Category Archives: Writer’s Block

Beating Writer’s Block Tips: Alternate Starting Points

Welcome to February and welcome back to our series on beating writer’s block. Last week was about engaging with your class materials (articles, textbooks, videos, etc.) and giving yourself time to process new information. This week we’ll look at another possible stumbling block you may be encountering.

Now that you’ve consumed the content and given yourself time to process, this time when you sit down you produce something but after an hour it is only an elaborately drawn “The” at the top of your page. What gives? You may be facing a second hurdle: feeling trapped by the way you think a paper “should” be written.  Sometimes you may feel obligated to follow a linear construction for your paper – starting with an intro and finishing with a conclusion. I’ve got great news for you! You don’t have to start at the beginning! If you’ve caught on to a good idea, follow it to its fulfillment, even if you know it is not the first concept you will introduce in your piece. Write down everything that comes to mind. Writing down what you know will set the foundation for you to engage with the parts of an assignment that you may be struggling with. If you’ve encountered a composition course, you may have heard a professor say that “writing is a process,” which is to say that you have options in how you approach an assignment and these approaches will not be the same for every piece you create. Finding an alternate starting point, such as creating an outline, storyboard, or even just a keywords list with knowledge you want to include can engage your mind with a new infrastructure to help you move past a writing approach that isn’t working for you. 

The Millersville’s Writing Center (https://www.millersville.edu/enwl/writing-center/ ) can help you with this and more. Tune in next week as we continue this series and best of luck with your upcoming fourth week of class! 

Beating Writer’s Block Tips: Content is King

by Becca Betty

A new semester is here and Spring is right around the corner, prompting thoughts of fresh beginnings and launching us into new aspirations for 2023. However, as students and writers we can sometimes encounter difficulty in facing down these new beginnings, many times coined as the phrase “experiencing writer’s block.” Over the next few weeks, this blog will be posting some tips on getting started and adapting our mental frameworks to overcome common stress-points while writing. The advice that follows is drawn from my own experience as a student and writer and is by no means an exhaustive list but rather a starting point from which you may form your own systems for combatting rhetorical clogs in your critical thinking process.  

To start off with, content is king. A deep understanding of the materials you are working with will form the basis of a strong argument. So, you’ve read, listened to, watched, or otherwise consumed your media of interest and sit down to write out your assignment and …nothing happens. Hurdle number one: the thoughts aren’t coming. My advice is to stand back up and take a step back from the assignment to give your mind time to process the new information it has just consumed. Processing new knowledge takes time, a luxury we don’t often afford ourselves as students with approaching deadlines, but even giving your mind a five-minute break before returning to the task at hand could give you the extra push you need to get started. This is kind of the biological equivalent of the technological standard “have you tried turning it off then turning it back on again?”  

The Millersville’s Writing Center (https://www.millersville.edu/enwl/writing-center/ ) can help you with this and more. Tune in next week as we continue this series and best of luck with your upcoming third week of class!