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10 Writing Life Hacks for Students

If you need essay writing help, take five minutes to review these great writing life hacks. It will make your work go much faster, and you'll be much more productive.

1. There is no Law that States You Must Write the Beginning of Your Paper First

You're at your desk writing a paper. You've been staring at your screen for twenty minutes, and you just cannot think of a good opening sentence. Do you waste another twenty minutes? Of course not! You move on to something that you can write. Maybe you have one of the body paragraphs worked out almost completely in your head. If so, forget about the introductory sentence and write that paragraph instead. It's better to make progress than to accomplish nothing just to write in sequential order.

2. Use EverNote to Organize Your Writing Projects and to Write on the Fly

With EverNote, your writing projects can be divided and subdivided into stacks and notebacks. This creates an incredibly easy system that can be searched, organized and reorganized as you see fit. You can store your notes on EverNote along with papers, and other writing projects.

3. Play Some Background Music or Ambient Noise

It may not be a good idea to have your favorite songs blaring while you study (too distracting), but it is a good idea to have some background noise. It will help you to remain focused on your work without becoming distracted by nearby conversations and other noise.

4. If You Learned to Type on a Typewriter Don't Hit Space 2x After a Period

This rule also applies if you have been taught to do this by an instructor who prides themselves in being 'old school'. There is absolutely no need to do this when you are using any kind of word processing software or app. If you're writing in MLA or Chicago formats, among many others, you'll also get dinged for breaking the rules.

5. Use Google Docs and Never Lose Another Document

Computers crash. Worse, they always seem to crash when we're in the middle of writing something important. When it happens, we quickly reboot and hope that we can restore what we had. If we cannot, let the wailing and gnashing of teeth begin. However, if we use Google docs, we don't worry about this at all, because we know that every word we type is saved.

6. Try Writing in a New Location if You are not Making Progress

If you find yourself not getting any writing done in your dorm or other studying spot, grab your laptop and go somewhere else. The library, a park, a coffee shop, or even your own back yard are a few great options. You'll feel more stimulated and ready to write.

7. Improve Your Writing with Wordle

Do you ever feel like you are using the same words over and over again. If your writing seems repetitive to you, it probably feels repetitive to other people. Wordle is simple to use. Just go to Worldle.net, paste in your writing, and it will create a word cloud for you showing you all of the words that you might be overusing. Don't worry, it filters out common words such as 'the', and 'you'.

8. Use Google Translate to Read Your Writing Outloud

Try this nifty trick to catch spelling and grammar errors along with awkward phrasing. Paste what you have typed into Google translate. Then, click on the microphone. It will allow you to hear what you have written.

9. Use Wikipedia

Your instructors warn you not to do this, but the truth is, Wikipedia is a great resource for finding great resources. Just look up the topic you interested in using the search function. Then, click on the link you want. After that, simply ignore everything that is written and scroll down to the bottom of the page. There you will find the links that were cited in the post.

10. Break Your Work Into Small Chunks

Writing an entire essay can be overwhelming. Writing a paragraph at a time is much less intimidating. Break your writing down and the job will be much easier.