:00pm… I find my way back to my dorm room and write with red block letters on my pinboard: “Meet with at least 1 Badger every day and gain new insight from them.”

This essay is a stellar example. The day in the life formatting is a common way to spice up your “Why This College?” essay, but the way this writer executes it is nearly flawless.

Opening with the vision board makes the student’s college goals clear from the very start, and this was cleverly done since vision boards are naturally one of the first things you see when you wake up.

The student then takes us to specific courses and labs and shares their thoughts on how they could improve their invention, PERIPHIS. The author seamlessly includes background information on PERIPHIS by including this hypothetical conversation with a professor who speaks their native language.

As we go through the day, we can see that this student will not only be involved academically, but also socially. We learn how important their culture is to them and how they plan to share it with the campus community.

This essay does everything a “Why This College?” essay should: it shares the student’s goals and motivations behind them, how the university can support those goals, and how the student will engage with the campus beyond academics.

There’s not much this essay could improve, besides a few formatting and wording issues. The first line of this essay—“ Essay – # Day 117”—is a great attention-grabber, but the placement of the # symbol is confusing and perhaps should’ve been in front of the number.

There are also a couple spots where wording is a bit awkward, such as these lines:

I crossways with my roommate from the Chadbourne Residential College, who is also interested in researching applications of Computer Vision in real life. We fix a time to chat later. 

It should instead say something like “I run into my roommate” and “We schedule a time”. This is likely due to English not being the student’s native language, but could’ve easily been caught by proofreading from a native speaker.

Essay Example #4: Northwestern

Prompt: While other parts of your application give us a sense of who you are, we are also excited to hear more about how you see yourself engaging with the larger Northwestern community.

In 300 words or less, help us understand how you might engage specific resources, opportunities, and/or communities here. We are curious about what these specifics are, as well as how they may enrich your time at Northwestern and beyond.

For as long as I can remember, I have seen my parents, both farmers, struggling to produce food because of the challenges presented by the environment. Joining Northwestern’s community, and majoring in Environmental Engineering, will allow me to understand what are the reasons behind climate change and learn how to stop them and/or prevent them from happening. 

Having witnessed how plant diseases affect crops, I would like to collaborate in the PLANT-Dx project and in its widespread application. I strongly believe that it will be able to help farmers to improve the quality and quantity of their production, and reduce famine around the world. At some point in my education, I want to take advantage of the study-abroad programs Northwestern has to offer and learn about farming practices in a different part of the world. In addition, I want to conduct research on sustainable alternative farming methods that adapt to the new environmental conditions and that can be practiced in countries with fewer resources.

Apart from having access to outstanding professors, rigorous academics, and cutting-edge research resources, I will be able to be part of a close-knit community genuinely curious about others’ activities, truly passionate about what they do, and not afraid to step out of their comfort zone to make of this world a better place. Being part of Engineers for a Sustainable World at Northwestern will allow me to get to know people that share one of my passions in addition to learning and teaching how to apply sustainable practices in daily life.  

I am already looking forward to marching through the Weber Arch.

This essay is extremely cohesive, as it focuses on the student’s agricultural background and desire to study environmental engineering. The student mentions a couple resources specific to Northwestern, such as the PLANT-Dx project and Engineers for a Sustainable World.

Because of the background information the student provided, their motivations for participating in these opportunities is also clear. We can see that Northwestern would be a school that would help them achieve their goals.

There are two main aspects of the essay that could be improved: the writing and its specificity.

To begin with, the intro paragraph is a bit clunky and vague.  The student should have specified the challenges the environment has presented to their parents’ farming with detailed imagery about droughts or torrential rain. The final sentence about climate change is also much too broad, and the student should’ve stated a goal in a smaller niche of environmentalism.

For example, here’s what a rewritten strong intro paragraph might look like:

The drought this year was bad, and the once-flourishing tomato crops on my family’s farm were afflicted with Southern Blight. As my family and our community struggled to put food on the table for the third year in a year, I resolved to major in Environmental Engineering at Northwestern to learn how to preserve our agriculture in the face of climate change.

Another writing error is the typo in the final paragraph, where they write “to make of this world a better place”. It’s important to proofread your essay and have others help you proofread as well!

Finally, while the essay mentions a couple specific Northwestern resources, the other resources they mention are too vague.  The student could’ve improved by mentioning a specific study abroad program and a current research project on sustainable alternative farming methods. Most colleges let you study abroad and conduct research, so you need to explain why Northwestern is the best place for your goals.

