Elizabeth Lewis Pardoe on writer's block:
Putting words together, one by one, can offer a delightful outlet for
pent-up creativity or a dire source of pressure. The order of
operations matters more than the stylistic form. Tell a student that he
or she MUST write on a particular topic in a particular manner and he
or she will produce clunky, constipated prose. The epistolary
equivalent of a Levittown tract house, the words will align to meet the
basic needs of the assigned task but absent any artistic flair. The
same student released under his or her own recognizance can construct a
magic kingdom of fluent fantasy. If we find the freedom to write
unconstrained by concepts of what the end product should be,
most of us can compose something worth reading. If only we could
distract ourselves from obsession over the final product, we could
remove the writer’s benighted block and begin building structures of
semantic brilliance.
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