writer’s block

I just sat at my computer for a half hour staring at a half page on my OpenOffice document. I’d write something, delete it, check my email, write something, delete it, stare at the screen, write something, delete it, look at the book I’m responding to again. When I took my first course on teaching writing with Bob Tremmel back at Iowa State, he argued there’s no such thing as writer’s block. We can always write (as long as we are physically able to), just as we can always do math (there’s no such thing as mathematician’s block). I’ve probably written about this before. I agree with him.

Indeed, I’m writing now. Perhaps this is just what I need: the permission to write something that’s not on topic, that I can use to clear my mind a bit. Bodies, silence, my shoulder hurts, slurs, I’m a little hungry, rhetoric, blogs, composition, grading, Lyotard, voice, Louisville, Ann Coulter, figures and discourse, critical pedagogy, civil discourse, fundamentalism, liberalism, poetry, face, Butler, bodies, silence… Let the writing pour out.