Writing Rant

This semester, I've been doing a lot of readings on how to write and it has really changed the way I think about writing. For one thing, it has made me very aware of how my writing process is just very structured and if I don't follow the "usual" steps of outlining, writing the essay based on the outline, and the revision. However, when I write, I am way too often suffering from writer's anxiety where I just keep on second-guessing everything I write and trying to 'fix' each sentence before getting to the next. I have actually recently started reading Mike Rose's "Writer's Block: A Cognitive Dimension" and it just makes me so angry that I've been trained since high school and brainwashed a bit with these rigid rules of writing. For example: "don't ever start your sentence with 'and' or 'but'" Even when I am grading my students' papers at Hostos, it just looks wrong to me when students do so. Then, I think back, where in the English grammar does it really say that? Or just this constant need to wanting to revise each and every sentence and prematurely "edit" an essay as Rose puts it. All of this especially annoys me because I like writing freely and journal writing and blogging and writing poetry. So why, I ask myself, am I so stuck on this need to write in this particular 5-paragraph structured way when it comes to academic writing which truly limits my own abilities of writing and cuts any sort of emotion that I may actually have in the subject?

I am now partly anxious about my way of writing, partly angry with the system of high schools and the way they have taught me how to write, partly insecure about my writing, and just needing to revise my writing. Somehow.