How To Get Motivated to Write An Essay: 5+ Useful Tips for You

There’s no magic bullet to writing essays that inspire. And that means it’s an assignment that’s easier said than done. But before you find the task boring, let us show you how to get motivated to write an essay. 

Everyday, hundreds of students struggle to write essays, whichever the type. They’ll mostly read the prompt, make short notes from it, do research, and create an essay outline. Then when it comes to the actual writing, they go blank, completely.

Isn’t that a familiar situation? And can you relate with it?

Unfortunately, writer’s block is something every student will grapple with at one point in time. But that doesn’t mean it’s hard to beat.

So in this guide, I’ll give you some handy tips you can use to write comprehensive essays, even when you feel like you don’t have the motivation to put your claims, ideas, and arguments on a paper.

How to Get Motivated To Write An Essay And Finish On Time

Below are simple tips that can help you write high quality essays in the shortest time possible, even if means you’re in your very last minutes.

1. Create an Essay Outline First

Even if you’ve done the finest research and you have a way with words, your essay won’t mean anything much to your instructor if it doesn’t feature an outline.

It doesn’t matter what type of essay the prompt requires you to write. You’ll need to create an outline to handle the assignment.

Irrespective of the essay word limit, you want to divide your essay into three sections: the opening paragraph, the body paragraphs, and the concluding paragraphs. That's the perfect essay outline you will ever need. 

The body section can have as many paragraphs as possible, usually depending less on the word limit and more on the arguments you’d like to present.

And an outline is an important element for one very important reason:
It helps you to organize your thoughts in a manner that makes sense, making the essay easy to read right from the introduction to the final full stop.

2. Read the Prompt, Do Research First and then Write, Don’t Do All at the Same Time

Essay writing can be as hard and boring AF if you do everything at once. But since you’re interested in making the process as flawless, engaging, and interesting as possible, consider doing the assignment in parts.

First, read the prompt to understand what your professor requires. The prompt may be long or short depending on the topic in question.

In any case, you want to make short notes in a notebook or notepad so you have only the most important information at your fingertips.

Step away from the assignment for a few hours and then go to the second step.

Second, do your research. Collect as much information as possible from the best scholarly sources. List your primary and secondary sources in a bibliography as these will be your references as you write.

Again, take a break from the assignment for a few hours. Come back later and move om to the third step.

Third, come back and write your essay. At this point, you have read the prompt, made short notes of the most important points, and completed your research. All that’s left is to write your essay.

As you can see, we’ve divided this into three sections, each with a few hours break in between. This is important because it break down the monotony of writing the assignment in one sitting and makes the project interesting to work on.

3. Write Your Essay in Bits

It’s possible to write a long essay on one sitting, but that’s not something you can do if you don’t have the motivation to complete the assignment in one night.

So instead of pouring all your energy to the paper and getting bored when you’re only halfway done, consider writing in parts.

This isn’t about how much time you’re going to spend writing. It’s about how many words you can get down within a given period.

First, use the essay outline and the information collected from research to create a rough draft. Introduce the topic, highlight your thoughts (arguments) in a logical order in the body section, and then write a strong conclusion for the essay.

Take a short break and come back to the essay later. Now write it in-depth, making sure you provide sufficient academic evidence to back up your arguments or support your claims.

4. Ask Your Course Mates to Help You Understand the Topic

Some students lack the motivation to write essays because they can’t understand the topic provided in the prompt.

If this is anything like you, then you should consider asking for help from your fellow students.

While you may not understand the topic in question, there’s a high chance that your fellow students understand the concept. So spend some time discussing the assignment with them.

Don’t forget to ask questions where necessary, as this will not only clear your doubts about the topic but also allow you to collect some strong points that you can include while proofreading your essay.

 5. Write in the Best Writing Spot

Your usual spot may not be fit for writing all types of essays, and especially the more complicated ones.

Maybe sometimes you’re too bored to sit in the same environment and get the essay done. In such a case changing location can be a motivating factor.

It doesn’t matter if you’ll write the essay from under a tree, in your bedroom, in the library, or in your friend’s classroom. Just find a spot that you find comfortable for the moment.

Some students even write better with the music on. This is especially true if you’re around other students and want to cancel out noise coming from the surroundings. If you prefer this option, you can get yourself some noise cancelling headphones.

6. Seek Academic Writing Assistance

 There’s more to writing an essay than just putting words on a paper. And to be honest, the task is almost always overwhelming.

So if you lack the motivation to write the paper because it’s too demanding, you can seek for essay writing help from Help for Assessment.