Writing Quotes by Writers but not Written about Writing

By Lyndi Scott

It is easy when someone says the word “writer,” to immediately think of names like Ernest Hemingway or Jane Austen, Shakespeare or Mark Twain. You know, the Greats (relatively speaking). The writers that defined what it meant to be a writer. It is a great misfortune that we often make this association. Just because you didn’t write Paradise Lost or Harry Potter doesn’t mean you can’t “write.” It also ignores the technicality, of course, that anyone who writes is a writer: to write, and write something significant, doesn’t mean you have to be a professional or that it has to be awe-inspiring poetry that transforms the nation, or a masterpiece of the novel genre-- it just has to be written.

With that adieu, I will further this perspective using the great writers who wrote great quotes about writing but not about writers. (Say that three times fast-- or even once, for that matter.)

“A word after a word after a word is power.” ― Margaret Atwood

Even writers don’t write to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Writing is therapeutic and is a powerful thinking process for both the individual writing, and those who read it. The act of writing is a cognitive process, so no matter what you are writing about, you are going to think very deeply about it before and while your pen touches the paper.

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” ― Albert Camus

If philosophers like Plato and Socrates or ancient scientists like Galileo or Copernicus had never written their thoughts down, not as writers, mind you, but as thinkers, gravity would’ve taken centuries longer to understand. Do you think? Then write. It is through writing that the world connects, grows, and accumulates the mass of knowledge that is currently swirling around in Google databases. 

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.” ― Carl Sagan

When you think about writing in the reductive form that Sagan puts it, it probably makes you feel a little silly at first-- it is such a simple thing, so useless when taken out of context. Sagan goes on though, giving writing context and emphasis, and suddenly the BuzzFeed article or that Tom Clancy novel is now an historical document, and is a small cross section on the web of writings that expands infinitely. And like Sagan says, our ability to access that web of ideas is the greatest gift we give to each other.

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.” ― Dylan Thomas

Replace the word poem with “idea” and suddenly you are contributing so much more than new perspective, you are contributing to progress.

“All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche was a German philosopher who believed God was dead due to the increase of secularism in Western civilization and wrote many theses on nihilism, which is the idea that life lacks purpose because nothing has an innate value. Maybe you knew that, maybe you didn’t. But you have heard of Nietzsche, because like me and you and Nietzsche, we are part of that web of writing. This blog you are reading this very instant is now a part of the great expanse. Writing is not reserved for writers, but for thinkers, for those who have ever had a question and desired an answer. And something tells me that you are one of those people. So go write!

5 Steps to Start the Big Paper Today

by Katie Avagliano

I get it, we’re just days after the snowpocalypse. There might still be snow blocking your front door. Also, it’s January. Do we really need to start that 25 page end-of-semester research paper in January? That grad school application can wait until the snow melts.

But you know that’s not what’s going to happen. It’s going to wait until the day before it’s due, or the week before it’s due, and you’re going to stress out.

So get started today. Baby steps, I swear.

#1: Go to the library

Just go in the library and smell the books. Look up your topic, find the call number, and stand in front of the shelf for a little while.

The library is organized by subject. It’s kind of genius, actually. So if you’re doing a paper on the old Hollywood studio system, you might be looking for Clark Gable and the book right next to it just as useful.

At American University, graduate and undergrad students alike can check out as many books as they want. The loan period is four weeks, for undergrads, and six weeks for graduate and law students. 

So go crazy! Bring all the books home and just flip through them for a couple of weeks. Real paper books can be inspiring.

#2: Read a Wikipedia article

Or, you know, grab an actual encyclopedia, but just knowing the overview of your subject can really help you focus on what you’re researching on. And if you find something interesting, look for more sources to confirm it. Wikipedia is a good way to know what the bare minimum research already can tell you. Just make sure to move on from the website and actually read a scholarly source.

#3: Talk it out

This is where the Writing Center comes in. We’re like those friends who pretend to care about your French Revolution paper, except we actually care. Come by with your Wikipedia research and your sixteen books and your idea and we will help you turn it into an outline. Papers always seem so much easier when you have a well-crafted thesis and five or six topic sentences right there.

#4: Un-schedule yourself

You know how when you start a paper the week before it’s due you put crazy demands on your mind and body. Like: Today I have to write my entire paper, or Today I have to get all my research done, or I have ten minutes to edit this whole thing.

