A form of controlled panic

Sometimes when a new acquaintance asks me what I do for a living, I say I teach panic management strategies.

Writing is a form of controlled panic. There is that sudden sinking feeling when you face the blank page, again, and wonder how you’re ever going to fill it. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve started from scratch before: there’s always a flash of panic that this time, for the first time, the words won’t show up.

Writing isn’t about getting rid of this perennial sense of panic; it’s about managing it. You befriend the Inner Critic who says you’re a nobody with nothing to say. You silently nod, smile, then ignore this voice, treating it as an annoying but ultimately innocuous stranger sitting next to you on the bus. No need to heed the opinions of someone who doesn’t even know you.

Managing panic means learning to live with it, recognizing it as a burden that doesn’t slow or stop you. Panic is like an albatross around your neck: annoying, yes, but neither final or fatal.

Writing is about scribbling on even though panic is screaming in your ear: in time, with practice, you’ll learn to overlook and overcome it. “Oh, yes,” you’ll say to yourself. “You again.”

***

In my first-year classes at both Framingham State and Babson, we start with five minutes of freewriting. Students are free to write about whatever they’d like, but I post three random words to give students a nudge if they have nothing else to write about.

Today’s post comes from yesterday’s five-minute entry in response to the word “Panic.”

 

Elbow

In my Comp I class on Tuesday, I shared a random snippet of conversation I heard decades ago while walking from the Green to Orange Lines at Haymarket Station.

Two men in business suits walked by, and one said to the other, “She does this amazing thing with her elbows.”

And I was so mystified by that out-of-context statement, I still remember it all this time–more than 20 years?–later.

It’s alarming to think I have memories that are older than my students. Last night I heard Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” and I realized my students probably have no memory or understanding of most of the allusions in the song. It literally describes a different world.

I am, in other words, a dinosaur.

***

In my first-year classes at both Framingham State and Babson, we start with five minutes of freewriting. Students are free to write about whatever they’d like, but I post three random words to give students a nudge if they have nothing else to write about.

Today’s entry comes from my five-minute entry from Wednesday, September 21, 2022 in response to the word “Elbow.”