Why is writing so difficult?

1. Overcoming writer’s block and fighting inner demons
2. Inner demons 101
3. Why are you telling us this?
4. Writing as identity negotiation: This is why it is so difficult!
5. Things that have helped me
6. Fun Fact

Overcoming writer’s block and fighting inner demons

Why is writing so difficult? We sometimes make the mistake to think about the next journal article in terms of mechanics: a careful construction of academic papers, a simple following of disciplinary expectations and editorial demands. Which is not helpful, because if we diminish writing to such a mechanical simplicity all we have a fabulous tool to constantly feel guilty for not being able to write. After all it’s simply putting some words in a pre-defined order, right? But we neglect how complex writing is. Add to this time pressure, and the publish or perish culture, and writing is not an attractive pursuit.

In our group we often talk about writing as an act of meaning making ¹. A very useful framing as long as we keep in mind how complex meaning making actually is, and consider writing as embodied practice ^{2 3} and identity negotiation.

Let’s disentangle this.

Don’t worry, I am not going to encourage you to reflect on the origins of your perfectionism or fear of failure. You can relax and vicariously live through my experience. Hopefully gaining a useful writing strategy or two at the end of the post (or skip right to them).

I thought writing my book would simply be: me telling you some stories that exemplify and  explain theories and concepts related to learning and teaching. I did not expect this process to turn into a wrestling match with my inner demons.

Inner demons 101

During my last coaching session this year we identified that the May time writing block was based on my perception that being seen is not a save thing. And it is a rather different matter writing into the ether on my blog than writing a book. Which comes with its own set of expectations from the reader, and very likely stronger criticism. Because my blog is simply me thinking out loud on a page–I assume your expectations are accordingly. The book will hopefully be editor approved and scrutinised, peer approved and scrutinised and once it is out there it seems more real than a blog post.

Not sure this makes sense. This after all the inner demon logic. It might not translate to the outside world. However, if your inner demon leads the same arguments. You are not alone.

The second demon is probably more common, Julia Cameron⁴ calls it the credibility attack, which is pretty much what we know as imposter syndrome. Who am I to write this book?

Why are you telling us this?

I need to take you back some years into a meeting with my Early Career’s Mentor and a colleague from psychology whom I met to have a chat about a successful teaching intervention I ran, which saw students who had to repeat a year being in the top 5% to 10% of their class the following year. As I was recounting a slightly funny and successful coaching conversation. The colleague from psychology asked: How do you know how to ask these (impactful) questions?

Blank.

I don’t know how I know. My mentor then questioned if the success of the program was a “Nathalie thing” or if anyone could do it. I believed then and still do that it can be repeated by anyone, but maybe with appropriate training in place. My mentor then called me an unconscious⁵ expert, while I did not see myself as an expert at all, I always considered myself (and still do) a learner.

Now off I went with a newly found interest in life-wide learning⁶–because of course I had to figure out how to answer these questions eventually.

So dear inner demon: this book is the answer to the questions posed by my mentors. I have worked in the education sector (part-time, full-time, across all areas) for over 30 years, and studied Erziehungswissenschaften (Sciences of Education) in my undergrad, and have two postgrad degrees in education. The combination of all of this surely gives me some klout here. Could you hear the silent question mark at the end of the last sentence? Yeah. Me too.

Why am I telling you this? Because during my earlier writer’s block and wrestling with inner demons⁷ I experienced that writing truly is identity negotiation^{8 9 10}.

And this is what makes it so difficult!

Writing as identity negotiation: This is why it is so difficult!

It is not not having time:

You can write around the edges. You can take 5 minutes a day and voice type a paragraph while you walk to work, or scribble a note while sitting in public transport, or get up half an hour early, or stay up 10 minutes longer to write down the day. It is interesting to read what the tired brain throws out!
But this won’t work if your “yes buts” to these suggestions are:

• yes but: I need a sustained block of time to write
  • last time you had that, what did you end up doing instead of writing?
• yes but: it takes me hours to get back into it
  • yes, because you have not engaged in writing in months
  • if you write a tiny bit even a couple of sentences a day you never fully disengage
• yes but: I don’t know where to start
  • oh I hear you!
  • start somewhere, the first thought that pops into your mind
  • all the questions you have
  • start in the middle or the end you want to get to
  • start somewhere

If I sound patronising, please know I do know all of these! All these reasons¹¹ are old old friends of mine. We sometimes have coffee and cake and good heart to heart conversation.

And in these conversations I found out that what is holding me back is often fear, or perceived risks of engaging in writing. And this is why writing is so difficult.

Things that have helped me

• Body doubling
  • find a writing buddy
  • set up a writing space either in person, or online, camera on/off
• Changing spaces
  • I write particularly well outside park or garden, I love the Kibble palace in Glasgow in winter
  • sit in a café
  • move to your kitchen table
  • write in bed–sometimes you simply need to be in a save place
• Morning pages
  • see Footnote 4 if you can work your way through this book
• Coaching
  • if you have the chance this can be useful
  • while mentoring is a longer time developmental process
  • coaching works very well to work through a current issue
• How you write
  • if you can use handwriting this has changed my whole approach
  • voice typing works well particularly if you fear the empty page or if the linear structure of writing doesn’t work for you (and of course for other accessibility reasons)
  • similar principle: voice record and then let transcribe
  • use an old fashioned type writer for some people the haptics of this work well

And know that your words count. That your voice is important. That the world would be awfully boring and flat if there was only one type of voice.

Fun Fact

So in German we don’t really use the phrase “to fight your inner demons” although it does translate well. We have an expression: Den inneren Schweinehund überwinden. Which roughly translates into: You have to overcome your inner pig-dog … so I asked AI to make a comic for this phrase:

1. Richardson, L., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2005). Writing: A Method of Inquiry. In The Sage handbook of qualitative research, 3rd ed (pp. 959–978). Sage Publications Ltd.
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2. for instance https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/ ↩︎
3. I eluded to some of it in a previous post about analogue journaling and the importance of materiality ↩︎
4. Cameron, J. (2020). The artist’s way: A spiritual path to higher creativity. Souvenir Press.
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5. so expertly I had to type this word three times to get the spelling right ↩︎
6. this is something for another blog post ↩︎
7. there are more of them but I don’t want to dump all of them on you ↩︎
8. not solely writing focussed but related and interesting: Yang, S., Shu, D., & Yin, H. (2022). “Teaching, my passion; publishing, my pain”: Unpacking academics’ professional identity tensions through the lens of emotional resilience. Higher Education, 84(2), 235–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-021-00765-w
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9. Brooke, R. E. (1991). Writing and Sense of Self: Identity Negotiation in Writing Workshops. National Council of Teachers of English, 1111 Kenyon Rd.
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10. Jones, K. M., & Beck, S. W. (2020). “It sound like a paragraph to me”: The negotiation of writer identity in dialogic writing assessment. Linguistics and Education, 55, 100759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2019.100759
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11. excuses if we are honest with ourselves ↩︎