Writer’s Block

My 6 year old had a writing assignment for first grade homework. He had to write “3-5 sentences about our trip to see Junie B. Jones.” His class had gone on a field trip to see the play earlier in the week.

He sat at the kitchen table, fiddling with his pencil and paper. After a couple of minutes, he got up and was fiddling around with everything around the table. I asked him why he wasn’t writing, and he said, “I can’t think of anything to write about.”

Writer’s block. The bane of anyone who works with words. Some days I can’t think of anything to write about, and then some days I have so much I want to write about that I can’t figure out where to start.

I asked my son what they did at the play. (We had already discussed it the afternoon after the trip, but asking again would get him thinking about something to write.)

“How did you get to the play?”
“Where did you sit in the theater?”
“Who did you sit beside?”
“What was something funny in the play?”
“What was something weird in the play?”

He answered the questions, and I directed him to write the answers down. Unfortunately, his writer’s block had already killed his initial enthusiasm for the assignment, so I had to really keep on him to make sure he started writing and finished writing. Eventually he wrote three sentences, and I let him call it finished.

A few hours later, I sat down to write this blog post. I couldn’t think of anything to write about for several minutes, and then I came up with this idea to write about writer’s block.

Writing about writer’s block when having writer’s block is sort of like looking into a mirror that shows a mirror behind you. It’s a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, and on and on. It’s silly, but at least I wrote something.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com