Motivation is believed to be one of the main essential factors that determine students’ achievement. Inevitably, students will encounter difficulties on a daily learning basis. Yet, motivation will not be adequate to help students deal with the challenges. Therefore, volition is needed to bridge students’ effort and goal achievement despite hardships or distracting situations. By employing the qualitative method, this study seeks to understand the role of volition in graduate students’ academic writing. There were 13 English Education Master Students of Sanata Dharma University involved in this study. Questionnaire and interview were used to gather the data. The findings showed that students used different coping strategies when encountered academic writing difficulties. Further, they keep allocating their effort in task completion amidst the pandemic situation where tempting situation occurred in the online learning could not be avoided. It can be concluded that the students perform a high volition in academic writing, specifically in working persistently to complete the task.