Your fingers hover above the keyboard as you stare blankly at your empty document. You have an assignment, a topic, a project that you need to work on.

And you have no idea where to go from where you are.

It isn’t burnout. You aren’t exhausted, or sick of writing and wishing everyone who wants you to write something would just go away for a week

What you are is stuck. You know what you want to do, but you just can’t seem to get anything out to work on. Continue Reading

Photo by Extra Medium.

“Um… what did you mean here?”

Those words make every writer flinch, and every writer who gets feedback from others hears those words at some point. They can signal something as minor as a forgotten preposition or as major as having a section that doesn’t explain itself well. Once the problem’s pointed out to you, it’s as obvious as a huge red zit without concealer. How could you have possibly missed that?!

Easy. When you read it yourself, you read what you meant to say rather than what you actually wrote. Everybody does it. It’s unavoidable.

What you can do is minimize it.

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Photo by SantaRosa OLD SKOOL.

“Drat!” echoes in your mind. You’ve found superb sources for what you’re writing, chock-
full of information you would absolutely love to use. How do you paraphrase the
information?

First, why should you paraphrase? If you use someone’s information and its wording as if
it is your own, it is plagiarism. If you use someone else’s unique information and do not
credit it, it is plagiarism. Plagiarism is illegal. It also tends to have nasty side effects on your
reputation, be it for work or school.

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