Tips on Writing Quickly for a Personal Essay
by Michelle P.
One essay for college applications can already be an intimidating task for many students.
Multiply that by the variety of essay prompts required from colleges, and the writing work required looks like a very tall mountain indeed.
How can students write more quickly for a personal college application essay, especially when you want to get that first draft out on paper?
And no, we are not talking about using ChatGPT.
Perhaps you’ve already worked on the brainstorming and outlining, but still feel stuck when staring at the empty page of your first draft. Here are some tips on writing quickly for a personal essay that can help you:
1.Know your own writing process
What does this mean?
Just as everyone uses an outdoor space like a park differently—some people sprint speedily, while others like a steady and leisurely stroll with rests in between—all students approach writing differently.
Perhaps you’re a student who likes to write a very messy 1000-word draft in one sitting, before going back and reorganizing everything. Or maybe you’re a student who works on a small section of the writing for a day, before moving on to the next section.
Having an awareness of your own writing process, of what kind of style you have towards writing something will help quite a bit when working on your personal essay drafts.
2,Use placeholders
Placeholders are one of the greatest and handiest tips to use in drafting anything, from your personal college application to an argumentative essay for English.
If you don’t know an exact word, or the specifics of an exact event that you want to bring up, you can simply put a placeholder in your first draft, so you can keep on writing without pausing your thoughts.
For example, here might be how a student could use placeholders below, which they could edit later:
It was the day before the big fundraiser performance for our club. As the event organizer, I could feel the details and my sanity slowly slip out of control. [List 2 details later here about things that were going wrong for the fundraiser]. Also, there was a worrying weather forecast about rain. I was very nervous [find a better word for nervous].
3. Set small goals
This tip works well for many students, no matter the kind of writing process they have. Each time you sit down to work on the personal essay, don’t tell yourself “I’m going to finish writing a whole first draft in 1 hour.”
That’s too much pressure. Instead, each time you sit to write, set a small goal that you might be able to complete, like “In 1 hour, I will finish writing one paragraph about my volunteer work in a community garden.”
With these tips, and the guidance of an encouraging Essay Mentor, you can learn how to work through your essay drafts thoughtfully and efficiently with your writing time!