Essay Example #5: NYU

Prompt: We would like to know more about your interest in NYU. What motivated you to apply to NYU? Why have you applied or expressed interest in a particular campus, school, college, program, and or area of study? If you have applied to more than one, please also tell us why you are interested in these additional areas of study or campuses. We want to understand – Why NYU? (400 words)

“A futuristic way of looking at academics,” the student panelist said during a New York University virtual information session. I reflected on a conversation I had with my grandma; she couldn’t understand how her vegetarian granddaughter could build a career in the food industry. However much I tried convincing her that vegetarianism was the future, as it offers substantial benefits to the environment and can offer health benefits to a growing population with the same environmental resources, she insisted that tofu would never provide the same satiation as meat. She was raised in a community where meat consumption was embedded in the culture, and its production is a large part of the country’s economy. In contrast, I had the privilege of living a few steps from San Francisco, with many restaurants and grocery stores dedicated to plant-based meat alternatives. Trying innovative recipes and products eventually allowed me to develop my own recipes. Upon my move to Nicaragua, where my grandmother is from, I found my food options to be limited, expensive and hard to find. So I developed my own small-scale solutions that did not break the bank and satiated grandma.

An institution that implements forward-thinking is what I need to reach my goals of changing the future of plant-based diets and people’s views on vegetarianism. NYU’s Nutrition and Food Studies program offers multiple disciplines of food studies that I will apply to my aspirations as a vegetarian. I plan to study under Adjunct Faculty Kayleen St. John, whose success in the plant-based industry and her teaching of the ‘Foundations of Plant-Based Nutrition’ in The Vegetarian Times excites me. The variety of classes like Introduction to Food History, Food Photography, and Food Systems: Food & Agriculture will give me an overview of what is available in the food industry to be prepared for all fields. Not to be cliche, but NYU’s proximity to the city is essential for the rapidly changing vegetarian industry. The multiculturalism available in NYC and NYU will allow me to understand the food system and diets of various cultures, religions, and areas. I can explore the extremes of the food industry, from fancy restaurants to public school cafeterias. These juxtapositions, much like the one I experienced after my move to Nicaragua, will allow me to broaden my reach and demonstrate that the vegetarian diet is not something reserved for select groups but a diet attainable to all. 

A core strength of this essay is the fact it takes its time to provide the reader with ample background on why this student is interested in nutrition and food studies and how they have grappled with difficult questions and surrounding this topic in the past. It’s okay to not mention anything about NYU for a whole paragraph if you are using that space to bring depth to your interests and tell the reader the crucial backstory behind pursuing your intended degree.

Another positive aspect is the inclusion of New York City for a purposeful reason. NYU admissions officers read thousands of essays that just talk about living in NYC for the sake of NYC—this is not what they want to hear. In contrast, this essay focuses on the vast and lively food scene in New York that the student considers to be an invaluable asset to her NYU education. This is a time where including New York actually plays to the appeal of NYU, rather than making it seem like the student is simply applying for the city.

Finally, this student clearly demonstrates that they are someone who wants to change the world for the better, but through their personal niche. NYU is looking for people who express this desire to be a changemaker, but oftentimes sweeping statements like “I want to change the world” come across as vague and disingenuous. The essay does mention changing diets and looking to the future, but it is focused within the student’s specific area of interest, making the claim to change the world more determined and authentic.

This essay could be made stronger if there was a bit more personal reflection included. The first paragraph provides a lot of details on the student’s vegetarianism and how it conflicts with her grandmother and her heritage. What it doesn’t include very much of is how the student thinks and feels about her diet being at odds with that of her family. 

Does this student feel they are betraying their heritage by being vegetarian? What emotions do they feel when people criticize vegetarianism? Why did they go vegetarian in the first place? Probing questions like these that get to the emotional core behind the story in the first paragraph would really help to build out this student’s backstory. We want to understand what their emotional responses and reasoning processes look like, so finding ways to include those into an already expositive paragraph would further bolster this essay.

Essay Example #6: NYU

My mother never takes off her Cartier necklace that my father gave her 10 years ago on their anniversary. As a child, I didn’t fully understand this attachment. However, on my 15th birthday, my aunt gifted me a ring, which was uniquely designed and made up of three rings linked together. Wearing it every day and making sure I would never lose it, I didn’t treat it like my easily replaceable childhood necklaces; it was my piece of luxury. This sparked my deep curiosity for the luxury world. The niche strives to provide the finest and most memorable experiences, as equally as my Japanese attention to detail and my French appreciation towards aesthetic beauty. In a constantly shifting environment, I learned that luxury chases timeless excellence.

