I had sincerely hoped to be done writing my remaining essays
for my English Composition course at Penn
Foster College
by now. They have even sent me a “nasty-gram”
telling me my proctored exam won’t be mailed until I finish these two
essays. There is only one problem, but
it’s a big one: writer’s block is
sabotaging my progress on my essay.
As a former reporter who made his living writing news copy,
I have dealt with writer’s block before.
It usually sets in when you spend too much time thinking about what you have
to write, and then panic sets in. The
panic causes you to freeze, and nothing you write “sounds” or looks quite
right.
Somebody made a great suggestion following one my previous
blog posts. She said “write your essay
as if you were writing your blog”. I
thought this was a great idea, so that’s exactly what I set out to do. After all, the Narrative Essay does kind of
read like a blog post, so what he heck, why not try it?
I got about three paragraphs into my essay, and it was
really flowing great, then bang! I hit another
roadblock. Usually, the best thing to do
when that happens, when you aren’t sure how to proceed with a piece of writing,
is to just walk away from it and come back to it later. This has usually worked for me, although this
really only works when you don’t have extremely tight deadlines.
You have probably heard the old saying “write what you know”. This is usually a good way of writing
yourself out of a bad bout of writer’s block, but again this usually works best
if it’s applicable to what you are writing.
In my case, I’m writing about my wife’s audition for the game show “Deal
or No Deal” (no, she hasn’t been called to appear on the show, at least not
yet). I had to appear with her at her
call-back audition, as one of her supporters.
It really was an acting job on our part, shouting “no deal!” in a hotel
suite as a producer video taped the mock run-through of a game. Sadly, there were not beautiful models
holding brief cases.
I am also dealing with some health issues, which leaves me
with very little energy or stamina. This
comes in cycles and I’m sure as soon as I get my medication straightened out I’ll
be feeling normal again. Until that
happens, it’s hard to stay motivated to write, study or do much of anything
else when all you really want to do is sleep for about 48 hours.
Perhaps a few of you have some helpful suggestions for overcoming
writer’s block. Whether it’s due to a
lack of creativity or inspiration, or the fact that I just don’t enjoy writing
these structured essays, I’m stuck.