Time-stress management
is big hurdle for many struggling writers

If you are going to be successful with struggling writers, you not only have to help them be efficient writers, but you also have to teach them time stress management.

Many students who have perfectly acceptable writing skills are tripped up by deadlines. A close deadline stresses struggling students because of the need to work fast. A far-off deadline makes them anxious because it implies a really big, hard assignment they feel they couldn't do in any amount of time.

Stress management for writers — especially struggling writers — requires a combination of

• Effective writing strategies.

• Regular practice.

• Positive self talk.

• Feeling connected to a support system.

• Self-confidence.

I often feel teaching writing is as much about building student's confidence in their ability to write as it is in teaching them writing skills.

Focus on problematic writing stages

Three stages in the writing process where writers struggle are

• Getting started.

• Developing ideas.

• Revising & editing.

Supply appropriate writing strategies for each of these problem areas, teach students to use them, and make sure they are using them correctly. The strategies not only help students write, they help them manage their time and reduce the stress of working against a deadline.

Model time-stress management

Part of your teaching of writing strategies should include modeling how you tackle a writing assignment. That modeling can reveal that

• You gripe about writing assignments just as your students do.

• Uncertainty over how to begin a writing assignment creates stress for you.

• You use positive self-talk to help you manage stress and stay on task.

• You set small objectives leading toward your goal of completing the project.

• You work in short blocks of time.

• You reward yourself for completing an objective by doing something you find more pleasant than writing.

As you teach writing strategies for each of those problem areas, you need to reassure all students, but particularly your struggling students, that competence is just a matter of time.

One bright student's inability to start a writing project led to a serious time-stress management problem.