NYU Stern’s BS in business and a co-concentration in management and marketing will fully immerse me in the business side of luxury fashion that I aim to pursue a future career in. The luxury marketing track, offered only by NYU, will enable me to assemble the most suited classes to reflect my interests. Specifically, NYU Stern’s exciting electives such as The Dynamics of the Fashion Industry seminar and Brand Strategy & Planning will encourage me to develop the skills that I was introduced to and grew keen on when running a virtual sustainable fashion auction.

As someone who has moved around from Paris to Tokyo, to Chicago and now Athens, I thrive in meeting and collaborating with others from diverse backgrounds. The school’s strong global outlook, demonstrated through Stern’s International Business Exchange Program, further sets NYU apart for me, as it is crucial to building essential soft skills. This opportunity allows me to experience new cultural approaches to luxury business which I can bring back with me to New York, and therefore push me to become a well-rounded business student. Similarly, I am excited to take part in the array of student clubs offered, such as the Luxury and Retail Association (LARA), which I learned about after connecting with and talking to current students. Seeing past talks from employers of companies like Conde Nast, I am eager to learn outside of the classroom from future speakers. 

Finding myself in new situations constantly, I always seek new challenges and explorations – to me, it is clear that NYU Stern will push me to create the finest and most unique learning experiences of timeless excellence.

This essay has an amazing introduction paragraph. It doesn’t mention anything about NYU or what this student is planning on studying, which is what makes it so intriguing. The reader doesn’t know where this student is headed after making such a seemingly unrelated statement about jewelry, but we want to find out. 

Not only does this essay immediately capture the reader’s attention, it maintains a succinct and direct tone that helps the reader effortlessly flow from one paragraph to the next. The student chose to include three opportunities at NYU that excite them and fully elaborate on them. This serves as an excellent example of more is less. 

We aren’t bombarded with a laundry list of classes, professors, and clubs the student wants to take. Instead, the student took a focused approach and described why they were excited by each offering they highlighted. Going deeper into a smaller number of opportunities at the college still shows this student did their research, but it allows for their backstory and goals to be discussed in far greater detail.

While this student does a good job of elaborating, they also mention a few key aspects of their personality as throw-away lines, when it would have been great to elaborate further on them. For example, they mention running a virtual sustainable fashion auction (cool!), but don’t provide us with any details on what that actually entails, how they got involved with it, what they enjoyed about it, etc. They also mention moving around a lot in the context of developing a diverse perspective, but they don’t include any emotional insight into what that was like.

Although there are only 400 words available, and you don’t want to spend too much time discussing the past, it would be nice to see just a sentence or two that delves into the details of this student’s background. The fashion auction and moving around clearly had an impact on the student, so we want to know what that was. If they are choosing to include these details, they must be important in the student’s decision to pursue business at NYU, so they shouldn’t be afraid to divulge the emotional significance to the reader.

Essay Example #7: Boston University

Prompt: In no more than 250 words, please tell us why BU is a good fit for you and what specifically has led you to apply for admission.

Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) attracts me because of its support of interdisciplinary study among its wide array of majors. In fact, the CAS now offers a course that combines biology, chemistry, and neuroscience. As I hope to conduct medical research into brain disorders, I plan to pursue all three areas of study. These cross-disciplinary connections at BU will prepare me to do so.

CAS’s undergraduate research program would allow me to work with a mentor, such as Dr. Alice Cronin-Golomb or Dr. Robert M.G. Reinhart related to their research on neurological disorders. With them, I can advance the work I have already completed related to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In a summer class at our local university, my partner and I extracted data from fMRI and PET studies and inputted them into a coding program. We then created an indicator map, which we imported into another software program, AFNI, to display significant activity in the brain regions affected by DID. Seeing the representation of our data thrilled me because I knew it could eventually help people who live with DID. I want to experience that feeling again. Successfully analyzing these fMRI and PET studies and learning to code drives me to pursue more research opportunities, and this desire motivates me to study at a university that offers research opportunities to undergraduates. BU’s interdisciplinary approach to psychology and support for independent undergraduate research will optimally prepare me for a career as a neurological researcher.

