5 Pockets of Essay Writing Time You Didn’t Know You Had

You have only been back to school for a few weeks and your schoolwork is already piled as high as the Empire State building. When will you ever find time to write your admissions essay, one of the most crucial components of your college application? THERE IS NO TIME!!!

Oh, but there is.

As essay writing experts, we are also scheduling wizards with the ability to pull extra minutes, even hours, out of thin air to devote to brainstorming, freewriting, even editing and polishing. Here are a few secret pockets of the day you may never have classified as prime writing time–until now.

1. 30 minutes before your usual wake-up time. Waking up is hard to do. Still, there is something about a rested brain and the dim light of dawn that brings out the magic in many people’s writing. Not to mention that starting the day with a burst of creativity is bound to set you on the road to a productive day. Set the alarm, grab a cup of coffee and see what comes out of your fingers and onto your page before you even have a chance to wipe the sleep from your eyes.
2. During your lunch period. If you can text and walk you can also eat and write. Breaks are important and you don’t have to surrender every lunch period to the essay writing gods, but taking one 45-minute period each week to scrawl some freewrites while housing your peanut butter and jelly sandwich can make a nice dent in the essay writing process and keep you warm for longer writing sessions.
3. While waiting for the afterschool bus. Whether you drive to school or take the bus home after tennis practice or speech and debate, there is almost always a cushion of 10-20 minutes you spend waiting for your friend to come out of the locker room or wondering why the bus is always (ALWAYS!) late. Use that time. Keep a pen and a notebook on you and jot down some observations from your day or riff on a topic you were exploring in a previous freewrite. Every little bit of freewriting helps.
4. 30 minutes before you go to bed. You’re soooooo tired. But what would happen if you pulled out your laptop and forced out another 300 words? What sort of mad genius might reveal itself in your near-sleep state? Maybe you should find out.
5. Before you go out on a Saturday night. Who is more excited to see Knives Out than you are? (Answer: No one.) Why not revel both in Tom Cruise’s stuntwork and your own ability to complete the near-impossible mission of writing for half an hour before you hit the movie theater. Use social time as a reward, gained only by putting in some writing time.

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