Getting my mind off reading about writing

I'm glad that we've turned to book-length research because I don't know that I would have believed any essayists we've ready so far who suggested that students' writing mechanics improve once they got their mind off structure (seems counter-intuitive but I sure hope it's true), that ESL and basic writers go through basically the same process in developing their writing, and that student writing improves overall when their anxiety about writing is reduced and they write about topics they like (so that's why diagnostic essays are filled with vague generalities and meaningless universal assertions). The latter is especially interesting to me since I am reading an ILLiad version of Nelson and cannot underline or take notes in it, so I've had to "relax" and just read. I found that I enjoyed the reading more and still got the main points (I think). Maybe there is something to this relaxing thing...