Don't know what to write about (I'm a student)

Two heads are better than one.

An idiom that never gets old. If you are having difficulties working through a problem by yourself, seek your friend's help. You can join forces and create as a team.

• Writing shoudler to shoulder,
• Over an open Skype line,
• Facebook chat,
• Open phone call, or
• Via simple text messaging.

You can get excited, fired up and what's most important - encouraged.

Peer pressure isn't necessarily negative. It can give you a mighty push to get yourself started on a topic. It might grow into a form of a competition, but will anyway keep you both working hard.

• Don't try to sound too smart
• Use only the words whose meaning you are sure about
• Be straightforward, with easy-to-follow arguments
• Do not pile up the connectors
• Include as many active verbs and simple subjects
• Your argument doesn's have to be complicated to be good
• Pull the right information from your mind and state it precisely
• Take whatever piece of information on the subject is exchanged during the lesson and use it in your paper

• 1st part: Opening paragraph with your thesis statement + setup (or the explanation of the thesis where "you say what you want to say")

• 2nd part: Supporting the claims you made in the first paragraph, or simply explaining them one by one ("say it")

• 3r part: A wrap-up paragraph is a summary of what you've said in the 2nd part, and which should end with your thesis statement again. A good tip is to start it with a connector "therefore". This actually "says what you have already said before".

A slight modification in your writing location (or position) can get your writing flowing again.

Some inspiration where you may go instead:

• Your toilet sit! :)
• On the bench
• While playing chess with the elderly
• In the middle of the student protest
• Under your bed
• In the bath
• Under the rain
• In an open lecture or class

Ways and possibilities are many, you just have to be bold enough to try them out all, or at least the ones most enticing to you. Remember:

Change can be beneficial, even if the effect is temporary.

Ever heard of a proverb: "The early bird catches the worm"?

The old saying can certainly teach us a lot. For one, you should really try up getting earlier in the morning if you wish to let that brain of yours do some proper work.

Our focus is sharpest in the morning and the same goes for our memory. If you tire yourself properly before midnight, go to bed and then wake up in some decent early hour, your work might as well meet its deadline, but on time.

You should cut yourself a slack and forget about the proud "Grammar Nazi" title. When you are supposed to be writing, then write. Needless editing and correcting won't do you any good, just slow you down and distract your writing process.

It is true that all the mistakes, errors and lapses may distract you at first, but you should train yourself to turn on a blind eye in the 1st phase of writing.

• Accept that your first draft most likely won't be perfect.
• While writing, you can leave notes to self near the sentential constructions, word choices,  ambiguities that you think should be fast-checked, rewritten or condensed.
• Keep in mind while writing, the important thing is to keep writing, and keep writing alone!

It is well known what a turn off a boring topic can be. All the inspiration and the enthusiasm immediately sink into the bottomless ocean of uniformity. But, despair not!

Ever heard that there are no stupid questions? Well, there are no boring topics either.

Put yourself in a role of a detective, or in the worst case, a reporter, and ask yourself:

• Who
• What
• When
• Where
• Why
• How

And now - google! Dig! The answers can be quite intriguing. Especially because there is so much trivia, true and untrue, but quite enough to provoke someone's interest and make them read.

If you think the topic you have been tasked to write about is a bit too boring or plain for your taste, you can simply give it a retouch. In other words, recreate it by giving your own remake of the topic!

And you will do this by choosing one of the enlisted ways:

• Use the topic as a metaphor to write about something totally different, but still defending your approache.g. Quite a hilarious but very charming and interesting essay by a high schooler proved to be an excellent example for such a practice. Apparently, he was supposed to write an analysis on the given topic which was the quote from the book he had to read before doing  a written test. He didn't read the book, of course, but he wrote one of his own, or rather a story. He used the quote to start the story of a dead man, his soul slowly leaving his coffin, the bereaved family and his earthly abode. His whole "goodbye" was written in a really post-modern, witty and approachable style. At some point he arrives to Heaven and meets with God. Well, the conversation between the two of them is a very creative punchline which ends with God asking the diseased one whether he read the book and whether he feels bad about it, because he should - he totally missed the topic.

