Thursday, July 22, 2010

Last2cu: Writers Block

Ever since I had my stroke I have major writers block and stage fright. Has anyone else experienced anything like this before and what do you do about it?

4 comments:

  1. Getting writers block in Composition II in college is probably different than after a stroke. When the block would hit me, I would tell myself to put the pencil to the paper and just start free writing. It worked for me, and after several thousand revisions of my free writing, I aced Comp I and II, clepping out of Comp III. :)

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  2. I always get my best ideas in the bathtub.

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  3. It will come in time....you do great work!
    You have been awarded the Ancestor Approved award for your great work on your genealogy blog...please stop by my blog and pick up the award (by right clicking on it and saving it to a .jpg) and then post the below information with the picture, using the format I used when receiving it.

    The Ancestor Approved Award asks that the recipient list ten things you have learned about any of your ancestors that has surprised, humbled, or enlightened you and pass the award along to ten other bloggers who you feel are doing their ancestors proud.

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  4. Ruth, I had a hemorrhagic stroke in 2007. Although I had no noticeable physical repercussions from it, I do seem to find it more difficult now to write. Even when I know what I want to write about, and sometimes even words I want to use to say it, I dread the starting. Once I actually do start, everything is fine, and if I'm not happy with what I wrote, I have no problem with revising until I'm satisfied. It's not that I can't think of words, nor is there any disconnect between the thinking and the saying or writing. It's just sort of a feeling of what I call gum-brain... as though my brain is somehow resisting the thinking process... as if the gray matter has turned to sludge.

    So, now that you've mentioned this, I am trying to figure out if my gum-brain might be stroke-related. I've been assuming it's age-related. In whatever case, as I look back on what I wrote before the stroke and what I've written since, I find that before, I used to do more creative writing than I do now. Since the stroke, more of my writing is factual rather than imaginative.

    I'm curious to know if your writer's block feels like what I've described as gum-brain, or if you can describe how it differs from my description of gum-brain.

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