College of Pension Actuaries

Writing or typing a bunch of words doesn’t sound like it could be that stressful of an event. It’s just words, right? In truth though, it’s never that simple. Plying the craft of writing can be very stressful indeed. Creating flow, and characters who come to life. Writing scenes that will stick with readers after the final page is turned. It’s not always just words, especially when you want to write the absolute best you can.

This post is all about why stress can affect your writing, and some ways you can get it under control. So why worry about stress? The answer is that stress can limit thought processes, and close you in a box you can’t think your way out of. It pulls focus away from the task at hand, limiting both the quality and quantity of words you produce in a round of writing. It could be the cause for your writer’s block, or cause you to be unable to write at all. All of these reasons, and many more, are why it is important to curb stress in your life before you sit down and try to write.

The stress itself could be coming from anywhere. Events in your life, children running and playing around the home, or even from writing itself. Maybe you have writer’s block, or can’t think of a hit story for your next novel. Regardless of the source, it’s important to find ways to manage it effectively. How should you do this? It all comes down to personal preference.

Once we have determined that the brain is receiving quality sensory input and have begun to increase auditory and visual processing skills, we decide if the information is “worthy” of keeping in long-term memory. Sadly, we cannot remember all the information that we want to remember. Why is this? We are designed to have a one-side dominance, which allows us to function most efficiently. Many are functioning with a mixed dominance. With a mixed dominance information goes to different parts of the brain. When information enters on the right side it goes to one part of the brain and when it enters on the left side it goes to another part of the brain. Then when we want to retrieve that information we have to look for it, going back and forth from one side of the brain to the other. This can be very slow and frustrating to a learner of any age. Depending on what it is, we may give up before we finish a task.

Functional Indicators of a Mixed Dominance:

• Remember one day, and not the other
• Constantly losing things
• Reversals (transpositions, omissions, inversions)
• Right/left confusion
• “Mirror writing”
• Diagnosis of Dyslexia
• Disorganized
• Difficulty remembering letters, numbers or sight words
• Stuttering or stammering
• No sense of time
• Overreact to situations
• Emotional melt downs – especially related to learning

In addition to these functional indicators, we can observe which eye, ear, hand and foot an individual uses:

• Using one-eye objects like a kaleidoscope, a microscope, telescope, or a paper towel roll
• Pointing or sighting through a “window” made with hands for far point vision
• Using one-ear objects like a phone, watch, etc.
• Hopping, kicking, running, etc.