This student clearly outlines BU-specific resources (the interdisciplinary course and undergrad research program), plus how these resources align with their professional goals (to become a neurological researcher). They do name professors, but since their work clearly relates to the student’s interests, it doesn’t look disingenuous, and shows that the student has done research on their fit with BU. The student also provides background on why they want to pursue research, and shows that they already have experience, which makes their interest in the undergrad research program more concrete.

The only thing missing from this essay is the student’s fit with BU in terms of extracurriculars and social life. “Why This College?” essays should also cover extracurriculars, as colleges are also interested in how you’ll contribute to their community. 

In general, these essays should be academic-leaning (especially if they’re under 250 words), but you should still address some social aspects of the college that appeal to you (we recommend about 70% academics, 30% social, with more or less focus on social aspects depending on the word count). 

Since the student probably already detailed their previous research in their Common App activities section, they could’ve just summarized their research background in one sentence (instead of 78 words, which is 31% of the total word count!), and used that valuable space to talk about a specific social aspect of BU that interests them. 

Essay Example #8: Boston University

Prompt: In no more than 250 words, please tell us why BU is a good fit for you and what specifically has led you to apply for admission. 

I am fascinated by research, though completely uninterested in the disciplines traditionally associated with it, such as STEM fields. I need to find a school that will balance my desire to conduct research with my interest in political science. 

While many schools boast in-depth student research programs for those looking to cure diseases or develop solutions to global warming, few tout their support for humanities research. Additionally, many universities that do allocate funding to social science research typically reserve these monies for graduate students or upperclassmen. BU, with the help of its Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, will allow me to conduct research on the topics that most intrigue me, such as gender disparity in politics, or the relationship between dominant parties in power and the country’s economy and involvement in foreign affairs. Furthermore, I can begin these studies as early as my first year. Not only can I take classes with professors like Sandra McEvoy or Dino Christenson to develop my interests in a classroom setting, but I could also work with one of them to develop new knowledge in the topics that we both enjoy learning about. With this knowledge base and experience conducting studies with top professors in a respected research institution, I will be well-prepared for my future law career. I want to learn in an environment that encourages independent study no matter one’s field of interest or experience, and BU’s support of intellectual curiosity for all of its students makes it a perfect fit for me.

This student knows exactly what they want, and they’re not afraid to state it bluntly. Their intro paragraph is totally honest about their interests (or lack of interest), and we immediately understand one of their main college goals: to conduct political science research.

The student mentions a specific resource, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, as well as an alignment with BU’s value of encouraging independent study in all fields. Showing alignment with a specific value of the university is a great way to take your essay to the next level.

This essay shows us that the student would be a great fit for BU and would take advantage of its research opportunities.

The writer mentions some of their research interests, but doesn’t explain the motivation behind them. We don’t actually learn very much about the student themself, which is a common flaw of “Why This College?” essays. The essay would’ve been stronger if they’d explained why they’re interested in “gender disparity in politics, or the relationship between dominant parties in power and the country’s economy and involvement in foreign affairs.” For example, maybe they feel strongly about abortion rights and are upset about the way men have been legislating women’s rights.

The student also names two professors whose classes they’d like to take and with whom they’d like to do research, but we aren’t told which classes they’re interested in, or which topics they could cover together. You want to avoid “name-dropping” professors without context in your essay. If the student shared the names of specific classes or research topics and why they’re interested in them, that would’ve strengthened their essay.

Essay Example #9: Tufts

Prompt: Why Tufts? (100 words) 

When Deanne, Tufts’ admissions counselor, visited my school, she immediately caught my attention by emphasizing Tufts’ diverse yet unified campus. Tufts’ inclusive definition of diversity goes beyond merely recruiting students from a variety of backgrounds. Tufts seeks to integrate these categories of diversity and pushes its students to learn from one another. One such intersectional program that attracts me is CAFE (Conversation, Action, Faith, and Education). By joining CAFE, a community that promotes interfaith education, I will learn from my peers, become more understanding of other religious backgrounds, and apply this broader understanding to my academic work at Tufts.

It’s hard to write a “Why This College?” essay in 100 words. This essay does a good job sticking to one unique element of Tufts—its intersectionality. Since Tufts also cares about demonstrated interest, it’s great that the student also mentioned speaking with an admissions counselor. 

We unfortunately don’t learn very much about the student from this essay. Why do they care about diversity and interfaith programs? How does this relate to their academic and career goals? While the word count is super short, they could’ve cut these lines and jumped right into the specific resource they’re interested in: Tufts’ inclusive definition of diversity goes beyond merely recruiting students from a variety of backgrounds. Tufts seeks to integrate these categories of diversity and pushes its students to learn from one another.

