By: Clarisa Colton
Writing and I tend to be in a constant battle. Whenever I’m assigned a writing assignment, I tend to procrastinate until it’s almost no longer feasible for me to finish on time. The hardest part for me is always starting. Once I get a good start, it’s usually just a matter of me concentrating for an hour or two and just getting it done – then I can go back and change things. If the assignment has been one I especially hate I tend to edit very minimally, which I know is bad, but I’m usually just happy to have it over with. As for prewriting, I’ll usually do that if it’s a paper or essay that’s pretty lengthy and requires a sense of organization. Mostly I’ll just make an outline on paper, which is usually really helpful for me. I think the starting part is so hard for me because I have such a hard time doing anything that’s not perfect, and if I can’t get my start right, I can’t move on or do anything. A lot of it is me not wanting to write something that I don’t think will be correct or good, and I usually am able to get started if I can put that aside. I definitely need to be somewhere without distractions to write – be it a room by myself or a coffee shop where I can at least get away from friends who might distract me. I’m a huge snacker when writing. I have this vivid memory of writing an essay my senior year of high school at my dining room table with a bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs by my side helping me along the way. Deadlines stress me out as well as push me to get things done. As my mom likes to say, as a fellow procrastinator, we’re just ‘deadline driven’.
I used to make cookies or something similar a lot in high school to procrastinate, but I haven’t really been able to do that since coming to college because I haven’t had a kitchen that’s very convenient to cook in. Perhaps next year that will change since I’ll be in an apartment. Instead I just order cookies from the many cookie delivery services available to us here.
P.S. Tiff’s Treats does half off codes on Tuesdays and free delivery on Sundays.