Writing journal

There's a rough draft due on Wednesday for my Classical Rhetoric class and I'm feeling pretty stuck. I want to use this paper to think through questions I have about the voice, which means I have a bit of agenda for this writing. I'm not sure if that's making it anxious; the writing seems a bit unhappy about getting on to the paper. I feel as though I'm falling back into the habit of writing "perfect" sentences without letting the words have some time and space to form. I have been thinking about ideas for this paper all semester but I'm not letting myself go to just write. I wonder how to get myself to just free write. Why am I hesitating? I think it's the pressure of having a tight deadline, and the guilty feeling that I should have been writing more about this class all semester. On the other hand, I'm not sure what I would have been writing about. I barely feel like I have a handle on the ideas we're discussing in class. Or, I feel these ideas escape as soon as class is over.
I'm quick to answer myself by saying, "Well, if you'd been just writing writing writing all semester, something would be taking shape by now." I feel enormous pressure to start "doing things right" when I write. Now that I know better; now that I've gone through this writing class, I should know all these ways to make it easier to write and revise. While this is true, I know it's a matter of practice.

For now, I need to get some writing done on a subject that feels pretty unfamiliar to me. I've found myself relying on Elbow's suggestion to write even if it means making up facts. I'm trying to write two pages a day, though I only have two viable paragraphs. When I fantasize about writing two pages a day it feels pretty low-pressure. Pretty effortless. I'm sitting at my desk or at Anodyne just letting it rip. Words are streaming out through my fingers and it doesn't even matter if they make sense. I can deal with that part later. But it's clearly not happening that way. I sit at my desk and try to let go; I try and tell my writing it's okay to come out. There's no pressure, really. Somehow, however, my writing knows I'm full of it. It knows it needs to show up to the big writing party on Wednesday.

So the question becomes: how do you trick your writing to come under pressure? How can I get out of the way so I have something to bring in on Wednesday? Tonight, I'm going to spend some time editing two pages of my writing for Thursday and then try and do as much free writing as possible. No pressure.