Writers Block Discourse

Writers block, that cripplingly frustrating feeling of not being able to put pen to paper. “…writing as a problem- solving process…when the process dead-ends in writer’s block.” Pg.196. We have all experienced it from time to time, some more than others. This fact can be highly frustrating to people who are greatly impacted by writer’s block, “what makes them so different than me”. These differences can often be boiled down to discourses, which are defined as “a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or ‘social network.’” By James Paul Gee. Within this paper I will investigate how writers block can be influenced by discourse, whether its academic or something that cannot be easily changed like gender or age. …show more content…
Mike Rose proposes that the rules you follow while writing can greatly affect productivity, these rules are influenced by your discourse as well as past experiences. During her investigation Joyce Hamon found out that starting at a young age writer’s block can occur due to what structures are set in place over time. Susan Latta’s exploration of how women’s daily lives can affect how effective they are at dealing with writer’s block. To get a better prospective on how writers block interacts with gender I included the story of one man Zechariah Newman and his struggle with writers block as a writer. While Alberto Ledesma reflects his own life experiences and the idea of having a different cultural background reflects how he went through writer’s