I have been staring at this keyboard for at least half an hour, trying to think of something to write about. I have been going through the events of my yesterday, trying to find something SOL worthy. My day wasn’t boring but it didn’t really consist of anything fun to blog about either.
When my students come to the personal narrative writing unit, the curriculum spends about three days just on generating lists of things from their own lives that could be used as small moment writing ideas. And here I am, their teacher, and I can’t even come up with one small moment idea from yesterday that would be a solid small moment writing idea. In the past 29 days, I’ve written about the weather, food, covid, work, morning sun, early morning wake ups, being grateful, spring, and more. This morning, I’m at a loss.
I guess my small moment is sitting here at my computer, spending too much time thinking of something original to write about and coming up empty. So now I am taking these, “I don’t know what to write about” thoughts and putting them into today’s SOL. I have a small light plugged into my laptop so I can see the keyboard since it is dark in the early morning and I did not turn on any lights. I am sitting on the floor, near the vent, warming up to the furnace heat while pouring out my empty thoughts onto the letters on this keyboard. I am promising myself to have a greater awareness of today’s small moments so that tomorrow, Day 31, I can write my final SOL joyfully, with intention and enthusiasm. So today, my writing job is not yet done, I will make a mental list of all of my small moments and bring my best to Day 31.
Teaching My Garden to Grow 
I always find this challenge is a good reminder of the request we make of young writers to write every day in our workshops. To mine ideas, especially in a time where our interactions with others and activities are quite limited is a challenge. There are days the writing is hard. There are days where nothing seems worthy of story.
I felt like you this morning as I stared at my keyboard. About a week ago, I had roughed out the writing ideas for the ending days of this challenge, but when I looked at this morning’s draft I knew I wasn’t ready to write about that idea. It needed more time to percolate.
So, like you, I sat and stared at my keyboard for a bit. I sipped on my coffee. Nope, that wasn’t going to work so I just went a completely different way. I knew I couldn’t not write on the day before the end of the challenge.
When you summarized, “In the past 29 days, I’ve written about the weather, food, covid, work, morning sun, early morning wake ups, being grateful, spring, and more,” I couldn’t help but think about all the writing you managed in this month. I found myself wondering which posts were your favorite, which would you want to dig in and write a bit more about, which ones surprised you.
Congratulations on finding a way through the hard part. That’s a secret to writing, for sure.
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Thanks for your thoughtful reply. You brought up a great idea, one that I wish I would have thought of this morning, going back to old posts and digging deeper! Hopefully I won’t need that for tomorrow but will remember this advice next March when I’m sure we will all be at it again. The best to you as March 2021 is quickly coming to an end!
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I always notice things as a writer during March that help me be a better writing teacher for my students. There are some days when the writing is just hard: even with my list of ideas, I can’t find something I want to write about.
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Same, I feel like my small moments this week are not very interesting.
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There are days when we come up empty. I had a few of those. I find that my writing notebook is hugely helpful for this. I often find small nuggets to mine into something. Cheers!
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