It is one of the most difficult parts about writing. I can imagine you sitting there, stunned, addled, and frowning frustratingly at the blinking line that seems to taunt your endeavor. The blank white nothingness presented in front of you seems exceedingly daunting as the deadline draws near. Eventually, you realize from your heavy eyelids that you have yet to get any sleep and the sun seems to be peeking above the horizon outside. It is difficult to just beginning a piece, be it creative or academic. Either way you seems to find themselves constricted by a lack of words, or thoughts, or a concrete thesis. But, you must not forget it is just the intro. Write anything! Leave yourself time to fiddle with your brain. Look at the white screen as an opportunity not a choir, "All that blank space to put whatever I have on my mind." I know what your thinking, and I do it too. You wait till the very last second that it is due to even begin to convey the thoughts you have on the topic. It may work for you, but you leave yourself no room for error. The more time you allow yourself to conjure ideas about the subject, the more likely it will be cohesive, precise, and fully developed. Give yourself the room to breathe easy. The best way to do so is to set yourself a strict schedule and see to it that you follow it verbatim--No slacking off me!
Again, just write anything down at first, let your brain work out the subject its way. That way you can get the muck, pointless material out of the way and be able to focus on the subject particularly. After a few pages of your opinions, experiences, or outside facts that you obtain you should be able to see a pattern. In the long run, after the horrid points are dismantled (don't feel bad, we all write nonsense sometimes), meaningless words removed, and unusually phrasings altered, you will be able to create a solid academic paper. Hurray! So give yourself time to get the crap out so within it the golden ideas will shine. Don't get stuck hating the blinking line, it has enough problems as it is.
-Mario Perez
