Life Lines: Writing and Writer’s Block in the Context of Women’s Studies 1

Abstract

This chapter argues that we should address in a creative way and as a matter of urgency the fact that many Women's Studies students suffer from writing anxiety; to assess the usefulness of the available literature; and to propose some ways forward. The anxieties we might feel, as teachers and students of Women's Studies, are underscored and perhaps even reinforced by feminist folk-knowledge about the uneasy relationship between women and writing: what S. Gilbert and S. Gubar have theorized as 'the anxiety of authorship'. Writing anxiety and the writing process turn out to be interdisciplinary issues, and hence promising from a Women's Studies perspective. Advice handbooks, feminist literary criticism, theoretical and therapeutic accounts of writer's block, and pedagogical studies of the writing classroom all have a bearing on the problem. Despite the evolution of process-oriented pedagogies, the process of higher academic writing remains one of the best kept secrets of college life.