Writer’s Block

In a course I am teaching, Spoken English, for my 3rd course students (a.k.a. Juniors), I am using the American movie Stranger Than Fiction to teach all sorts of things. I am using it for speaking practice, for reading, writing and listening practice. I am using it to teach critical thinking skills, something greatly lacking in my students. It has been a great teaching tool and it’s great entertainment. Will Farrell is great and Dustin Hoffman is brilliant. Anyway, if you haven’t already seen this film, you should.

One of the characters, Karen Eiffel, is an author struggling to finish a book she has been working on for the last 10 years because she suffers from writer’s block. But this is beside the point, too much pretext. Like Karen, I too have suffered from writer’s block.

Since arriving in Darkhan, I have found it extremely difficult to make time for myself to think, to write. I was good about this at my training site, Sukhbaatar Bagh 5. Needless to say, the differences between training and site have been vast. Here in Darkhan I have been mentally swamped. I have many times wanted to just sit down and write, a practice I have always found comforting, freeing and even therapeutic. My university life, the new scenery, the transition to yet another culturally significant location has, until now, created quite a sizable mental block. Just trying to live here has been so much work. It has been exhausting.

There are simply too many things getting in the way. How could I stop to write, to catch up on the recent events when I am still trying to catch up on life itself? I told myself many times before I came that I would be good about journaling. That worked for a little while. What changed was my reality. Training was fun. In many ways it was like camp or a vacation. The stressors, though real, didn’t feel a real kind of real. Now things are real. What I am doing now is why I came here. The work I am doing now is the work I am most passionate about in this world – university life. Sure, it’s different than it is in the states. It’s what I was expecting completely and yet not at all. It still is, though, a university. Whether in America or Mongolia, I see a career, a life in this world very clearly. I am fascinated, I am challenged, I am confused, I am confident, I am lost, I am happy, I am overwhelmed, I am completely invested.

Like Karen, but for different reasons, of course, I am freed from the trap that is writer’s block. I have been here long enough to get lost in my thoughts for too long but also long enough to know when I need to just stop, drop and write.