Slice of life writing challenge - Day 18

7:57 AM Posted In , Edit This 3 Comments »
Writers Block.
I have a paper due tomorrow in my class about teaching writing and I am just stuck. I enjoy the topic- I'm writing about the power of writing in a journal for self discovery and healing. I have found lots of great books on the topic and devoured them each one confirming my belief that writing is good for you! But I lack the ability to make it all fit together and make any sense at all. I feel like I'm talking about too many things; my personal experience with using a journal and how it has helped me, my thoughts about how a journal might have helped a student I taught in internship, The Freedom Writers movie/book and how writing changed them, examples of studies, personal accounts of people in the books I read about how their lives changed because of writing. Then I have to connect it to school and how I would use it in my classroom. My biggest block is my lack of confidence to write academically. I am in a class full of English majors, with a Prof who knows more about any writing topic then I ever will and I well I just write because it hurts not to. I have always had trouble with the mechanical and grammar stuff and I thought this class might have helped me out but we have had presentations on theorists the whole time who demised the grammar and mechanics but I get dinged on it anyway.
I want to teach the process of writing, prewrite, draft, more drafts if need revise edit etc because I believe that produces the writing that the student will be most proud of and it mirrors what "real" writers do. I personally have not been through that process since grade 6. I have a hard time re reading my work and fixing it. I get mad and want to throw it all away and with my deadline tomorrow I can't do that. I have this desire in me to write stories, poems, a book for the "world" to see but I am scared. Scared that my words are nothing, scared that my story is old, scared of myself. I feel like I have lost my creativity somewhere along my life. I signed up for a creative writing class that starts next month---I want to write I really really do I just need some direction and focus and I hope this class is a start.

I should get ready for my day before it starts without me.

3 comments:

GirlGriot said...

It can be daunting to write 'academic' papers ... I had a great professor in grad school who really helped me see that I had to forget about academic writing and just write what I wanted to say. Yeah, as if that was so easy.

But it kind of was easy once I really got out of my way. You love to write, you journal regularly (my guess) ... and all the pieces you mention in your post will be excellent support for your paper. You do have the ability to make it all fit together ... and when you do, it will make sense!

Good luck, Ashley!
--Stacie

BK said...

Ashely,
I echo Stacey's vote to write the way you write clearly with a sense of the audience you are writing for and true to who you are as writer. I think good writing is something universal. I would write away and then tighten to the topic and then hand it over for someone who you trust to give your grammar/mechanics the once over. That's the way to finish your piece.
Bonnie

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