You might feel like you're the only student who feels anxious about academic writing, but we promise you're not. At some point in their programs, 
most students feel anxious about their academic writing skills. Students, like all writers, are writers-in-development, which means that there's always new skills to discover and develop. The process of learning new skills is often challenging, and when you consider how many complex skills are involved in academic writing (e.g., understanding the writing process, understanding assignment descriptions, planning the document, demonstrating critical thinking skills, grammar, sentence structure, editing), it's understandable if you sometimes feel anxious about the writing process.
If your anxiety starts to get in the way of your writing, we're here to help. This guide is a collaboration between Counselling Services and the Writing Centre, and our goal is to reassure you that you're not the only person feeling anxious about writing, as well as to provide practical strategies, links to resources, and identify how you can ask for help.
Anxiety about writing may be typical for students, but that doesn't mean that students need to suffer through the process. Please take advantage of the information and resources in this guide, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact us:
Counselling Services
counselling@royalroads.ca
250-391-2600 ext 4515
Book an appointment
Writing Centre
writingcentre@royalroads.ca
(250) 391-2600, ext. 4353 or 1-800-788-8028
Book an appointment
All images used in this guide were retrieved from Pixabay.com, have a Creative Commons CC0 license, and do not require attribution.
