If you ask a college student to describe their essays, “fun” probably won’t be the first word that comes to mind. However, if you ask students what they like to do for fun, you’ll find many enjoy writing—as long as it’s writing they want to do. When you think of writing as something enjoyable and fun, you’ll be more likely to want to write more and to write better. In this article, we’ll take a look at some interesting facts about writing and some fun facts about essays to help you get inspired and motivated for your own writing.
Top Facts About Essays and Writing You May Find Fun
So, without further ado, let’s take a look at some fascinating trivia about the writing process:
- German researcher Martin Lotze discovered that creative writing is similar to athletics at the neurological level. After studying both professional athletes and professional writers, he determined that both had similar brain patterns during their respective activities.
- Lotze also found that professional writers use the speech processing centers of their brain more than amateur writers, who relied more heavily on their visual centers to imagine their stories.
- John Steinbeck used 300 pencils to write his classic novel East of Eden and reportedly would go through as many as 60 pencils in a single day.
- Writer’s block is something almost everyone faces. You can’t turn creativity on and off like a spigot, so it turns out that most writers will experience moments of writer’s block. Usually, taking a break and giving your brain a bit of rest is enough to get the creative juices flowing again.
- The formal word for writer’s block is “colygraphia.” It comes from the Greek words for “hinder” and “writing.”
- Edith Sitwell, the famed British poet, liked to lie in an open coffin before starting to write. That’s certainly one way to get inspiration!
- Truman Capote also thought that lying flat on his back helped him write. He liked to write lying down with a glass of sherry in one hand. Since he had a pencil in the other hand, it isn’t clear how he held the paper over his head!
- Gertrude Stein and Vladimir Nabokov both felt that they did their best writing while sitting in a parked car.
- Friedrich von Schiller claimed to only be able to write well in the presence of rotting apples.
- Author Graham Greene felt that it was important to write exactly 500 words per day, no more and no less. He would stop in the middle of a sentence to avoid going over 500 words.
- Anthony Trollope thought of writing as a kind of timed race. Beginning each morning at 5:30, he used a watch to ensure that he wrote 50 words every five minutes, counting out 250 words at fifteen-minute intervals.
- Alfred Hitchcock made a funny joke when he went to visit Georges Simenon, an author famous for writing a lot of novels very quickly. Told that Simenon was writing a new novel when Hitchcock called to speak with him, Hitchcock replied, “Let him finish. I’ll hang on.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche was the first major philosopher to write on a typewriter. Mark Twain was the first major novelist to adopt typewriting.
- Although humans have been around for more than 100,000 years, writing dates back only to around 3000 BC. The first writing systems developed in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China and emerged out of earlier ways of communicating using pictures.
- The Inca did not have a system of writing as we know it and used knotted ropes to record information, “reading” the information by examining the pattern of knots.
- A majority of incoming college freshmen are required to complete a remedial or introductory college writing course because they do not have the skills to write college-level essays when they arrive on campus. This number has increased considerably over the past twenty years, in large measure due to changes in how high schools teach writing.
- A growing number of students are using essay writing services for help, both due to a lack of skills and a lack of time to balance essay writing with other obligations like work and family. Because so many students face difficulties when writing essays, a growing number of college and university students are turning to professional writers from online companies like SmartWritingService.com to produce custom papers for them.
- While many colleges and universities have policies governing how and when students can use material from essays written by others, it is not illegal to buy an essay, and there is no law against hiring someone to write an essay on any topic.
- Seuss used only fifty words to write Green Eggs and Ham because his publisher bet him $50 that he couldn’t write a complete book with only fifty words. When he accomplished the task, and wrote a modern classic, his publisher had to pay up.
- Jack Kerouac was so inspired to write quickly and without distraction that he taped together 120 feet of paper so he could type the second draft of On the Road without having to stop to put new sheets of paper into his typewriter. Today, we don’t have that problem since every word processor program is essentially its own endless roll of paper, making us all Jack Kerouac.
How to Make Writing More Fun On Daily Basis
We bet there is nothing you can’t do when you feel it being something fun — we are much more easily motivated to do what entertains us than what bores us, which is pretty obvious. So, how to make writing fun? First, start your own activity connected to writing. It can be a blog, morning pages, anything. Second, think how writing can help you earn more money, now or in the future. This way you will have better motivation, as money is a key incentive no matter what. Third, praise yourself with some treats every time you reach one of your writing goals. It is another simple but working motivation. You can randomize treats, or grade them, when you get more expensive and fun treats for bigger tasks. Of course, not every assignment can be turned into something fun, but in many cases you can make writing much more engaging and pleasant.
