#accordingly to even the smallest expression of that rhetoric; because /you have no idea if you are going to become a statistic/

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

my kingdom for a function that will let you choose to exclude specific, individual posts from searches without having to shadowban your entire blog. i cannot overstate how much of this webbed site's most vicious drama this would have averted over the years. PLEASE staff for the love of god do this one thing i beg you it is not too late

[kaitlyndai]

On writer’s block and anime.

At age thirteen, I finished my first novel: poorly written beyond description but chock-full of an ambitious storyline and Harry-Potter-esque elements; in other words, 396 pages of pure, unadulterated imagination. I typed the last word of the story’s epilogue with irreplicable oomph, relished in its completion for about two weeks, and settled back in front of our bulky iMac to begin round two. This, I thought to myself, was the beginning of the writing career I’d dreamed of for so long. The rest of my life would be clockwork: book after book cranked out one after another, with nothing to go off of (and nothing else needed) but my work ethic and momentum.

I was in for a rude awakening, however, when I experienced it for the first time. A terrible, completely unfamiliar barricade between the part of my brain that strung words together and my fingertips, positioned at the ready over the ridges on the F and J keys. The tiny black cursor blinking against a stark white document didn’t look so much like an exciting new beginning anymore, just a sign of how much of nothing I had. I was told to have a conceptual skeleton in mind when beginning a new piece of writing, but I didn’t even have a conceptual femur, a rib, a stirrup (the smallest bone in the human body, thank you WebMD). The arsenal of ideas I thought I had at my disposal (things I liked about my first book that I wanted to expand on, to revamp, things I hadn’t written about that I wanted to experiment with, and everything in between) had sealed itself up. Something had put a damper on my creativity like molasses poured over the cogs of my brain, and I would soon come to realize this something had a name.

All of us have experienced writer’s block before. To different extents, surely, since writer’s block is far more dire for a freelance author struggling to pay rent than for a high schooler struggling to turn in UC applications on time (not like I speak from experience, or anything), but it’s a universal experience to not have the first clue what to write, and to not know what the hell to do about it. 

As someone who’s been writing her whole life in some form or another, I’ve searched high and low for appropriate ways to combat writer’s block, and the methods I’ve discovered have always varied depending on the type of writing in question: skimming important textbook chapters for AP U.S. History essays, rewatching eventful episodes for Criminal Minds fanfiction, watching (and seething with jealousy at) YouTube tutorials for bullet journal spreads, et cetera. Scholar David Bartholomae’s work builds off this idea; he offers his impression of writer’s block only from an academic standpoint, drawing from his experiences as a professor to define writer’s block for college students and college students only. He acknowledges that student-specific difficulties with writing exist, just as blogger-specific or novelist-specific difficulties are just as prominent for writers in those respective fields. Academic writing, which is unique in that it’s being graded, must also cater to the reader in order to reflect well on one’s transcript; students don’t only need to tailor their writing to the subject matter at hand, but also to the professor grading their work. Instructors tend to have certain preferences when it comes to various components of writing, such as sentence structure or word choice, all factors that students try to take into account — all factors that make writing harder.

I remember an earlier writing mentor referring to her writer’s block as an “inspiration deficiency”, a description that made sense for years of my life, but I now know that writer’s block isn’t quite as straightforward as she made it out to be. Calling it a deficiency of something assumes that we know exactly what’s missing, so it should, theoretically, be easy to fight off. Deficient in inspiration? Easy: get inspired. Watch motivational Ted Talks. Listen to MarioKart music on two-times speed. Leaf through your favorite books until you remember what aspects of the authors’ writing you hope to emulate. It’s never enough, because writer’s block is the result of a lack of a lot of things: time to write, motivation to write, emotional, mental, or physical wellness, or anything that helps our brains digest information. 

It’s not just a lack of these intangible factors, however. Scholar Jan Corbett, building upon Bartholomae’s interpretation of writer’s block among students, postulates that the cause of writer’s block is actually too many ideas and muddled thought processes. This leads to a state of mind that isn’t so much an “inspiration deficiency” as it is an “inspiration death”, inspiration being completely absent and seemingly unattainable. On top of that, students tend to have botched understandings of the rhetorical conventions of expository essays, so misconceptions about writing only exacerbate the existing problem of being confused as hell. TL;DR: writer’s block, like most things, is incredibly multi-dimensional, and it’s hard to know where to begin remedying it. I believe the answer to that question is to first define what it means to each of us.

