Writer’s Block, most of us have had it, and I guarantee every writer has had it at least once. Every time you start an essay and after the first sentence your mind just goes blank, or when you just don’t know what to write and everything you think about just doesn’t make sense once you put it on paper, you suffer from writer’s block. Writers block is very common in many students, but then there are those rare students who never get writers block, they mess up but they correct themselves and keep going without a problem. Some say it’s how every student follows their own individual writing rules, and some blame the writing techniques and things that previous writing professors have taught them in the past or because the rules are simply too rigid. One way or another, writer’s block is a problem that we need to face and overcome as writers.
0 Comments
This article titled “Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitive Analysis of Writer’s Block” by Mike Rose Talks and summarizes what causes students with “writers block” to freeze up and not be able to write papers as well as what triggers this behavior. Throughout the excerpt he compares and differentiates two common types of writing students, the first student is the one to breeze through writing papers, and compares them to students that are extremely terrified of not upholding the rules of writing. While asking questions and trying to figure out what is the main thing that is causing writer’s block, Mike Rose came to the conclusion that a rule that students constantly repeated was the fact they had to make an interesting introduction paragraph. We have been taught that an introduction paragraph must have certain characteristics such as, interesting, catchy, solid, and factual, among others. The people without a block do not stress this rule; it comes naturally because they don’t stress what they have to write about, they simply put their thoughts into paper, they tend to look at it heuristically which means that they can bend a rule, or view a rule “loosely” which only means to make the rule fit to the plan that they already have for their papers. Algorithmic writers or people with writers block panic because they feel the need to follow each rule step by step. Mike’s solution to helping to solve writer’s block was to interview with each student in order to get to know them as a writer and about their writing background and the knowledge they already have coming with from previous English or writing classes.
Writing has always been essential to modern society, it has lots of benefits which have made life much more practical, not to mention it has given us the gift of education.
The one thing I personally value the most about writing is the fact that you can create, change, and perfect as you go through the writing stages. Writing is something you can always do when you need to express yourself in, if you don't want to verbally express yourself. This reading is a research conducted by Nancy Sommers who wrote about the various aspects of the writing process, and how student writers differ from experienced adult writers and their different revising techniques or strategies. Nancy Sommers focused more than anything on revision and its stages since current models of the writing process have directed attention away from revision and it has been notably absent as she referred to it. In these writing conceptions of the writing process, revision is commonly viewed as a separate stage left for the end, or it’s seen as something you do once you are done with your writing, and this is what student writers tend to do, or they don’t take revision as such big deal or even consider it a part of the writing process. There is crucial stages or parts to the writing process which must be properly followed in order to have a positive outcome in your writing, the parts of classical rhetoric are being described in the reading as “stages” of composition that are repeated in the contemporary models of the writing process. She gives an example of the writer Edward Corbett’s idea of the “five parts of a discourse- disposition, elocution, memoria, pronunciation and, disregarding the last two parts since after rhetoric came to be concerned mainly with reading discourse.” Many other authors also follow these stages, not because of the historical accident, but because the process represented in the linear model is based on the irreversibility of speech. The writer Roland Barthes referred to it as “irreversible” he then explains how a word cannot be retracted from what you wrote, “Except precisely by saying that one retracts on it, to cross out here is to add.”379. Following by an example that if a writer wants to erase what they’ve just said; one simply cannot do it without showing the eraser itself. Meaning that you must express your mistake or what you didn’t mean to say on the reading, a good example of doing so could be “or rather, I expressed myself badly.” Most students don’t use the terms revising or rewriting in their vocabulary or feel comfortable using them for that matter, students responded that it was not a word that they used, but a word their teachers used. Although most of the students developed various functional terms to describe the type of changes made which included; “Scratch and do over again, Reviewin, Redoing, Marking out, Slashing and throwing out”381 The students understand the revision process as a rewording activity, meaning that they might indeed change the text but they change the wording rather than the writing itself. We can see in contrast how experienced writers in the other hand, focus on a primary objective when revising as finding the form or shape of their argument, “Experienced writers often use structural expressions such as finding a framework, pattern or design.” 384 Experienced writers responded that since their first drafts are usually scattered attempts to define their territory, their objective on their second drafts is to begin observing general patterns of development and decide what to include or take off the text.
The author of this article Anne Lamott who was previously a restaurant critic and a novel writer believes how helpful first drafts can be. She explains how that first draft is meant to be a mess, she even refers to them as the “child’s draft”. Anne would stress over writing an article about a restaurant. She would always start out by visiting the restaurant with some friends and then she would take those notes and just “pour them all out into a pile on her first draft.” Then she would “come back the next day to find that some of that mess makes sense so she pulls out bits and parts that she can use in the article. Anne then adds a little more to it, then rereads it, and then sends it out to be printed.” After reading this you can easily recognize how some writers will sometimes have trouble writing but the important thing is to keep an open mind and have a good sense of self constructive criticism when working on your second and third draft. After working in your writing and expanding your boundaries, you’ll be surprised to what your final work came out to be and you might be contempt with it. In the reading “Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird She argues for the need to let go of fears, and critical thoughts on your own writing and insists that writers should put down on paper whatever comes to their mind for their first drafts, regardless of what they might think about it or how it might be judged by the reader.