• Use the topic as a title for a poem you will write, or as a rhyme, or a strophe.
  
  
• The topic might look like a potential quote or a wordly wisdom, so use it to talk about the symbolism in that author's work and the message he wanted to convey. Or what the people wanted to warn us about by saying such a thing.
  
  
• The topic might remind you of the work you have read, a documentary, or a movie you have watched, or even an event you have been present at, so you can relate the two. Connect them like they are one and the same, or make parallels between them to prove your point. Breathe your philosophy into it, or make a story out of it.

If you cannot come up with a topic or even start writing about something at all, you should use some of your virtual friends' comments, which will certainly give you a musely push.

A really useful trick is to :

• Post a question or a topic on some of your social profiles like Facebook or Twitter. (and do it somewhere where you have lurkers and followers waiting around the corner for someone to post a comment or a picture, so they can react to it)
• Post a question containing keywords that you will base your topic on
• Make them somehow give their own ideas and advice about what you will later use as a material
• Provoke them with the rhetoric question

What you are doing here is practically provoking them to give you a ready-made topic or triggering the process of random brainstorming, which you can safely borrow.

Do the obvious:

•  Turn off everything you are so addicted to that is constantly distracting you (your phone, your internet, in case you do not need it for your research)
• Clean up the mess on your table so you won't be distracted by (it can disturb you and confuse you, however strange that sounds)
• Tell yourself that 3-4 hours of writing are a must for the day
• Write when everyone is sleeping or at least when you know you're safe from the interruptions
• Be alone with yourself (that's how you focus better and are more free to let your thoughts take over)

It is the same with food. You can eat more than just three or five times a day, but make sure that those intakes are nutritive to your health. The same goes for the concentration.

You don't have to glue yourself to the chair all day long. You can let the writing process be as short as writing a mere thought, but make sure that when you sit down, you should fill up that time with all the focus, creativity and skill you have.

What you can leave for later should be the proofreading.

If you cannot come up with anything good enough to be an interesting writing material, use your real life friends and their spirit for good games to get some ideas.

There are already-made card and board games that you can use, but a more simple trick would be to:

• Write sentences (quotes, or random names and words, names of the movies, books, or people) on the small pieces of paper that you will
• Fold 4 times.
• You can even draw on them instead of writing anything
• You should then put all of the pieces in the hat or some bowl, and make people pick one without looking.
• In turns, you should open your paper and tell a story using a drawing or a word on a paper as a topic or idea. There should be no time for thinking. It is an oral brainstorm.
• You can always add something knew to this game. Introduce more papers as a help. For example, plot twists, or a setting, or an object on an additional paper.

You can always have lots of fun and borrow an idea or two from your inspired company. Maybe even a whole story if it turns our great.

You have been discussing the matter in question in the class or on the seminar. There is one subject everyone has to pick something interesting from and turn into a topic.

Usually, what is expected from you is to defend a viewpoint of your own in your paper, but you first need to choose what the topic will be. Regarding the questions the teacher or professor has been most interested in, you can make you own topic, following your preferences as well.

The title of the paper, your topic can also be the name of your point, like for example:

• Teacher's question: What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?
• Your topic and viewpoint: Loss of traditional values, Lost Roman Empire

You should never plagiarize! However, you are free to use other people's arguments to support your own.

The only thing you should always think of is to credit all of them whose words you borrowed.

With your own point, you just need to find anything remotely relating to it.

Those can be quotes, whole passages, or even expressions. Even if a certain passage only dimly supports your argument, use it. Just always explain how the two are connected and in what way they relate to each other, and then put the quoted sentence in the right context.

"One man's trash, is another man's treasure."

Why we should never look down on people who are digging through the garbage is because they are putting an effort in front an putting their dignity aside to feed themselves. Much of the trash is still edible and usable. People who are to feel embarrassed are the ones throwing things so nonchalantly, without even considering the value it has for the ones who are poor. We should always think beforehand and do everything we can to help the starving and the poor, like packing the unfinihsed and still edible food in the plastic bags and hanging them on the side of the container.