No Bad Habits Here!

By Shaughn VanGinkel, Communications major at Silver Lake College

            Well, here I am writing my first blog post ever. A blog? You might as well just call it an online paper. Now that I’m in that mindset, I’m pretty sure I’m going to be facing writer’s block at some point, burning through draft after draft with phrases and sentences leaking from the deeper corridors of my brain.
             Writer’s block, how that pair of words so deeply etches itself into my writing habits. It forces me to halt what I’m doing as my thoughts accidentally get their shoe laces tied together and crash on their face, being unable to continue any further. Some people would call me lazy, and think that I am simply making excuses for myself. Others would call me inept, doubting my ability to scribble anything on paper worth reading. While I respect such opinions because of how often the cases arise (writer's block, brain lock whatever you want to name it), the reality is that many writers such as myself have our moments of struggle. Thankfully, however, a great many of us have adopted some rather interesting methods to continue our writing and to sidestep the constant accusations of laziness against us.

            Let’s face it, people. Writing is simpler than we think. We experience it each day through our various means of technology. We flow from one text message to the next and pound the keyboard with one Facebook message to another. Why then is writing professionally such a difficult task? Whether it’s an English assignment or even a novel, many of us have faced these struggles one right after the other, trying to think beyond our slanged and twisted language that we communicate with each day.
             I remember back in the 8^th grade when I used to write descriptive book reports from the various stories I was pretty much forced to read despite my lack of topic interest. It wasn’t necessarily the story itself that disinterested me, but the idea of trying to manifest the story into my own words on to paper. THAT by itself was a nightmare to me in my young age. Hearing the teacher’s words “write a paper” was equivalent to getting smacked across the face by a red dodge ball on the four square court outside, the words themselves leaving behind a burning sting. The same thing occurred every time I would attempt to write out a paper. I would deliver an okay intro, and then immediately lock up the moment I tried to form a body. My mind would blank and my hand would tremble as I would sit with the paper lying before me, unfinished and mediocre. Eventually, I would simply give in and walk back to my bedroom, knowing that I would have to explain to the teacher that somehow this was not due to my laziness. But, I decided that after so many repeated attempts and blanks, maybe my mind just needed to see things other than wooden pencils and blank pieces of white paper.  

Photo: Sherri Seals via Pinterest

            I pushed myself away from the table and strolled outside for a fall nature walk. As I stepped outside amongst the dancing red and orange leaves, I began to feel a sensation like no other. I was fascinated by the colorful artwork that was moving before my eyes and my brain began to trigger something rather amazing. It’s as if at that moment, information began to overflow, words and colorful sentences appeared and vanished before my eyes as if my paper was being written without me lifting a finger. Fascinated, I hastily returned home, flying through the leaves fearing the sensation would soon leave my presence. I immediately jumped to my chair and wielded my pencil as I burned through each word, each sentence and every line filling like a glass of water and the paper itself was my resulting pitcher. What a rush! I had never experienced an information flow like that. That was when I first discovered the term “gateway." To me, a gateway is a means of being able to trigger my thought process when I seem to have run out of steam or to put it simply, refueling.

            From there on, these gateway methods have been present through my life to this very day, and as I have gotten older I found these interesting writings habits out of the blue. From the nature walks to more simple methods of just having a glass of water to refuel my system, whatever little triggers helped me to wash away writer's block, I would be more than willing to use. Many of my puzzled friends would always ask why exactly these methods worked for me when suffering from writer's block, and honestly, I can’t give anyone a straight answer.
             Many of the “professionals” would say that the explanations of these methods could simply be broken down by science. But why make an effective method of writing be so complexly explained, especially when nearly every one I have academically been involved with has their own tendency, such as twirling a pen or drawing a picture to illustrate the words in front of them? 

            Truthfully many of the “experts” (I’m really stretching that term) will say something along the lines of “These actions/habits are due to certain brain wave patterns or certain synapse triggers etc. etc.” Heck, all you really have to do is Google “writing habits” or “good and bad writing habits” and then count how many times you see the words “studies show…” Scientists are struggling way too often to explain simple matters that don’t actually need some pseudo-intellectual textbook explanation. The way I like to express my own writing habits or what the experts call “nervous tendencies” is that it’s something that calms me down. It helps my papers get back on their feet, it relaxes. That’s all the explanation one ever needs whenever you twirl your pen or drop everything and go for a short nature walk. IT REFRESHENS YOU.

            All the same can even be said for myself as a novice lyricist/poet. Music writing is pretty much the same as fictional writing except there are some extra elements that one must think about. While the words themselves are important, you must also think about whether or not you actually want your song to rhyme, the structure of the beat of the song as well as the melody, and what kind of attitude you want the piece to project as your pen or pencil etches the story in front of you.

            “When the glimmer of her eyes

Captivates me from across the street,
The beauty of her full gaze

Shall stay the movement of my feet.”

Just the beginning scratches!

This is just a taste of some of the lyrical complexity I try to develop as I come up with new song lyrics. These four lines alone took me quite a while to develop in the sense that I needed to not only split it up into four phrases to make it melodically captivating, but so it also makes some lick of sense to the listeners and performers! The amount of writer's block intensifies when it comes to all these different elements that must be intertwined. To compensate, I intensify the amount of study habits that I have at my disposal! Sometimes I will go on an extended nature walk while carrying a bottle of water with me in order to sustain my energy. I have learned that using multiple different habits is actually useful for more difficult projects. It’s as if my own mind automatically projects the amount of habit usage I need in order to complete my assignment or writing project, whatever allows the words to glide across my sheet to form the final piece of story I so desperately desire.

I honestly enjoy the many different study habits that I have developed throughout my many years of writing and I am unashamed of the power and influence they have given me over my writing to this very day. Of course, I’m not saying to go out and smoke 20 packs of cigs a day seeing as those have clearly awful side effects, but there are many alternative means of allowing one’s writing to flow. You don’t need some crazy intellectual who thinks he/she knows all to explain it to you nor do you need to completely destroy yourself, but to find your happy medium. Your writing must be fluently expressed from your heart and through your own mind. I encourage everyone to try different writing habits and see what will actually trigger you to become a more fluent writer. It’s never a weakness to stop your writing to go out for a nature walk or to have a glass of water by you at all times to get the ol fleshy word processor going!