It’s no secret that writing is hard, its been my opener for weeks now. This week though, it turns out that failing and making mistakes is part of the writing process. As academic writers, it leaves absolutely no room for creativity because often times, its tied to a grade, and so out of fear that this stroke of creativity may be deemed incorrect and possibly cost us a passing grade, we play it safe.
Writer’s Block
This term is not something I use for myself when I get stuck on a writing assignment, mostly because I never thought of myself as a writer. I related this term to the Stephen Hawking and the Jenn Bennet’s of the world. They are writer’s, authors, they get writer’s block, I just get stuck on an essay for class. After reading Michaela Ramirez’s article on Writer’s Block, I can definitely say that I unconsciously use her methods on how to decompress after getting stuck. Because I find my desktop at home to be my most “productive” device, I tend to do most of my work on it. Somethings I do to decompress after getting stuck is getting up and getting reading socks because I inevitably get colder than I thought I would, and while I’m up I’ll grab the nearest blanket. Once I am back on my chair I’ll try again and if I get a burst of creativity, I will write it all out and as I finish spelling the last word I am up and out of that chair, whether it’s to grab my headphones or wander around my room, I allow my brain to settle after that waterfall of creativity. So I guess I have developed an unconscious writer’s block prevention strategy.
Diversify your outline
One or two paragraphs into Christopher Morales’ Diversify your Outlines article, and I was getting flashbacks to my English 101 days where that professor was very much a fan of a structured outline AND bibliographies. I still remember how the outlines had to be lined up exactly the way her outline was and how it needed to have the same numbers and roman numerals as hers and she’d take points off if they weren’t. When it came to actually writing based off of the structured outline, I remember being confused all the time. I never got higher than a B and I think it was out of pity, because I was in her office trying to understand that I should be writing about the lower case roman numeral one in section C in my third paragraph and not my first. But then I also remember the following semester having an English professor who never gave us an expectation on outlines and just complained about us not knowing how to write one for her class. I also never got higher than a B in that class.
Now that I am taking 2000-3000 level English courses is that I am realizing that I benefit from having a lose outline for my papers. I find that my writing style leans on the side of painting a picture for my reader, and when my outline is so structured, it feels like I have no room for any color. I also, however, know that I am an academic writer, who writes, 8/10 times for an academic audience, so I also do benefit from having some kind of structure in my outline. I would say that I have a similar stance to Christopher, where I need to have my staple points, but I choose how to bring the staple points to the table.
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