Opening and closing Facebook ten times a minute isn’t going to get you anywhere.

If you’re struggling to push through your essay stack and the pressure is mounting, here are some useful websites to keep you on track and pulling HDs in no time.

The Game Plan

As much as essay writing can feel like watching beige paint dry, you can still get creative when your planning the structure. The most visually appealing way to do this is with a mind map. Coggle is a free online mind mapping platform that allows you to picture your ideas and plan a flowing structure to your essay.

For all those folks who love a good list, Google Keep offers a similar, more cathartic experience that’s great for helping you to keep track of your essay checkpoints. Whether it’s the whole piece or a paragraph at a time, there’s nothing more satisfying than ticking off each section of an essay.

Keeping Pen To Paper

Alright, you’ve planned your structure so now it’s time to crack the knuckles and get typing (or writing if you’re feeling particularly retro). Sometimes just that little bit of motivation is all you need to get into a flow so let Written? Kitten! sort you out. This site lets you select image collections as rewards and depending on how many words you type in a given time limit, one will pop up.

If you’re really under the crunch, Write or Die will punish you for falling behind in your word count. Sometimes this means removing vowels from what you have already written or playing annoying sounds (like peanut butter jelly time). Brutal.

Getting Zen On Your Essay

Save meditating for when you’re asleep, now it’s time to focus. To get deep into your writing zone you can use Coffitivity to set the mood. Coffitivity will play soft background noises from café chatter to Brazillian bistro banter. Sometimes you just need to feel like you’re in the right space to write, even if you’re not.

If you’re the kind of writer who likes an absolute distraction free environment, FocusWriter is the program for you. FocusWriter is a word processor (so like MS Word) that’s basically just a space to type with backgrounds, fonts and the ability to set a timer. That’s it. There’s nothing between you and the page.

Calling All Perfectionists To The Proofing Line

Spell check is lamestream – what you really want is editMinion. This site essentially proofs your essay for you, suggests alternatives for overused words and points out the weaker areas in your piece so you can dive in and fix them up. This is a huge help for the flowery writers among us who just need to nail down a point.

For a more simplistic version of editMinion, just like the man himself, Hemingway Editor will give you all the same features but also has a desktop application.

Referencing So Nice You’ll Cite It Twice

Much like Batman v Superman, the great referencing war is a little dull. EndNote, the OG of referencing software isn’t as user-friendly or aesthetically pleasing as most, but comes jam packed with advanced features and the flexibility to cater to any essay writer. It’s not cheap, but can you really put a price on your own stress levels?

Now comes Mendeley, the student alternative. Well OK, the free alternative. Mendeley, is a cleaner and easier to use referencing program that syncs across devices and has a ‘playlist’ like system for organising your citations. Hope that made you ex-cite-d (excuse the pun).

A country kid at heart with city slicking aspirations in his head, Harrison is an aspiring journalist, video editor and human being. 

(Lead Image: University of Essex, Flickr Creative Commons license)