Moving from Assignment to Topic At one point or other, the academic essay manages to intimidate most student writers. Sometimes, we may even experience what is commonly called writer's block—that awful experience of staring at an assignment, reading it over and over, yet being unable to proceed, to find a way into it. But the process of writing the academic essay involves a series of manageable steps. Keeping this in mind can help you work through the anxiety you may at first feel. If you find yourself "clueless" about beginning an essay, it may be because you have skipped an important step. You may be trying to come up with a thesis before finding and narrowing your topic. Entering the Conversation Try to approach the writing of an academic essay as a genuine opportunity to connect with the material, to think in a concentrated and stimulating way about the texts you've chosen, to articulate your own ideas. In short, think of the essay as a chance to challenge yourself and to contribute to the on-going conversation among scholars about the subject under discussion. What's at stake is your own intellectual development. Writing is not playing someone else's game. Successful writing involves the creation and framing of your own questions about the sources you've chosen. You want to attend to the assignment at the same time that you locate and articulate your own, particular interest in it. Primary and Secondary Sources If you were a lawyer and had to present a case for your client, the worst thing you could do would be to face a jury and spout out random beliefs and opinions. ("Trust me. This guy's really honorable. He'd never do what he's accused of.") Instead, you would want to look for evidence and clues about the situation, investigate suspects, maybe head for the library to check out books on investment fraud or lock-picking. Whatever the circumstance, you would need to do the appropriate research in order to avoid looking foolish in the courtroom. Even if you knew what you had to argue—that your client was not guilty—you still would need to figure out how you were going to persuade the jury of it. You would need various sources to bolster your case. Writing an academic essay is similar, because essays are arguments that make use of primary and secondary sources. Primary academic sources are sources that have not yet been analyzed by someone else. These include but are not limited to novels, poems, autobiographies, transcripts of court cases, and data sources such as the census, diaries, and Congressional records. Books or essays that analyze another text are secondary sources. They are useful in supporting your argument and bringing up counter-arguments which, in an academic essay, it is your responsibility to acknowledge and refute. These are the basic rules that determine whether a source is primary or secondary, but there is some ambiguity. For instance, an essay that advances an original argument may serve as your primary source if what youre doing is analyzing that essays argument. But if the essay cites stat

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