Elbow Post #1

Reading Elbow's first chapter, I realized that my writing process, if I start a paper early enough, often mirrors his suggestions. There are tidbits scribbled from books here, random thoughts scrawled over there. It's so comforting to sit down with these knickknacks. Like I already have an attentive audience at my fingertips just waiting to applaud. Without my scribblings, I begin going into shock. I begin blaming everything, and while I am waiting for the god of writing to descend upon me, the paragraphs wait and wait and wait. I think and think and think, but because I am so anxious about the looming due date only meager utterances sputter forth. My first jumbles. Of course it feels awkward, as Elbow suggests, because I'm typing in previously uncharted territory and it's 6 am.

"How comes sometimes you write these papers that blow me away and other times you
hand me this?" several of my professors have confronted me. "I know you can do better."
"I don't know." (At the time, I mostly didn't.)

Five years since I have been in undergraduate school, I would like to hope that these anxiety ridden papers never ever happen again. Or, at least, I would like to limit their occurrence. So, I read the topic for a paper and jot things down before it is due. I will write something, anything before the due date. I plant myself in a seat at my desk and write words on notebook paper. Then, when it comes time to start typing, I set my notes up like flipping up faces in the game "Guess Who?" and there's my audience and here we go.

One of my yoga teacher's often says, "It's just a stupid yoga pose", meaning stop freaking out. And, seriously, it's just a writing assignment. So, as Elbows preaches, just write something.