Concentrating on the Writing Process, Not Product: The College Application Essay

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Staying Focused

On campus tours, do you glance at perfect strangers, imagining that they never struggled with their admission essays? Has every lunch-table conversation for the past month revolved around how many hours you spent staring at a blank computer screen or sheet of paper? In other words, are you running around in circles, stalling as you try to create “The Perfect Essay”? Relax. “The Perfect Essay” does not exist, but many wonderful, effective essays do. They’re all in your brain, waiting to emerge.

I can hear you declaring, “Fine. All the essays I need are in my brain. But they won’t do me any good if I can’t get them out.” Too true. However, “getting them out” is actually easier than you think. All you have to do is focus on the process of writing, not the product. If you handle the process well, a good product pops out automatically.

Here’s a brief overview of the writing process — in six easy steps — so you know what to expect:

1. Gather ideas, pondering what to write about.
2. After you have a focus, list yards of details about your topic.
3. Punch the material into shape, choosing a structure and creating an outline.
4. Put those words on the page and write a rough draft.
5. Revise, check, and insert the final product into that little blank space on the application. (Don’t worry; most colleges allow you to staple a computer printout to the application.)
6. Mail the application and sigh with relief.

The key to the whole process is simple: Concentrate on whatever step you’re on and ignore everything else. (As they say in Zen, stay in the moment.) You can do one step, can’t you? Piece of cake. And when all the steps are done, so are you . . . and you have an essay to be proud of.

Keeping Perspective

It’s not the last spaceship off an exploding planet. Nor is it a cure for a deadly disease or a formula for world peace. It’s an essay. Yes, what you write will have an impact on your chances for admission, and certainly you want to do a good job. But how good a job can you do if you see the admission essay as the only possible path to everything you ever wanted out of life? “My entire future depends upon this sentence” is not an attitude likely to bring out your best performance.

Remember that writing a college admission essay is not as hard as most of the other things you’ve already done, such as learning to tie your shoelaces and passing phys ed. You’re telling “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about a subject you know very well — your own life. How hard can that be?