JSM 2022 August 7, 2022
Gallaudet University [email protected]*
First, it always helps me to remember . . .
As Charles Darwin observed, “Man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of our young children, whereas no child has an instinctive tendency to bake, brew, or write.” The spoken word is older than our species, and the instinct for language allows children to engage in articulate conversation years before they enter a schoolhouse. But the written word is a recent invention that has left no trace in our genome and must be laboriously acquired throughout childhood and beyond.
— Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century
Explain out loud to a willing friend/partner/cat what you’re trying to write about and why it’s so important (or why it’s so hard to write about). Bonus: record your verbal explanation and have it auto-transcribed.
But what is this thing we call writer’s block?
Usually, if I don’t know how to start, it’s because I don’t really know what I want to say.
Let’s suppose there’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s loss of confidence And forgetting to think And failing to prepare And not reading enough And giving up on patience And hastening to write And fearing your audience And never really trying to understand how sentences work. Above all, there’s never learning to trust yourself Or your capacity to learn or think or perceive.
— Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several short sentences about writing
Before you start to write, spend some time getting everything organized and in front of you. Don’t waste precious cognitive resources during your writing session with repeated searches to find your notes and papers. Bonus: If you’re looking for a new writing management system, check out Scrivener, which can display your notes, outline, and draft all together — very helpful for academics.
After I’m organized, I need to play a few psychological tricks on myself.
— William Stafford, 20th century poet
