Writer’s Block

by Zach DeMattio

People around the world face many difficulties along the way, but a struggle that most, if not all, high school students can relate to is writer’s block.
Writer’s block could be described as one of the worst feelings in the entire world for a high school student. People may never find a cure to the inability to write a good article or paper to pass a class.
Innocent high schoolers every single day get discouraged by an important paper they need to write. Some may just choose not to do it, but there is a group beyond these delinquents that do at least try.
If a frustrated student asks his/her teacher for help, the teacher’s response is often to “just think about” the topic. However, “thinking” isn’t helpful. To a student suffering from writer’s block, “thinking” becomes synonymous with procrastination.
Those who try, however, often resort to the same old tricks.
An extremely large portion of high school students rely on different search engines to try to do the work for them. Reality check: teachers and schools are cracking down on your “smart” idea of writing your essay the night before. Playing Google Pacman is just about as far Google will take you on your journey of writing an essay at 1 a.m.
If searching on the computer fails you, you may ask a friend for some advice. However, this results in the blind leading the blind. Case in point: when asked how to break writer’s block, senior Zack Gould recommends “looking things up on the internet to get ideas.” As we already went over, this is not the answer.

Nextscience.com suggests a study group or bouncing ideas off of others. Simply talking about a topic can get your mind where it needs to be. Neurologist Alice Flaherty, as well as other scientists, have theorized that writer’s block is likely related to a shift in brain activity. Quartz.com says they believe that when you stress over not knowing what to write about, it releases hormones that make you not able to think clearly.
If this idea is to be true, writer’s block might be able to be cured. Taking a break and clearing your mind could release hormones to then help you think clearly.
The world may never scientifically find out if writer’s block can be cured or not. In the meantime, I suggest that complaining nonstop about not knowing what to write about will not work. Being open to new ideas and methods will keep us learning about the tragic thing we call “writer’s block.”