Being stuck is not a sign that you are bad at this. It is a normal stage of writing that experienced writers plan for. What separates them is that they have moves to make, and they do not sit there.
Stuck at the start
- Write the middle first. Nobody has to know. Openings are easier when you know what they are opening.
- Say it out loud to a person, then write down what you said. Your spoken sentence is usually better than the one you were trying to type.
- Write the bad version on purpose. “This poem is about losing your language and it makes me sad” is a bad first sentence and a perfectly good tenth one, once you know why it is sad.
- Set a timer for six minutes and do not stop moving the pen. What comes out is raw material, not a draft.
Stuck in the middle
- Read what you have out loud. You will hear the place it stopped working, usually two sentences before you thought.
- Ask “so what?” of your last sentence and write the answer. That is often the paragraph you were missing.
- Go back to the text. Being stuck in an essay almost always means you are short of evidence, not short of words.
Stuck because the reading is too hard
- Read the paragraph aloud. Slowly. Out loud is not optional here.
- Circle every word you cannot define and look up three of them.
- Say the paragraph in one sentence to yourself, even if you are not sure.
- If it still will not open, mark it
?and read on — a later page often explains an earlier one. - Bring the
?to class. That is what the first ten minutes are for.
Stuck because you do not care about the topic
This is a real problem and it has a real solution: change the topic, or find the part of it you do care about. Most task pages in this course let you choose. Come and argue for your version — the pitch takes two minutes and it is almost always accepted.
The rule that saves the most time
Twenty minutes stuck is information. Forty is a waste. At twenty minutes, do something different: ask, move on, or write badly on purpose. Sitting in front of a blank page is not effort — it just feels like it.
Curriculum connection
C1.2
generate, expand, explore, and focus ideas for potential writing tasks, using a variety of strategies and print, electronic, and other resources, as appropriate (e.g., free write or consult a writing journal to evolve or focus a topic for a narrative; identify and rank focus questions for further investigation; brainstorm in a small group to create a list of potential topics and questions for enquiry; conduct an electronic search for information on an author for a class project; summarize and paraphrase information and ideas in point-form notes; use formal debate strategies to explore ideas prior to research)
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C4.1
describe a variety of strategies they used before, during, and after writing; explain which ones they found most helpful; and identify appropriate steps they can take to improve as writers (e.g., explain the benefits of sharing their brainstorming list with a partner; identify the graphic organizers they find most useful for organizing their writing ideas and the characteristics that make them useful; identify the proofreading technique or tip they found most helpful)
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