Because you’ll now have weeks or months to finish your paper, you’re not trying to schedule your paper like train times. You’re just trying to keep sane, and balanced. Sit down with your planner or your iCalendar app and put in everything you have to do all week. Your classes, your soccer practice, your job, your regular homework. A lot time for breakfast, lunch, dinner, driving, snacks, hanging with friends, watching Netflix, watching the Superbowl, watching the Oscars. Try to account for everything. Remember you need eight hours of sleep.

Now how much time do you have left over? Per day? Per week? That’s how much time you’ll use for writing. Now, if you have two hours left per day, you don’t have to use all of those two hours. But try to make it at least thirty minutes, so that you can really get into the groove of your assignment. And then move onto something else.

Make writing a routine. Make it un-scary. Make it so that there’s enough time left for revising, rethinking, re-editing. When you finish one assignment, move onto another. Keep that thirty minutes a day productive.

Then you’re good, man. You’re golden.

#5: Just do it

The best part about starting the paper in January is that you can procrastinate. Write five pages this month, five pages next month, edit on the weekends. But in the end, remember that procrastination can only save you for so long. Eventually you are going to have to do the thing. And when the time comes, you’re going to have to turn off Facebook and stop scrolling through Twitter and just do it. And it sucks. But it makes you a better person, I swear. If nothing else, knowing every Confederate general will help you be boss at pub trivia.

BITE-SIZE ESSAYS

By: Simone Feigenbaum

Like many students, I'm a procrastinator. The thought of having to write a paper often ends up seeming like a Herculean task, so I avoid it until the last minute, and need to do everything at once, which just reinforces my avoidance of it. 

What I have found, though, is that breaking the paper up into smaller, easier to digest tasks can greatly ease the process. 

This is how I break down projects for a research paper:

Step one: Research

This is my favorite part. Find an aspect of the topic that interests you, and look into it. The library research desk can be a great help with this part. Make sure you keep track of the things you've read and what you've learned from them. It will make the following steps far easier.

Step two: Find a question

Now that you've done some research into your topic, what questions do you have? What did you find most interesting? That's your topic.

Step three: Outlining

When you were in high school, your teachers probably taught you how to make a basic outline, and you probably ignored them. I did too. But they do help. They don't need to follow any specific format; play around and find what works best for you. I usually decide what I want to talk about in each paragraph, and write down my support for each point, along with where I found the information to make citations easier. My outlines are handwritten: informal, messy, and covered in arrows from moving points around. Yours may be typewritten with neat bullet points. It's up to you.

Step three: Write the essay!

Look at your outline: it's basically your complete essay. Follow your own instructions, and add an introduction and a conclusion. 

That's it! You're done! Proofread, write your bibliography, turn it in, and get yourself a treat! You've earned it! 

Asking for Help

By: Matt Ehlenbach

Being seasoned students, many of us feel as though we have the gig down.  We get the assignment, we do it, and then we turn it in, right?

While often enough things work as planned and we’re able to be pretty self-sufficient, it’s important to realize that sometimes everyone gets stuck.  Whether we don’t understand the assignment, don’t know how to get started, or are having problems understanding why something about our work just isn’t panning out, sometimes we need to reach out and ask for help (or at least a second pair of eyes).

To a lot of people, reaching out for help can feel like failing.  A lot of students don’t feel comfortable turning to professors or friends in time of need because they’re afraid they might look “stupid” or “incompetent.”  Sometimes we even worry that our problems might feel like a burden to others. 

Would it surprise you to know that asking for help can actually make you seem smarter, though? Or that many people actually like being asked for help?  According to research by professors at Harvard Business School and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, participants asked for advice were more likely to think positively of their colleagues and to rate their colleague’s performance positively. In the same study, participants reported a boost to their self-confidence when asked for help.

While asking for help can still seem like a scary thing to do, keep this in mind next time you’re not really sure where to go with one of your papers.  Reach out to your professors, talk to your friends, and most importantly keep University support services (like the AU Writing Center) in mind when you need a little extra support. 

Remember: Not only are you helping yourself, but you’re doing them a favor.

Transitions for the Socially Active College Student

By Elaina Hundley

When you are talking to your best friends about your date on Tuesday, it’s ok to jump from what you wore to what you ate to how you really just want to go to the mall and shop and how you really hated what was served in TDR today. However, in an essay, even an informal essay in the first person, you must transition from paragraph to paragraph and from sentence to sentence. Your friends might follow your disjointed conversation but your reader most likely will not. Transitioning between ideas on paper takes practice but it helps the reader understand how your varying ideas all connect. Transitioning can actually start on the sentence level. 

