You can’t write the essay right now. You can write the first sentence, and then the second one.

The whole task is not something you can hold, and trying to hold it is what produces the paralysis. An essay does not exist yet, which makes it infinitely large in your head, while a single sentence is a small and completely doable thing. Work becomes possible at the size you can actually start.

Write one bad sentence on purpose. Then write the next one, without judging either. Give yourself permission to fix all of it later, because the version on the page can be improved and the version in your head cannot. Momentum begins after the first line, not before it.