I write a lot; it's a hobby of mine, and well as an obligation, considering I am an English major (and trust me, we write a LOT in my major). And while I do enjoy the process and act of writing, there are times that I just want to get it all done in one sitting, that way I don't have to worry about it later. But that tends to yield...bad results, as most of the time when I do something like that, my work ends up coming out sub-par. Depending on what I was writing, however, I tended to just accept the fact and move on, leaving my finished work unfinished.
Now, for awhile, I considered myself a pretty fantastic writer; every single one of my written papers in high school never got below an A-, so going into college, I thought that writing everything would be extremely easy...it was not. After a couple of Bs and Cs, I realized that I needed to step up my game, so that my grades could improve.
And I believe that I did, as the last couple of papers I have turned in have all scored high. However, even after sitting down and fixing most of my problems when it came to writing, I still had the desire to just sit down and knock out whatever I was writing in one sitting, that way I didn't have to deal with it later. Even though my work kept coming out not meeting my expectations, I still thought it was the best solution. Funny enough, the solution to this problem of mine came from a friend who constantly asks me to proofread his papers once he's done writing them.
He had a paper due the next day, and he wanted me to go over it, to make sure everything made sense, content and grammar wise. I said that I would, but I asked him why he had waited until the last minute to get the paper done. He replied that he didn't, but that he spaced out the work over a week, so that way he was doing a section everyday, and not trying to get it all done in one sitting.
I immediately thought that this idea was stupid; why would you force yourself to work everyday when you could just get it all done in one, and forget about it? Well...I decided to try out his method of pacing, and see if it did anything for me; worse case scenario, I just get it all done in that one sitting. I can gladly say now that I am happy that I did indeed give it a try.
Upon breaking up my work over a number of days, and working on bits and pieces of papers everyday, my life became incredibly easier. For starters, with an entire day to focus on just one piece, my work came out much, much better than it had been, finally meeting my expectations, and since I was doing this for every section of my work, it all turned out amazing well.
In addition, because I was only doing a piece everyday, my stress of writing virtually went away, knowing that going the course I was going would result in a better finished paper right on time, and that now, I had more time in the day to finish other work that I had to do. This method proved to be so useful, that I have been doing it for each and every single one of my papers, and all have turned out exceptionally well.
So, all in all, I'm glad I started to space out my work; not only has it caused my stress to go down, but it's also improved my work quality as a whole. I guess the whole point of me retelling this story, is to tell you, dear reader, to give this method a try, if writing a paper seems insurmountable. It might just make life a whole lot easier.