Here’s an example of a stronger version of this essay:

When a Tufts admissions counselor visited my school, she immediately caught my attention by emphasizing Tufts’ diverse yet unified campus. As a Muslim hoping to go into International Relations, I want to attend a school that not only recruits diverse students, but pushes them to learn from one another. I hope to join intersectional programs such as CAFE (Conversation, Action, Faith, and Education). By joining this community that promotes interfaith education, I will gain the necessary perspective and compassion to become a human rights lawyer in countries with religious conflict, such as my homeland Azerbaijan.

Essay Example #10: Tufts

Prompt: Why Tufts? (100 words)

Someday I hope to conduct medical research in developing countries; Tufts attracts me because of its wide array of majors it offers and support for undergraduate research. To understand the human brain, I hope to study biology, neuroscience, and psychology. In addition to outstanding faculty in each of these areas, Tufts also organizes initiatives including the International Research Program. Through this program, I would work with other students and faculty members on an international project related to brain diseases. This opportunity will give me a taste of my future career and help me narrow the scope of my later studies.

This essay does a better job of sharing the student’s goals with us compared to the previous Tufts essay. We learn that the applicant is interested in medical research in developing countries on brain diseases, and that Tufts has a program to support international research.

The essay still mentions some resources that could apply to many schools, which is not an effective use of the tiny word count. For example, they say: “Tufts attracts me because of its wide array of majors it offers and support for undergraduate research” and they mention the “outstanding faculty” in the fields they plan to study.

They also don’t tell us their motivation behind studying brain diseases abroad, and it feels like there’s a significant story there. Giving some background would’ve further strengthened their essay.

Finally, they mention that they still need to narrow the scope of their studies; while it’s fine to be undecided on your career and majors, you don’t need to spend your precious word count saying that in your essay. They could’ve instead shared a couple potential avenues they’re considering.

Here’s what the student could’ve written instead:

Outcomes for schizophrenia patients are better in developing countries than in developed ones. I hope to research the reasons behind this and improve the treatment options in the US for the cousin I grew up with. In college, I want to study biology, neuroscience, and psychology. Tufts attracts me because of its unique interdisciplinary BS in Cognitive and Brain Science and its International Research Program. Through this program, I could do the research I’ve dreamt of doing with a faculty member and other students, preparing me for my future career as either a researcher or clinician.

Essay Example #11: Georgia Tech

Prompt: Why do you want to study your chosen major specifically at Georgia Tech? (300 words)

Climate change is a human rights issue.  

There the headline was, screaming on my phone screen. I think about those suffering from a lack of clean water. I think about those suffering from a lack of clean air. 

I often think back to that headline – it’s what drives my passion for environmental engineering. As an environmental engineer, I can mitigate air pollution and design water treatment systems that address the water injustices that people face. However, it’s not just about creating a technology that cleans water; it’s about changing people’s lives. New technologies can make a lasting difference in humanitarian issues worldwide; Georgia Tech’s research on creating a toilet that turns human waste into clean water for those in need of improved sanitation aligns perfectly with my interests.   

At Georgia Tech, through the student-led organization, Engineers for a Sustainable World and the InVenture Prize, I can translate the knowledge gained from my classes into a concrete vision. I can design and implement hands-on sustainability projects around Atlanta and invent a water sanitation system for the on-site acquisition of clean water. 

Georgia Tech can also provide me with ample research opportunities, such as the broad area of Healthy Communities in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. I can further pursue my interest in developing solutions to deliver clean water while welcoming new areas of inquiry. An area I would like to explore would be the controlling of dangerous matter in the air to reduce health hazards; reducing the impact of climate change is of utmost importance to me. 

Studying environmental engineering at Georgia Tech would well prepare me to develop solutions to climate-related issues. With the countless opportunities that Georgia Tech has to offer, I know there is nowhere else where I can receive a better environmental engineering education.

What the Essay Did Well l

This essay begins with an attention-grabbing statement that leaves the reader wondering how this will relate to the student’s interest in Georgia Tech. They then transition seamlessly into how climate change and human rights motivate their desire to become an environmental engineer.

The student mentions several resources specific to Georgia Tech that would help them achieve their goals, such as the research on the toilet turning waste into water, Engineers for a Sustainable World, InVenture Prize, and Healthy Communities research. It’s clear that they did their research and have reflected on their fit with the campus community.

