- AN’T GET STARTED You are understandably excited about your first day as Unit Supervisor in the communications division of “Middleast Insurance Company”. You will direct the writing efforts of seven employees, working on such projects as brochures, advertisements, form letters, and reports. The previous supervisor was dismissed, you learned, for not providing “direction and leadership” for the unit’s writers. You resolve, therefore, to be a hands-on supervisor from your very first day. Your first day begins at 8 o’clock with the customary introductions and well- wishing. You are somewhat surprised by 9 o’clock to see that none of the writers has yet begun to work. You ask several if they have projects to work on. “Oh, yes,” they reply, “we all have plenty to do.” By 10 o’clock, you are dumbfounded to see every writer still nursing a morning cup of coffee, talking at the water cooler, or flipping through the newspaper. You promptly call a meeting to get to the heart of the problem. One writer seems to speak for the rest. “Well, you don’t start writing the way you start your car. It’s an art, and sometimes it takes several hours to get motivated. Most of us experience Writer’s Block until about 11 o’clock every morning.
- tQuestion(s):
1. Write a step-by-step guide for overcoming Writer’s Block.
2. In a polite but firm memo to the writers in your unit, set forth your expectations of their activity beginning at 8 A.M. every morning.
3.Tell how you manage to break through the blocks and dead ends that so often accompany the writing process.
