Writer’s block
I keep expecting to have something to say here. Surely, I think, I must have something to say about Ukraine, on a disappearing plane, on Turkey’s attempted blocking of Twitter. But I don’t, because anything I could possibly say has already been said by someone infinitely more qualified on the subject than I am. At what point, I wonder, does an opinion become valid?
Perhaps this sense of inadequacy is a natural product of the first year of university, when you realise that everything you knew was simply related to passing public exams and that, in fact, you basically don’t know anything of any consequence. With exam season approaching once more, this realisation is becoming increasingly acute.
All of this is mixed in with the typical student guilt, which for me comes in two mutually-enforcing forms. One, that I am not working hard enough and, two, that I am not writing enough. I say mutually-enforcing because when I am doing one I feel I ought to be doing the other, and so I do neither and it all gets worse. There, that’s my pathetic little student-life problem; there’s a good reason that Warwick (and possibly every university?) is nicknamed ‘the Bubble’.
In an effort to break the cycle of non-achievement, I decided to make myself write something. Short, long, personal, journalistic – whatever. So, aware of the irony, I am writing about writer’s block. And in confronting the problem, I am hoping that it goes away. Quickly.
Lucy Webster 