How to Write an Essay

GuiThis is intended as a guide for people who want to know how to write an essay.

To begin, you should attempt to get up an hour earlier than you usually do, unless you already rise at 9am or earlier. You should go through your morning routine, and make sure you look entirely excellent, this will help avoid the temptation to get up and redo your hair or paint your nails. Although clearly this will be inevitable at some point, if you get it as close to being right as you can the first time, then it will take longer before you crave change.

Why not try a new hairstyle altogether at this point, who knows, maybe having a new style will convince you that it only feels like you want to change it because it's so different - and a truly open-minded person would give it a fair chance.

Ok, so once your morning routine is out of the way, you should turn on your computer. You should absolutely not at this point open any kind of word processing program. You are not prepared yet, and wouldn't be able to write anything useful anyway. Instead; check your email, facebook, bebo, any other regularly updated site on your favourites list (webcomics are good).

Next you should window shop - online only, and preferably only for shoes, though I'll accept fashion in general, and you can check play.com if they're having a sale.

Now shut down your computer, disgusted at your tendency to procrastinate. Unless you've actually bought something, in which case you can celebrate your sucess, as you've been semi-productive and now need to go check your wardrobe to make sure you have outfits that your new thing(s) will work well with.

Now for the essay bit. Make a to do list. At the top of the list write "essay," add all the other major and minor chores you need to have completed for the next week or so. Draw little check boxes. Go find some highlighters and set up a colour scheme so you know how urgent each item on the list is.

Have lunch. No one works well hungry.

Do some of the easier chores on your list so you can get into the mood for doing work. Check them off and feel acomplished.

Find some books relevent to your essay subject, and go back to your computer. This time, you're going to open a word-processor, but you aren't going to write anything, because you're also going to open wikipedia and search for your topic there.

You may now write the title, and make a note of the books you've found and the wikipedia URL (assuming you haven't lost the URL and the last three hours to frantic link-clicking). Maybe a vague sentence or two is appropriate by now, if you're certain you won't be sad when you come back and have to rewrite everything.

Get distracted and go out to buy perfume. When you come back, burn a CD and write a blog instucting people on writing essays.

You see my problem?