Writing happens when an idea builds up enough energy to require its thinker to make it known. Make no mistake about this: both the idea and the compelling need to make it known are essential; if either of these is lacking, nothing worthwhile will happen. Students all too often approach writing as a chore that must be completed to meet a requirement. How many attempted essays I have seen with this problem! If what you write and hand in bores you, it will also bore the reader. The overarching Rule for a writer, be it a professional or a student, is this: Never write about something that you do not care about! This, of course, immediately presents a problem. Students are given assignments to write about things they think they don't care about. This feeling of not caring about something is almost always a failure to understand some aspect of the material. I told a teacher once that a certain book "bored" me. He responded very curtly and with a real and discernible displeasure at my remark: "The boredom is in you, not in the material. The material is actually very interesting." Since that rather humbling moment in which that teacher graced me with the truth about myself, I have taken a different view of things. For anyone who will write well because it matters, the first (and hardest) task is to confront the boredom and sloth in his or her own person.

So whatever the teacher assigns, the first task is to read well, think and understand the material. Read the material! The worst nightmares I have encountered in student writing are those situations in which a student struggles, complains, comes in for help and finally discloses that the real problem is lack of a substantive encounter with the material. That is unexcusable, and such a student makes it impossible for the teacher to be of any real help at all. How can something matter to a witer enough to write about it when the raw material of basic knowledge is missing?

Assuming adequate reading and thought about the material, be it primary sources, secondary sources, etc., here is the process I use to bring ideas forward and shape them into an essay. You will notice the instruction to "lay it aside" after each step. This is crucial, so you need to think in terms of a 7-10 process to really do this right. The results will astound you if you actually try this approach.

• Open the file in which you did the rearranging and playing around. Copy the contents into a new document and rename it something to distinuish it--something like "Step 3" or whatever you like. Read through the whole thing carefully. Chances are that if you read it very carefully and thoughtfully you will find some things you really like; embedded somewhere in this stuff you really like is your thesis. Start pulling the ideas that really have some coherence into a group by either cut/past or dragging the text around to assemble a paragraph that sets up and states your thesis. Spend some time looking over the rest of your material in this document and work out a prelimary plan on how it should be organized based on the thesis you have worked out. Rearrange and edit accordingly. Save it and put it aside for a day or two.
• At this point, I suggest creating a desktop folder with the name of this project, and that you store all your document stages--your archives--in that folder. If you have not done so already, you should also create a backup of the file on some kind of dependable media like a CD or a DVD. Flash drives are good for transporting stuff around, but I wouldn't let that be my only backup. One thing you can do, if you use a Web based e-mail service, is e-mail each stage of your work as an attachment and store it in a dedicated folder on the e-mail server. Whatever you do, do not put hours of hard work at risk because you don't have a backup file safely stowed away.
• At this point, you have a serious rough draft forming. From this point on, it is a matter of working on details: paragraph breaks, transitions between paragraphs, conclusion, etc. This will take time. Your best work will always be within the first 60-90 minutes of work, and it is always good to have a least a day between work sessions. Successful writing at this point is a matter of doing whatever it takes to get it right. I have been know to put essays for graduate courses through 8-12 drafting stages just to refine the result into something I really liked. Sometimes that meant waking up in the middle of the night with an idea on how to fix something. The real writer does whatever it takes.
• Whatever you do, save every stage in your archive. This folder will be a good resource for some later project that you don't foresee at the moment.

Hard work? Yes!