Professor Jill Aeschbacher defines her writer’s block as a tall brick wall, of which the dimensions symbolize various factors that hinder her writing. Its width is proportional to the image that she gives herself as a writer, its length is her ego’s desires to express herself through writing, and its height is her fear of expecting too much, only to let herself down. Putting an image to the thing keeping her from producing prose has helped her assert her goal: to reach a headspace where she can appreciate the mechanics of the craft rather than the quality, therefore lowering her expectations to a manageable level (not to be lazy, but to be reasonable. We’ve all had standards for ourselves that were more damaging than anything). After reading her work, I’ve taken a page out of her book (literally) to procure my own wall-related personification of writer’s block.

I watched an anime called Attack on Titan this summer. It’s a fantastically written, apocalyptic tale where man-eating, massive monsters called Titans roam free; the small population of surviving humans erect three colossal, concentric walls to protect themselves, the show following their attempts to stay alive among these deadly circumstances. The reason why I bring this up isn’t just to gush about high-quality television (season 4 coming out on December 7th, be there or be square), but to draw an analogy: I am a Titan, and my writer’s block is represented by these three walls. 

The outermost wall, Wall Maria, is destroyed first in the show due to its lack of tight security and proximity to Titan territory; this is inspiration, the wall that is metaphorically broken down first when that je nais se quois happens, things fall into place, and I figure out what to write about. The second wall is named Wall Rose, which is much further inland, populated with richer individuals and more capable protectors, thus harder to break down: this is expression. With the destruction of this wall, I am able to translate my ideas from arbitrary shower thoughts to coherent, usable sentences. The third and final wall, which contains the untouchable home to the royal Reiss family, is Wall Sina. When my hulking, bloodthirsty Titan self takes this wall down, I achieve application: the integration, connection, and expansion of my ideas until they hatch into beautiful butterflies of prose. (I now realize that Wall Sina is virtually impossible to breach in the canon of the show, but I assure you that application is much more realistic of a goal. Maybe this wasn’t the best metaphor.)

So I’ve made it into Wall Sina and successfully eaten the queen, but one question lingers. What prompted the building of the walls in the first place? Translated back from far-fetched anime metaphor to English, what are the mental processes behind writer’s block, and is it possible to put its origins into words? Cue Michael Anthony Rose, an expert on writer’s block (probably because of repeated exposure. I feel for him), and his six basic reasons for why writer’s block exists among students.

Overly-rigid writing rules. Like Jill Aeschbacher, whose high expectations were subconsciously restraining her from writing, students who place too many restrictions on themselves will find words nearly impossible to mold to their liking.

Misleading assumptions about composing. This ties into Jan Corbett’s notion that a student must be thoroughly familiar with the conventions of academic writing in order to write at their best ability. Clarity breeds efficiency. Someone put that on a pillow.

Premature editing. Write first, revise later. It’s nearly impossible to know how an idea, no matter how out of place it seems at first, contributes to a paper after it’s completed. Writing and editing at the same time is something I’d done for years before realizing how detrimental to my writing process it was. Every thought counts.

Poor planning. Another thing I’ve been doing for years, except this one I have yet to correct. Leave ample time for assignment completion, obviously, and leave ample possibilities for writing completion. If only I ever took my own advice.

Conflicting strategies. Jan Corbett also warns us about this: “creative death”, as she calls it, by an overload of ideas. Hone in on what writing approach would best suit the assignment right away and act accordingly; taking on too much at once is sure to cause confusion.

Misunderstanding evaluation criteria. David Bartholomae emphasizes that understanding a professor’s rubric is a two-way street; students must take the time to digest their instructor’s expectations, but instructors are also expected to delineate their expectations clearly.

I was skeptical after reading these for the first time. Rose had taken the shroud of mystery that is writer’s block and given it such understandable, straightforward explanations that they seemed too good to be true. But I was able to utilize the teachings of fellow writer’s block experts Jan Corbett, Jill Aeschbacher, and David Bartholomae to explain his findings, which I think is a testament to their integrity. As aforementioned, writer’s block is hard to generalize because of how nuanced it can be, so no stress if not all of Rose’s reasons apply to you; his work serves as a mere framework for what is ultimately much more complex and varied.

Is envisioning my writer’s block in the Attack on Titan universe an excuse for me to further indulge in its incredible universe? Possibly. Do I think that the imagery helps me to better understand and therefore manage my writer’s block? Definitely. By no means am I capable of avoiding writer’s block entirely, nor do I think I ever will be, but I’m certainly learning to accept writer’s block as a completely natural, expected part of the writing process. We’re not learning unless we’re doing something wrong; similarly, we’re not writing as best we can if we’re not struggling to do so. What’s the point of having a Titan around if there are no walls for it to break, after all?