Student's guide to writing college papers, Fourth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2010

Manage moments of normal panic
Engaging sources
Writing your paper

This might be a good time to address a problem that afflicts even experienced researchers and at some point will probably afflict you. As you shuffle through hundreds of notes and a dozen lines of thought, you start feeling that you're not just spinning your wheels but spiraling down into a black hole of confusion, paralyzed by what seems to be an increasingly complex and unmanageable task.

The bad news is that there's no sure way to avoid such moments. The good news is that most of us have them and they pass. Yours will pass too if you keep moving along, following your plan, taking on small and manageable tasks instead of trying to get your head around the whole project. It's another reason to start early, to break a big project into its smallest steps, and to set achievable deadlines, such as a daily page quota when you draft.