Photo source: Zen Sutherland.
Gratefully adapted with a CC license from Flickr.
Writer’s block can be experienced either as a sustained difficulty in producing text or as an ongoing dissatisfaction with the text produced. In both cases, the writing process becomes laboured and unproductive. Because writer’s block is the result of one or several underlying, unresolved conflicts—in effect, a symptom—the cause usually must be addressed to remove the block.
For university students, three useful ways of understanding the causes of writer’s block emerge from three distinct paradigms: the institutional context of academic writing, which structures expression; the power imbalance experienced by the writer, which creates vulnerability and self-doubt; and misconceptions about the nature of the writing process itself, which confound expressive agility. With a better understanding of context and process, students are often able to reconfigure their relationship with writing and overcome the block.
Almost everyone faces writer’s block at one time or another. For some, it is a fleeting annoyance; for others, it is a lasting debilitation. Either way, when we are blocked, our tendency is to assume that it must be something about the content of what we are writing that is blocking us: we don’t know enough, we need more research. The trouble is, more research doesn’t resolve a true writer’s block. It makes it worse. As we gain expertise in our subject and are still unable to write about it, our frustration mounts and the process becomes even more unpleasant. The secret lies in the word process. Writing is not text itself, but the act of creating text. Writing is a process and every process is influenced by its context.
Students write to meet the requirements of the university and the university is an institution. All institutions function according to rules. Fair or unfair, incisive or blunt, rules are the bricks of human society and every institution is built with them. Most students are fine with this arrangement. We’re a social species to start with and students, especially, have already spent most of their lives learning to function in educational institutions. But not all rules are created equal. Some are explicit (submit your work, don’t plagiarize), others are implicit (ask questions here, don’t ask questions there). And while we have a fairly clear relationship with the rules we know, we are often defeated by the rules we don’t know.
Writing in an institutional setting implies a tacit acceptance of all the institution’s rules and this can complicate an already complicated process. We try to conform to standards we don’t fully understand and take on the burden of pleasing an audience we don’t know. We are overwhelmed by the impossibility of the task and writing stops. The diagnostic symptom for this form of block is selective block. We are able to write some things, but not others. You might have no difficulty writing a letter, a short story, or a blog, but find you can’t get started on that three-page essay.
The solution to this type of writer’s block lies in changing the relationship between you and your institutional audience. Because we are blocked mostly by what we perceive to be impediments, we can often overcome the impediments by changing our perceptions. We do this by disturbing the patterns that reinforce our negative perceptions. This can be done in three different ways.
Change your audience. If you are having difficulty writing an essay, turn it into a letter to someone you know well. You might start off with “Dear Mom, I’m writing an essay for criminology on Strain Theory. Have you heard of it? Let me explain.” After you have a rough draft, revise it.
Change your environment. What we write and where we write can become negatively linked. If writing has been difficult, sitting down to work in your usual spot can feel like sitting down before a panel of judges. The solution is to work somewhere new. Try writing in a coffee shop, a different library or even a different room. The goal is not to find the perfect spot to work, just a different spot.
Change your routine. Write whenever and however you normally do not write. It might be worth getting up at three in the morning to discover that the strangeness of a dark and quiet room prompts you to write. Say the words aloud before you type them. Set a timer and write for only fifteen minutes.
These devices are intended to disturb the unproductive relationship we can create when faced with institutional conformity, but there are many ways to the same end. Be creative.
University is an odd place. Students come here for one form of empowerment or another: knowledge, expertise, status, recognition. Certainly, a university education can offer all these benefits, but it requires students to submit to its authority. In order to be empowered, students must go where they’re told, when they’re told and do what they’re told in the way they’re told to do it. Then they are evaluated by people in positions of superiority. Indeed there might not be a practical alternative to this structure, but the fact remains: students are often faced with the unarticulated paradox of seeking empowerment in disempowering ways. This creates vulnerability.
Add to this the fact that writing is an odd process. We write for an audience, but we write alone. Our subject might be quite removed from us, but because we are creating our own text, writing feels intensely personal. The result is that we tend to internalize imposed vulnerability as personal weakness. Because this power imbalance is manifested in our writing, our tendency is to blame our writing for creating it. This can leave us feeling inadequate and isolated. The diagnostic symptom for this form of writer’s block is endless preparation and endless revision.
The solution to feeling disempowered in your writing is to reinforce your sense of legitimacy within the university. You cannot change the very real power imbalance that caused your block, but you can lessen its effect by strengthening yourself in other ways.
Connect. If your academic performance is the only link between yourself and the university, you run the very real risk of judging your self-worth exclusively on that performance. You need many connections to a community to feel secure within it. Join a club, sit on a committee, write for a student newspaper, explore the campus, use the facilities. Good academic performance will always be important here, but the more links you have with the university community, the less damage your fear of poor performance can do.
