Writer's block = bunch of crap

Well, at least that's what I'm telling myself.

I just sat down to start composing this "article" that I have had swimming in my head for at least a month now, and I don't know what it is - fear, nervousness, anxiety, the sense that I have never, ever read enough, whatever - but I just can't seem to write the thoughts down. Writing seems to be the hardest part of all the research that I'm doing, because every time I'm faced with the blank word processor screen, I freeze up. I even wrote down some partial thoughts at one point to get "warmed up," and it didn't seem to work.

But I can write here, maybe because I can see that some people are listening. So I'm going to warm up here and writer's block be damned.

When I began my work with Dr. Alatis, I entered another world. James E. Alatis was born in 1926 in Weirton, West Virginia. He is the son of Greek immigrants, his mother coming from Chios and his father from Cypress. At 82 years old, he is Dean Emeritis of the Georgetown School of Languages and Linguistics and Professor of Linguistics and Modern Greek. He teaches four days a week at Georgetown, and although at our first meeting he told me that he met with a colleague to discuss his retirement, he shows no signs of slowing down despite a debilitating eye condition.

Why is Dr. Alatis's world so different from my own? I am the daughter of two IT professionals, first generation college student, and avid technophile. During my time as a graduate student, I have conducted many interviews while learning the craft of both oral history and ethnography. I use a variety of technologies to help me transcribe interviews, record my observations, and write my conclusions. Without realizing it at first, I have been taking part in what Alistair Thompson calls the fourth paradigm transformation of oral history, the digital revolution in oral history (1). Ignoring all else that has occurred during the past half century, the digital revolution has created a divide for me to cross when interviewing Dr. Alatis. I have learned that the key is to enter his world completely, and then bring his stories back into my own, where I can use my abilities as a 21st century oral historian to bring new meaning to them, meaning that may have not been possible 10 or 20 years ago.

Ugh. I still feel like there's no "there" there - I'm working through it. Basically I want this to be an introduction to my work - giving the reader some key, interesting details about Dr. Alatis (like why do I want to know about this guy?), highlighting my methodology and especially why I am in a unique position to bring his story to life (I'm adept with technology, can bring his story to a wider audience), and finally, some meat to what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. Also, the goal is that this would be a publishable article - something that would give other oral historians some insight into new ways to bring oral history to life. I guess I can bring up the fact that I'll be using Wikipedia, why Wikipedia, etc, my blog, what that means. Even my Twitter - whenever I post here, it goes on Twitter, which then goes on facebook, which then draws in readers to read about my work and therefore about Dr. Alatis. And all of these things are simple to do. I guess the differences are that I (and others from my generation) tend to create in real-time... we don't research, write, edit, re-edit, edit, then edit some more. We write and hit "publish post," and then it becomes part of the public domain. What implications does that have for our narrators and for our craft?

OK. I'm definitely on to something here. Thank you, Google, Blogger, readers, whomever... I think blogging definitely cures writers' block.



(1) Alistair Thompson, "Four Paradigm Transformations in Oral History." Oral History Review 34 (1) (2007): 49.