by Albert Aunchman

Created on: May 14, 2008

I remember as a child, getting up in the morning and announcing to my mother that I wasn't going to be able to go to school today because I had a stomachache. She would immediately respond with, " It's all in your head, come eat your breakfast."
Sure enough, after a couple of mouthfuls of Cheerios and a glass of juice, I felt better and was off to school.

Whenever I hear that someone has "writer's block", I scratch my head. Do carpenters get "carpenter's block", or artists get "artist's block"? What if your surgeon, after opening you up, had a case of "surgeon's block"?

What is this strange malady that keeps people from writing. After all, writing is just putting down one word after another. These words make up sentences, and the sentences make up paragraphs. Sounds pretty straightforward to me. Sometimes all you need to do is stretch your writing muscles. If you don't write daily, you're like a weekend athlete; you have to stretch those muscles before they will do what you want them to. You're never going to break par if you only golf once a month. Exercise your mind. Write something: anything. Free writing whatever comes into your mind is a good way to get the creative juices flowing.

If you've made the commitment to sit down and write, then why stare at the computer screen. Put your fingers on the keys and press. Believe me! Something will start to come together. Those first few words and sentences may look like something in your alphabet soup, but eventually a seed will be sown and you will be on your way to completing that assignment that you've been putting off. Eventually you'll be putting together something from all the research material you've pulled together, and before you know it a paper will be born.

Go ahead, take a piece of research and write something about it. It doesn't matter if it fits neatly with your subject right away. Those little sentences or paragraphs are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Eventually you'll separate the edge pieces from the box, and then group pieces by color, and pretty soon areas will become apparent and the pieces will start to fall in place. What's even better is that when you're through, unlike a jigsaw puzzle, you can move things around any way you see fit.

Most cases of "writer's block" stem from the authors fear of rejection, or in the case of a paper that's due, a failing grade. The only way that you can fail is by not writing. Your chances of winning the lottery are in the range of 85 million to one. The only sure thing is that if you don't buy a ticket, you can't possibly win.

Mom was right. It's all in your head. Eat your breakfast and get to work.

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