overcoming writer's block

I have been thinking about my own early fear and avoidance of writing, and at this point I write more than anyone else I know. I have been accused by some of running off at the keyboard. I consider it practice. As any craftsman knows, you get better at something if you practice and are critically engaged in observing your results.

The early history of my own writing was bleak. I hated writing in school as many kids still do today. The idea that I was to sit down with a blank paper and compose and express my thoughts horrified me. I held the pencil a funny, awkward way that my teachers criticized and tried to correct. In sixth grade, I had moved from Memphis, Tennessee to Omaha, Nebraska, and my teacher, Mrs. Mummert, noticed that besides having a very strong southern accent, I had some undeveloped skills in writing. She said a few kind words about my writing but her words were not enough to overcome my reticence to write.

In 9th grade things got much worse. My English teacher, Mrs. Adamson, would take my papers, mark them with red ink to indicate misspelled words and faulty punctuation with no mention of the value of the ideas I expressed. It was as though my papers had never been read except to pinpoint my faults. I was supposed to rewrite them and turn them back in, but instead, I threw them away, disgusted with her lack of sensitivity to my thoughts and embarrassed by her red marks. At the end of the term came near disaster. She insisted that I recreate and turn in all my papers corrected or I would flunk. She was on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and had far worse troubles than I, but I managed to partially recreate some papers, and was allowed to pass the course.

It's a problem in school when the value of content is marginalized relative to the rules of writing, and while the rules of writing may be important, having something to say, is the whole forgotten reason for writing in the first place. I was never one for making stuff up, and while many children and adults are looking for escape, I am one who enjoys the real world and more practical involvement in it. To write real things about the real world, requires experience as the foundation for good writing. From an educational standpoint, and in light of the pedagogist's admonition, "move from the concrete to the abstract," you can see the value of building an abstract exercise like writing from a firm foundation of concrete reality.

So if you wonder how to overcome writer's block, I have a suggestion. Do something interesting. It will provide content. Develop a non-writing skill that can be shared with others through writing. You may at some point face the critique of a Mrs. Adamson's red pen, but content is of far greater meaning and merit, and sharing something useful that empowers others to create or to understand, is an important accomplishment.

If you are have the responsibility to teach children to write, don't forget that there are many like me who need real things to write about. The opportunity to develop and present how-to narrative is a great way to get kids started in writing, but unfortunately, it requires kids to be given real stuff to do and to write about. That will come to schools with the revolutionary strategic reimplementation of the hands that this blog promotes.

My own writer's block was actually quite easy to overcome. It has to do with my choice of subject. The hands literally touch and have shaped every aspect of human life and culture.