What are transitions? How do transitions work sentence by sentence?

Transitions are defined as the process or period of changing from one state to another. The word transition refers to a number of different processes, but for the purposes of writing, this process occurs in two places. Writers must transition from sentence to sentence and they also must transition from paragraph to paragraph. The move between sentences is nuanced and slight but crucial for clarity and cohesion in your paper. Although each paragraph you write should typically contain one central idea, your sentences supporting that idea may cover a few aspects of it. When you are moving from one sentence to another, it is important to make sure that the turns or changes you make from one aspect of the subject to the others all connect. Sometimes what you think is an implicit follow up thought could confuse your reader. By logically bridging the gaps between your thoughts, your reader will know what to expect and understand why you put the two thoughts together. An example might help illustrate this. 

Let’s go back to the conversation I mentioned at the beginning. If you were writing an essay (HYPOTHETICALLY) about your experience on a date, you might transition from what you wore to what you ate by explaining how you dressed in a really nice white shirt and then proceeded to spill wine on it. Even though the spill felt catastrophic, the wine was delicious and complimented the quinoa and asparagus dish you ordered. Connecting the clothing to the wine that was spilled to what you ate transitions a little smoother than saying, “I wore a white t-shirt on my date. Also, we ate a meal of quinoa and asparagus.” This example is completely hypothetical, but if you jump from idea one to the other too rapidly, your reader might not understand why you talk about clothes then food. Connecting them makes for a more interesting story and one that your reader can follow. Transitions start at the sentence level but the bigger transitions you will make in a paper are from paragraph to paragraph.

When moving from one paragraph to the next, you could be talking about the date but your next thought may go beyond the actual night of the date. When ideas go beyond the central topic of your paragraph, it is time to move on to the next paragraph. Moving from one paragraph to the next successfully relies on two key moves: the transition in the preceding paragraph and the topic sentence in the following. Let’s focus on the transition. If you were writing about the date and then wanted to write about whether or not you plan on a second date, it might be time to switch paragraphs. To do this, you would simply say something to the effect of, “ The date last night was really fun. I enjoyed the food and felt good about our conversations. We were even able to laugh off the wine spill. However, I am really not sure about a second date. It is my senior year and I have a lot of choices to make and so many new things ahead of me.” Paragraph two would proceed with this thought by talking about graduating and perhaps the cons of going on a second date. This transitional sentence connects what was said in the date night paragraph to what you plan to write in the new paragraph because it summarizes what you wrote and makes an explicit correlation between the two ideas. By using transitions, you simply connect your thoughts in a deliberate way between sentences and paragraphs.

Transitions work differently on each level. The sentence level is a smaller jump, whereas the new paragraph transition must give a slight re-cap of the previous paragraph and join those ideas to the next paragraph. Transitions are easy to forget, but if you struggle with spotting places where you need a transition or if you just are not sure if your movements from topic to topic are clear, ask a friend to read over your writing or bring your paper to the Writing Center. A second pair of eyes can help show where your thoughts connect clearly and where you may need to add in a smoother transition.  

Re-Outline to Stay Focused

By Mina Anderson

Normally, it’s best policy to give yourself several days ahead of an essay deadline to compose and edit your writing. This is because spacing out some of the difficult writing steps and giving yourself time to rest allows you to come back to the essay refreshed and re-focused. However, busy schedules (and often procrastination) sometimes lead to long last-minute writing hours at the computer. Procrastination often happens in the first place when we get “stuck” in our writing, which is when we are prone to taking lots of breaks and “walking away” from the assignment. This prolongs the whole writing process. To ensure staying on task, re-outlining your paper can also serve as a short sort of mental break without distracting you from the assignment itself.

Before you begin to write, outline the general structure of your essay. Write down a sentence for your thesis statement and a topic sentence for each of your major paragraphs/arguments. You can then do a skeletal, bullet-point outline of the rest of your paper. Sometime at this point in your writing process, you may also choose to type up the evidence or quotes from other texts in your outline so as to later have them handy. Then you won’t have to use up some of your writing time leafing through articles or papers, giving you more time to focus on the real issue at hand: composing your own argument.

