Dr Frankenstein writes an essay

Writing The Essay was a bit like Dr Frankenstein building his monster.
First the organs - the descriptions of the works of the chosen artists. These fill the central cavity.
Then the bones - the argument of the essay is the skeleton that holds the organs into place - given that these organs will need to work together, what kind of structure is needed to get them to do so? How does each contribute to the argument?
The muscles that move the argument are the sources: judicious quotation and pulling ideas together. It needs to be all muscle, no fat - the essay has a word limit as well as a time limit.
The skin is the writing itself - ideally it will be concise, clear, accurate.
With any luck, there will be glimmerings of a brain...

The deadline was Friday at 4pm, and my essay was handed in at 3.30pm. My stumbling blocks were too much research (resulting in too many footnotes), procrastination, and possibly an excess of enthusiasm. Writing about the artists and works wasn't a problem - but pulling them all together came to be a weighty problem.
On Monday evening I had five descriptions and was about to start the sixth when reality kicked in - how did they fit together?
On Tuesday during class I had a Long Think about this but was getting nowhere. Driven to desperate measures, I did something I've not done before - a 'mind map'.On Wednesday morning I started writing the introduction and -magic!- the needed structure just appeared. No time for writing till Friday, but suddenly it felt ok - the bibliography was compiled, the photos were in a folder, all that was needed was "a little tidying" (quite a bit! and a conclusion) ... and choosing some juicy morsels from the books that were covering every surface and all those notes already on computer.
Isn't it wonderful when you get so immersed in what you're doing that the time flies by unnoticed? Suddenly it was 2.30, time to stop. Of course there's always another perfect quote to fit in, another sentence that could be more concise, a paragraph that could be completely rewritten. Quick skim, hit the Print key, grab shoes and coat....
Ah the sense of freedom with that out of the way! Now it's straight uphill to The Internal Assessment.
(The image is from 'Mary Shelley's Frankenstein'; director of photography Roger Pratt.)