She explains how the first draft is a “shitty first draft. That might lead to clarity and sometimes brilliance in our second or third drafts.” In paragraph 1, Lamott explains ,how people’s perspective on how writers work is completely different to how they really work, she refers to this as “The fantasy of the uninitiated.” Referring to those inexperienced writers or non-writers as uninitiated portraying them with a rookie look, and describing what they think writing is about as a fantasy. He then explains how very few writers really know what they’re doing until they’ve done it. She goes on talking about how writers sometimes have horrible starts to their first drafts and how hard it is for them to get their thoughts going and writing their ideas down. Anne said how no writer “sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts.” She even wrote about a writer she knows that sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, “it’s not like you don’t have a choice, because you do. You can either type or kill yourself” a bit harsh of an option if you ask me, but this is the perfect example to show that being a writer is tough although it might look like a piece of cake to people’s perspectives sometimes. Anne explained how “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts, but you need to start somewhere.” Sometimes writing whatever comes to mind might be a good thing because when you’re done you can scratch off anything that you feel that doesn’t belong there and you get to perfect your writing for your second and third drafts without worrying about anyone reading that horrible first draft. “Spanglish as Alternative Discourse: Working against Language Demarcation,” Kate Mangelsorf9/17/2015 Now a day it’s rather common for someone to speak more than one language. The main focus of the article is Spanglish, which is used to “demonstrate the effects on students of linguistics containment and standard language ideology” (114). In the article “Spanglish as Alternative Discourse: Working against Language Demarcation,” Kate Mangelsorf explores the heavy usage of spanglish used by Latinos in the United States community, spanglish is a type of linguistic slang of spanish and english. Kate Mangelsorf states that “the practice of segregating students in writing classes according to their language” is a form of discrimination and the policy of linguistic containment could be a good thing for those who need extra help with their linguistic skills. Mangelsorf talks about “standard, correct language.” Which is the belief that there is a right or wrong in language which has lead to the feeling of being “obligated to go along with this notion because of the assumption that so called standard language can help students succeed in the mainstream culture” (113). The article explains that Spanglish differentiates between characteristics and deep phenomena, a surface characteristic includes word borrowing or language switching, “borrowings include English nouns that do not exist in Spanish or vise versa, as well as English words that are simpler to say than their Spanish counterparts” (116). Many consider this as improper or unprofessional. The increase in the use of Spanglish is the “result of what happens when groups of people speaking different languages interact” (116. Mangelsorf lastly states that a “A standard language is seen as necessary for creating and maintaining national identity and power” (117) instead of variating from different languages.
Synthesis
Young explains that there is, and will always be racism and and racial differences, although it may not be such a big deal or as obvious as it was many years ago, sometimes we might not even be aware that we make racist prejudices on a daily basis, I strongly agree with Young, and how he explains that racism occurs in the current society through “new racism” and microaggresion. Many individuals are not consciously aware that they are being racist and offensive an example of this could be someone who expects someone else to speak a certain way or act a certain way based on how they are dressed or the color of their skin. Summary
Vershawn Ashanti Young, the author of “Momma’s Memories and the New Equality” explains the advice he remembers his mother gave him concerning his race and his job along with the reason why she gave him this piece of advice. Vershawn explains how his mother came from the Jim-Crow South and is still skeptical and very conscious of socializing or affiliating with a white person in her society. The reason for this behavior started since an early age for this is what has been instilled in her and it’s the way she was brought up. Young explains that there is, and will always be some kind of racism and and racial differences, although it may not be such a big deal or as obvious as it was many years ago when Young’s mother was growing up. Young describes and refers to a phenomenon he calls microaggresion defined as “mostly unintended ‘racial slights and insults’ (271)”. To have a better understanding of this think about it this way; The great majority of us may not even be aware of the fact that we are engaging racial prejudices in our everyday lives and this does not necessarily mean that we are racist, it’s just the way some of us are brought up to think like To expand on that this issue Young includes two articles where this is highlighted. The first article entitled Shayla’s involved a situation which occurred where Young was located at the time. In this article a young girl’s mother explains that her young girl, Shayla was verbally insulted by her classmates by asking her “why she’s so black, why her butt is so plump”. The mothers’ friend classifies these type of insults as a microinsults defined as “communications that convey rudeness and demean a persons’ racial heritage or identity. Young’s article ends with his plea for others to join him in “the individual and societal conscious-building project of the new equality. This leads us into what Young classified as the new racism which is the promotion of “distinct themes” of microaggression: colorblind ideology, a belief that in effect says, ‘pretend race isn’t here” or “if you ignore race, it’ll go away.” |
AuthorMy name is Alex Ivan Martinez, I'm a freshman at UTEP seeking an Engineering Leadership major and a graphic design minor.
Archives
November 2015
Categories |