They end the essay explicitly stating that Georgia Tech is the best place for them to grow, and the reader is certainly convinced of this by the end.

This essay is quite strong, so there’s not much that the student could’ve improved. That said, there is one sentence that is a bit awkwardly worded: New technologies can make a lasting difference in humanitarian issues worldwide; Georgia Tech’s research on creating a toilet that turns human waste into clean water for those in need of improved sanitation aligns perfectly with my interests.

Instead, the student could’ve written:

New technologies can make a lasting difference in humanitarian issues worldwide; Georgia Tech aligns with this value of mine and is even developing a toilet that turns human waste into clean water for those who need improved sanitation.

Essay Example #12: Georgia Tech

From my first Java project, a somewhat primitive graphing calculator, I realized that CS unlocks a different way of thinking. My brain races at speeds it seldom touches with other subjects. Every part of CS, from conceptualizing a plan to executing a solution, is another piece of a puzzle I’m eager to solve and affords the most opportunities for creative problem-solving and application. 

“Progress and Service,” Georgia Tech’s motto, tells me there’s no better place to explore my curiosity and deepen my CS skills while simultaneously helping make the world a better place, my ultimate goal for a college education. 

In the classroom, I look forward to GT’s threads program, where I can tailor the curriculum to suit my career choice after exposing myself to all technical aspects of CS.

I’ll apply my specialized learning with Tech’s fascinating research opportunities. Professor Pandarinth’s brain-machine interfacing software means a lot to me. My uncle passed away from a freak accident after extensive paralysis because potential treatments were unaffordable. Exploring this revolutionary brain decoding software wouldn’t just involve me in cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology research, I’d be personally driven to ensure its success and accessibility. 

I’m at my best building towards tangible results. I learned this on my robotics team using design skills to create a technically complex robot that tackles anything from shooting balls to hanging on a balance beam. I’m excited to expand my skills on the RoboJackets team, applying my career interests to build ferocious BattleBots and autonomous race robots that compete on the Indy Speedway, two events that sound ridiculously fun. 

Of course, I can’t skip hackathons. These competitions molded my interest in coding so I want to give back to Georgia Tech’s Hack-Community by planning HackGT and the Catalyst Mentorship program as a member of the Hexlabs team. 

The student’s passion for CS shines through this essay. They explain what they love about the subject (the problem-solving aspect) and they share that they hope to make a difference through CS, demonstrating alignment with Tech’s motto of  “progress and service”.

It’s clear that this student has done their research, mentioning specific academic programs, research, and clubs. We can see that they’d be greatly engaged with the campus community.

Finally, this essay is also down-to-earth. The student doesn’t try to use impressive vocabulary or formal language. In fact, they even describe some extracurriculars as “ridiculously fun.” While you shouldn’t get too informal in your essays, this student’s casual tone in this context makes them feel more approachable and more excited about the prospect of going to Georgia Tech.

This essay has a couple sentences that are confusing to read:

Every part of CS, from conceptualizing a plan to executing a solution, is another piece of a puzzle I’m eager to solve and affords the most opportunities for creative problem-solving and application.

This sentence could’ve been broken up and rewritten as:

Every part of CS, from conceptualizing a plan to executing a solution, is another piece of a puzzle I’m eager to solve. For me, the field affords the most opportunities for creative problem-solving and application.

This sentence also uses incorrect grammar—the comma should be replaced with a semicolon:

Exploring this revolutionary brain decoding software wouldn’t just involve me in cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology research, I’d be personally driven to ensure its success and accessibility. 

These details would make the essay more readable.

The organization of the essay could also be reworked. The student mentions Tech’s motto of “progress and service,” but doesn’t follow up until later with an example of how they’d use CS for the greater good. Using CS for social good isn’t ultimately the theme of their essay, so this section would’ve been better placed at the end of the paragraph about AI technology research, or at the very end of the essay. The essay actually ends abruptly, so placing the section at the end might’ve tied it up nicely, if the student could’ve placed more emphasis on how they plan to use CS to improve society.

Do you want feedback on your “Why This College” essays? After rereading your essays countless times, it can be difficult to evaluate your writing objectively. That’s why we created our free Peer Essay Review tool , where you can get a free review of your essay from another student. You can also improve your own writing skills by reviewing other students’ essays. 

If you want a college admissions expert to review your essay, advisors on CollegeVine have helped students refine their writing and submit successful applications to top schools. Find the right advisor for you to improve your chances of getting into your dream school!

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