Freewriting Your Way Past Writer’s Block By Amery, a Writing Coach Everyone’s probably heard the terms ‘writer’s block’ or ‘blank page syndrome’ before. For someone as self-critical of my writing as I am, though, none of those words seem to … Read more

Writing Soundscapes By Karah, a Writing Center Coach I’ve had a long and complicated relationship with music and writing. Thinking back on when I first began writing for personal enjoyment as a teenager, it’s strange to realize how I did … Read more

Writing for Mental Health By Katie, a Writing Coach January 2023 During the last few years, I kept hearing that writing can be a tool to improve mental health. Despite being someone who loves writing, whether it be writing creative … Read more

You Belong Write Here: Journal Prompts for Feeling Othered By Adia, a Writing Coach I remember it as if it happened yesterday. I was a young, eager, and newly minted 21-year old in a Master’s program. During my orientation, I … Read more

Writing from Silence, Reading with Music By alex, a Writing Center Coach In my experience, I tend to write and read in a variety of places and often listen to music, but I’ve also begun to appreciate silence. In this … Read more

Introducing……”App Spotlights!” In our new series, our writing and learning coaches share some of their favorite websites and applications! Today Writing Coach Sherah reviews Focusmate.

I started blogging in my twenties when I moved across the globe, was desperately lonely and terrified, stressed and elated and thriving and stagnating all at once. I wrote to remember what was happening to me. I wrote to imbue my little life with meaning.

The clock was ticking. I had gone home for Winter Break, and my sister had given me a Christmas present, a jigsaw puzzle intended to hang in my admittedly bare apartment. It was a great idea in theory, but now I felt as though I had a task to complete before returning to my apartment.

How I Made My Life Easier By Using A Synthesis Matrix: I’ve always enjoyed writing and thought myself quite good at it before getting to college. Of course, a lot of the writing you do then is for English class, reading one book and writing about it; you still have to work at figuring out your focus and how to support it, but the “research” aspect is limited. Stepping outside of a traditional English paper is another step, one that I was hit with when I first started college and had to write for other subjects.

It’s the beginning of the semester—meaning, as a graduate student, it’s time for me to get back into the groove of planning and writing long papers. For me, the hardest part of approaching a paper is coming up with a topic that will stay interesting to me throughout the research and writing process. A good example of this is from the end of last semester, when I found myself dreading the final paper for my archives class. We covered so many interesting topics in the class, it was hard to decide which one to choose.