User:Sourpatchkidlover112/Writer's block

Negative self-beliefs and feeling of incompetence
Mike Rose stated that writer's block can be caused by a writer's history in writing, rules and restrictions from the past. Writers can be hesitant of what they write based on how it will be perceived by the audience. Guangming Ling states that there is a negative correlation between self-efficacy and avoidance goals in studies on writing apprehension and writer's block, which suggests that having hesitations about writing may lead to less effort and thus less success.

'''Similarly to Ling, Dana Driscoll and Jennifer Wells explain writing dispositions in their essay "Beyond Knowledge and Skills". Driscoll and Wells argue that dispositions toward writing play crucial roles in determining if writers are able to transfer their knowledge of writing into other contexts of life. Related to self-efficacy, Driscoll and Wells suggest that writers who have a positive self-belief are more likely to produce work than some with a negative self-belief. Self-efficacy is especially important for a writer when it comes to an unfamiliar learning or writing setting because it may seem overwhelming.'''

James Adams noted in his book Conceptual Blockbusting that various reasons blocks occur include fear of taking a risk, "chaos" in the pre-writing stage, judging versus generating ideas, an inability to incubate ideas, or a lack of motivation.

In "Motivation in the Writing Centre: A Peer Tutor's Experience," Leonie Kirchoff states "The concept of 'amotivation' describes a lack of motivation due to an individual's feeling of incompetence and helplessness." Demotivation is the process of reducing or diminishing motivational basis for behavior or ongoing actions through external influences. An external factor such as feedback may affect demotivation, whereas an internal factor, such as pessimistic expectations, may cause amotivation. Even so, both concepts have similar effects on writers.

For tutors to provide students with the most appropriate feedback, scholars like Jared Featherstone from James Madison University suggest that tutors should be well educated in mindfulness strategies to combat a student's fixed mindset. He argues that tutors or instructors should be mindful enough to be grounded and focused solely on their student so they can pick up on the feelings, stress, or fixed mindsets their student might have. An unmindful tutor might accidentally reinforce a student's negative thinking patterns.

Coping strategies
Irene Clark describes the following strategies for coping with writer's block: class and group discussion, journaling, free writing and brainstorming, clustering, list making, and engaging with the text. To overcome writing blocks, Oliver suggests asking writers questions to uncover their writing process. He then recommends solutions such as systematic questioning, free writing, and encouragement. A recent study of 2,500 writers aimed to find techniques that writers themselves use to overcome writer's block. The research discovered a range of solutions from altering the time of day to write and setting deadlines to lowering expectations and using mindfulness meditation.

'''Mindfulness meditation has proved to increase awareness and improve writing skills. Dr. Kate Chaterdon, an English professor at Marist College, suggests mindfulness not only improves writing skills but also allows for writers to transfer their knowledge of writing into other contexts of life. Dr. Chaterdon recommends meditation as a grounding exercise to help people becoming more metacognitavely aware. Dr. Chaterdon had conducted a study in her two writing classes at Marist College and concluded that practicing mindfulness at least once a week is essential in developing higher levels of metacognition.'''

Other Techniques
Other ways to cope come from ideas such as The Brand Emotions Scale for Writers (BESW). Using the framework of the Differential Emotions Scale, the BESW works with grouping emotions into either states or traits and then classifying them as positive, negative passive, or negative active. Researchers can assess subjects, giving writers a chance to get more work done if left in the right emotional state since data suggests that writers with positive emotions tended to express more than writers with negative passive or negative active. '''Scholars and researchers such as Dr. Mandy Bamber suggest practicing meditation to reduce negative moods like stress and anxiety. Dr. Bamber's team conducted a study on 40 university students who showed signs of anxiety. After practicing mindfulness and mediation exercises, 33 out of the 40 showed significant decreases in stress and anxiety levels.'''

Relation to Procrastination
Writer's block and procrastination are two similar issues that people struggle with when it comes to writing. Writer's block is an issue that can cause people to delay their goals and may prevent them from finishing writing projects. Although writer's block and procrastination are not the exact same issue, they can end up leading up to one another. Writer's block is not continuing to do a task, and procrastination is delaying to start the task. In her 1987 Ph.D. thesis (published in 2012), Karen E. Peterson posited two different scenarios on how procrastination and writer's block can lead up to each other. One scenario is that a person will procrastinate due to having the fear of past experiences of getting writer's block when doing a task. The other scenario is that a person will have writer's block because of the feeling of being overwhelmed about needing to do a task at the last minute after procrastinating for a long period of time.

'''According to some scholars like Claire Kervin, procrastination is usually a result of a negative mood and is a "short term mood regulator". Unlike previous beliefs that procrastination is poor time management, Kervin suggests procrastination is a way individuals cope with negative emotions. Kervin's suggestion makes a connection to one of Peterson's scenarios, specifically when someone procrastinates due to fear of past experiences and begins to feel judgmental toward themselves. Kervin recommends taking a mindful approach to combating procrastination in order to become more grounded and improve self-regulation.'''