Episode 35: Pessimism Month: Writer's Block, Journaling, and Growth as a Writer

Date of Publication/发布日期

April 29, 2021

Author/发布者

Curtis Westbay

Language/语言

English

Files & media

Volume

Volume 1 2020-2021

Writing is a craft, and it has to be practiced.

Writing is no different than any other skill— it has to be practiced. Students will be very familiar with academic writing from the BASIS curriculum, but academic writing is not the sort that is featured in the college application. Academic writing is impersonal by design: the author needs to be removed to remain objective, unbiased, and scientific. In the college application, the personal statement requires students to be personal, as the name implies. If academic writing (regardless of the discipline in which it is undertaken) is meant to be scientific, narrative writing is meant to be artistic. As with any art, it requires practice, failure, revision, scrutiny, and patience.

How do I practice writing?

Students can practice writing however they like, but there is limited time in their schedules for them to submerse themselves in narrative writing. Fortunately, students can achieve gains in their ability as a writer by journaling for short amounts of time, provided that they do so consistently and frequently. Ten to 15 minutes a day could be enough time for students to become more comfortable within their writer's voice. Students can journal about whatever they like— sometimes, a daily diary will appeal to a student. For some, however, the daily events of everyday life lack the excitement they need to stay motivated to write. In this case, students should write in response to prompts.

I've included a table below of journal ideas. This resource will be in English only, but students are welcome to use it to get ideas for journaling. For the summer break, it will benefit students to use English every day. A journal can serve this purpose.

Writer's block can make students lose motivation. How can they defeat it?

For every writer, sometimes, the words don't seem to come to mind. This is called "writer's block". There's no easy way to overcome it, and different writers deal with it differently. Still, when it comes to the college essay, I advise students to keep writing. Even if they start a new version of an essay and set the one on which they were stuck aside, this is fine. There's no reason to force writing, but there's also no reason to resign yourself to stalled momentum.

Whenever I get stuck on a task or a writing assignment, I try to shift my attention to something else. By taking pressure off of myself to finish a particular task, I can mull over the topic more passively. Sometimes, in the absence of pressure, the breakthrough moment will come.