One of the advantages of taking a correspondence course is that you may hand in assignments at your own pace. Take advantage of this flexibility. Once you have found your topic, I encourage you to learn to write slowly, the way a professional author would write, lavishing lots of time on the choice of a single metaphor or the rhythm and structure of a particular sentence. The art of writing is in large measure the art of patience. The human mind is simply too fallible an instrument to be trusted to produce good writing at assembly-line speed.
Writing is a time-consuming craft.
Preliminary combinations of words are tested and found wanting. Still other combinations are tried, until slowly the composition takes form after many frustrating hours of revision and minute change. If, on the other hand, you race your prose against the clock, your chances of producing an effective essay are greatly diminished. Accordingly, you are not encouraged to hand in reams of mediocre prose. If you are reading the assignments in your textbook and are truly absorbing them, you will discover that a good, three-page essay may well take many hours to compose.