What if I wrote a BORING essay?

This is a technique for after you have written a boring essay: Use your main idea as a “jumping off” point.

This is a technique for writing paragraphs that can pierce a person’s mental defenses against information overload. Even if people choose to read something, they often are unreceptive to it.  And as we discuss in the “speed reading” section of the Academic Ninja training course, people consciously choose how slowly and attentively they read. Your goal as a writer is to give the reader something so useful that they feel compelled to slow down and pay attention.

Everyone is filtering out most stimuli in this “age of information,” so you have to write something really useful in order to get them to be receptive.  To be useful, your writing has to go beyond the surface of ideas and take the reader deep into thought.  No statements-of-the-obvious are allowed.  No truisms are allowed (A truism is a kind of statement-of-the-obvious, a vague expression of some idea everyone already knows). Do not include any sentences with boring content, cliché, or anything that sounds like you are just trying to fill space.

The writing needs to be refined.  That is why I recommend writing your ideas and then using the whole draft as a “jumping off” point. Do not use this technique after you have written during moments of inspiration that cause the material to be rhythmic and infused with energy. Only use it with writing that lacks inspiration. If you had to write something during moments without inspiration, you can refine it by following these steps:

1. Condense what you have written, taking out all words and sentences that are not useful, and when the essay is reduced and simplified as much as possible, reduce and simplify it even more.
2. When you have condensed several paragraphs into one good one, use that paragraph as a “jumping off” point by looking at its meaning – its message to the reader – and writing about that concept.   

Inspiration is a tricky wave to catch and keep your balance on, but you can take inspiration from the main idea that underlies your boring essay.  You wrote a boring essay because you wrote at a time when you were not inspired.  Talk when in a bad state of mind, and the listener feels it; write when in a bad state of mind, and the reader feels it.

But if you use this main idea, this theme, as a jumping off point, and if you find a moment of inspiration... you will soon have an energized essay full of those sacred sayings that come from that inspired state of mind.