Then, over the course of writing, every time you get stuck and are likely to take a break from writing, re-create your outline. You may find that the structure of your argument in the essay has changed – for instance, maybe you phrased your thesis statement differently in the first draft, or found that in the course of writing you had more to say about a peripheral piece of evidence than you originally anticipated. In cases where the structure of the essay is shaping up to be different from the original outline, alter your outline. Then, when you have finished re-outlining the structure of the essay, you will be able to observe that structure’s “skeletal” body and evaluate its trajectory: is the structure and organization of your essay turning out the way you had originally envisioned? If not, is the new structure more helpful to your argument, or would reverting to the original outline enable you to better explore the essay topic? Which argument points could be collapsed or expanded in order to give you more “wiggle room” to explore your topic more thoroughly or in new directions?

Re-outlining at moments in your writing when you become stuck can allow you to take a mental break of sorts without completely walking away from the essay. It helps keep you focused on the task at hand while also giving you some distance from your writing, so that you might be able to evaluate the essay as a whole and make holistic decisions about where it will be headed next.

That Tricky “So What?” Question

By Elaina Hundley

We’ve all read a paper dense with facts and ideas but wondered “So what?” when we reached the end. Who cares about ideas strung together if there is no given connection to a greater problem or question? This is why there are multiple arguments at work in every paper. There is the argument defending the claim you made in your thesis. But there is also the argument for why your thesis matters.

Writers must show the reader why they will benefit from reading the argument. This second argument and often forgotten “so what?” is subtle but essential. There are several things to consider; first, the writer must consider whom they are writing for and what that reader will care about. The writer must also consider why the thesis is worth arguing in the first place.  Does the thesis touch on a greater issue in a text or does it bring a new insight into a larger conversation? 

Every paper you write should have some sort of relevance. It should have both a reason you as the writer wrote it (besides the fact it was assigned to you) and a reason a reader should read it. When the reader is finished reading they should care about your issue. You, the writer, care about it so what makes it important to you?      As simple as the “so what” may seem it is fairly tricky especially since you might not be excited to write that paper for your Gen Ed. Instead of approaching a paper as an assignment that you just have to finish, think about it as a chance to convey something meaningful to you. When you care about what you write, your “so what” will be easy to find.

Example: If you needed to write a movie review, the “so what” of the review would be why the reader should or should not invest money in seeing “Silver Linings Playbook”. Readers care about your piece because it gives them a fuller and more honest idea of what the movie is about than promotional materials.  Your more detailed information helps the reader make a decision whether to see the film or to skip it and see it on DVD (or just not watch it at all).

Research Papers: the When and How

By Meridian Ganz-Ratzat

Many spring semester classes culminate in a final research paper. While it's tempting to put off starting for another few months, beginning now can keep you stress free later. To help you (and myself!) budget your time and handle those papers with ease, I've broken down a timeline for brainstorming, research, outline, drafting, and editing:

2-3 Months Away (Now): Start brainstorming on your topic. If you have a prompt, read it through a couple times. Even if you don't, start writing down anything about the class (or related topics) that interest you. The best place to start is with something that you're passionate about. Once you've located an area you're interested in, start doing some casual research and thinking about what your research question will be.

1 Month Away: Now's the time to delve into your research. At this point you should have a topic and a solid idea of your research question. The library's catalog and databases are the best places to start researching. If you're having trouble finding a good research question, come to the Writing Center! Or if you're struggling to find good sources, try looking at the databases by subject or talking to one of the librarians at the research desk.

3 Weeks Away: After you've got a good handle on your research, start thinking about how to organize your essay. Remember that every essay is an argument. Develop your argument step-by-step by thinking about what information your reader needs to know first and building from there.

2 Weeks Away: Write the first draft of your essay. By making yourself sit down and write a draft, you can get your ideas out of your head. Don't worry if it doesn't sound perfect! You've given yourself somewhere to start. If you're having trouble with writer's block, check out our blog archive. A lot of our consultants have written blogs about how to get started on papers.

1 Week Away: This is the perfect time for big picture edits. Before you start worrying about grammar and other small errors, address the big picture issues: your thesis, organization, flow, and clarity. These larger issues can be hard to fix on your own. Ask a friend you trust to give you feedback or bring your draft into the Writing Center!

2 Days Away: Read through your essay for a last polish. Now you can relax, watch an episode of your favorite TV show, and let everyone else stress out.

Remember, this is just one way of writing a research paper. Everyone has their own process. If this structure isn't working for you, come into the Writing Center and we'll help you find what does work!