I Know What You Mean

This morning, at the school where I volunteer, I was one-on-one with a kid who'd been pulled out of class because he wasn't able to focus on his essay test. They were supposed to be writing a five paragraph essay. He'd written five headings and topic sentences, on five different sheets of looseleaf paper, all of which he'd discarded. I told him that if he'd spent all that time writing instead of doing the same sentence over and over, he'd have half an essay. So he pulled out a fresh sheet, figured out his three main ideas, and started again.

And then it hit me. It's not that he's screwing around: it's that there's just something daunting about a blank piece of paper. It stares at you, daring you with its whiteness. You can put anything there, but will it live up to what you could have put there? You start. You erase or delete. You start again. The blankness is what's scary-- once you get rolling, the words begin to flow. At first it's just a trickle, but then you find yourself typing faster, like a stream building momentum as it winds down a hill.

He stops after the third paragraph and says, "I don't know what to put in my paragraph about rappers."

"Which rappers? What songs did they do? What albums do you like? What are their lifestyles like? What cars do they drive?"

He stares at me. "Where'd you get all those ideas?"

It gets easier, believe me. Or at least a little.

Tags: writing