Congregate. Write with someone else. You needn’t be working on the same task; you needn’t even speak. Just sitting with someone else who is writing, and taking breaks together, is often enough to dispel the isolation writing imposes. Join a writer’s group. Over the years, I have discovered that talking about writer’s block almost never resolves writer’s block, but talking about writing almost always encourages writing. Get together with others and complain for a while to get it out of your system, then get down to a good companionable discussion of how writing works, what you want to say and how you want to say it.
Making yourself part of the larger community will help you overcome the burden of facing that community on your own. You didn’t create this imbalance, but you are still subject to it. Sometimes we must fix problems that are not of our own making.
One of the problems we have with writing comes from a misunderstanding of what writing is. We often assume that writing is a simple matter of taking the words in our mind and transferring them to screen or paper. When our written text doesn’t look the way we imagine it should, we accuse ourselves of being unable to do something simple. In fact, writing is a complex process in which our thoughts move from imagination to reality. To transform the immaterial into the material involves substantial change.
It is not surprising that our real text differs from our imagined text. Indeed, by definition, it must. However, because our real text is different, we devalue it. In Writing Past Dark (New York: HarperPerennial, 1994), Bonnie Friedman suggests writer’s block is a sort of perfectionism, akin to anorexia, where obsession with the ideal, prevents the birth of the real. The diagnostic symptom for this form of writer’s block is writing that is agonizingly slow in the search for the best expression, yet invariably disappointing.
The solution lies in reconceptualizing the writing process. Instead of assuming that writing is accomplished in the mind, and that putting words on paper is merely mechanical, we must recognize that creating text plays an important role in mediating the conceived and the written word.
Freewrite. At some random moment of the day, let yourself write. It might be on any topic and in any form. The idea is to recognize and justify the mediation of conceived and realized text. As you take possession of this aspect of your writing, you will find you can adapt it to many tasks.
Embrace the Change. Once you realize that the writing process must have an impact on what you write, you can actually enjoy a sense of continual discovery. You might think to yourself: this is what I imagine I want to say, let’s see what it becomes. Sometimes it will not be what you need, sometimes it will. Either way, you are not failing in your task, you are embracing every aspect of a rich and demanding process.
It is hoped that these three perspectives on writer’s block will give you an insight into writing as you experience it. They are unlikely to provide you with a quick fix, but they can be the basis of a reliable sea change that makes writing easier and more productive. As you are discovering, nothing is simple. You must contend not only with the writing process, but with fluctuations in your energy and motivation, as well as the exigencies of your task. Recognizing and balancing all these elements is difficult but rewarding. The mindful writer has an enduring skill.
Procrastination is a difficult habit to change. We procrastinate because it works: we get immediate gratification when we put off a task, when we finally get to work we have the adrenalin of the last minute rush to motivate us, and we still manage to get the task done. In order to change this pattern of behaviour, we need to address every advantage procrastination provides us. Here are six useful strategies. Use the ones that work for you.
University essays and assignments may seem daunting; but Steve Hoselton explains how to break down large tasks into smaller, manageable ones---a process called chunking.
CHUNKING Starting a major project can feel like sitting down at the foot of a mountain: it’s overwhelming. Divide your work up into small tasks. Begin a project early, but only do a little at a time. Don’t decide to write a 10 page paper; decide to write a paragraph. As you get into the assignment, you will find it easier to plan longer work sessions.
TIME NOT TASK When we decide to read 3 chapters, it puts the book in charge of our time: “I have to stay here until the chapters are finished.” Instead, plan your work by time. Figure out how long you think it will take you to read 3 chapters and stick to that time. If it isn’t enough, plan another block of time later to finish it. This way, you control the task; the task doesn’t control you.
FALSE DEADLINES Completing assignments before their due dates gives you flexibility in planning, but it’s hard to respect a deadline you know isn’t real. So plan a meeting with a friend on your deadline. Your goal is to show your friend the work you’ve completed, not to read, but to acknowledge that you did it. Then put the work away and enjoy your time together. A Writing Centre appointment can work the same way.
REWARDS We can be stimulated to work when we know we will be rewarded for our efforts. Unfortunately, the rewards of university work are often long delayed. Create your own rewards for each work session. They can be very small: a walk, a hot drink, some music, a phonecall. Reward your effort now; celebrate your successes later.
PLAN PERSONAL TIME Procrastinators constantly steal personal time from work time and then feel guilty about it. Eventually, this pattern becomes an expectation and the line between work and play disappears. Break the cycle by planning dedicated personal time. Even limited personal time will help to re-establish boundaries and help you work when you need to work.
Use this quick guide to help you prioritize your assignments. In the video, Steve Hoselton explains the simple ABC method of sorting your tasks into a manageable order.
PRIORITIZE We can be overwhelmed by the number of tasks ahead of us and no one likes to face what overwhelms them. Limit your tasks by prioritizing them. Create a list. Consider one third of the items on your list as your immediate priority – no more. When those items are complete, you can make a new list.
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