#stuck strategy

This Stuck Strategy also comes from Katie B., English grad student and former writing center consultant. If you have a stuck strategy you use while writing and would like to share, email us at [email protected] or use our Ask Box to submit.

Katie recommends creating not just a general writing playlist, but a playlist geared toward the specific needs of your paper. Maybe you need to feel like a daring adventurer while writing this paper, because it's so hard and scary. Maybe you're writing about a particular time period and want to get yourself in that mindset. Maybe your topic gives you a particular mood, and you want music to accentuate that mood.

Today's "Stuck Strategy" comes to you from writing center consultant and English PhD student Jay S. Jay says:

"I like writing various drafts of my ideas out and seeing which ones can be expanded."

Writing and revision doesn't have to be linear! Jay's strategy allows him to try out multiple ideas and ways of writing about them at the same time, so he doesn't have to erase or change his work just because he wants to try something new.

Another strategy I used while working on my Shakespeare paper is reading through my draft and making a list of all the "promises" I made to the reader--statements saying "I will discuss ____" or "I will argue _____" or I will analyze how _____."

Once I had a list of all the promises, I was able to compare the list to my reverse outline and see which promises I fulfilled (the answer was not very many).

Now, I know what I need to add to make my paper more complete!

Hello writers! We're beginning a new post series about strategies REAL writers REALLY use when we're having problems with our writing. Every strategy in this series will be something a consultant, English graduate student, or other writer has used in their own writing process.

Today's strategy is the Reverse Outline, and it was used yesterday by me, Olivia, your friendly writing center social media coordinator.

I was 9 pages into a 15-20 page paper and I was feeling like my paper was a swamp and my boots were getting sucked into the mud. I wasn't totally sure what I was trying to say, whether I was succeeding at saying it, what more I needed to add, or where I should add it. It was a mess.

My Reverse Outline Steps:

1. Turned to a new page in my notebook and picked a nice pen I like writing with 2. Read through my paper 3. As I read through my paper, I wrote down the main topics I talked about and what I was ~doing~ in my paper in order. Sometimes this was just "Introduction," and sometimes it was "Explaining Freud" or "Analyzing the endings of the books." 4. Now I have a bird's eye view of my essay, so I can look at the structure all at once without scrolling through pages and pages of text and getting bogged down.

What I Did/Am Doing Next:

1. I made another chart of "Promises to the Reader," which will be the next "Stuck Strategies" post 2. I wrote notes on my reverse outline about what I should add where. 3. Next time I work on my paper, I will do exactly what my notes tell me to do. Obeying the notes will keep me grounded and focused, instead of getting lost in the "swamp" of my paper.