How Writer's Block Got Me an A

It was the fall semester of my junior year in college, where I was sitting with my laptop and wondering what in the world I had gotten myself into when I’d decided to take Intro to Creative Nonfiction as the first class for my Creative Writing minor.

I barely enjoyed writing regular nonfiction, never mind how good I seemed to be at it. One can only put up with churning out so many literary analysis essays, persuasive essays, and personal essays for so long. What even was creative nonfiction, I wondered. What was so creative about something that was not a fictional story?

Quite a lot, apparently.

For instance, the first assignment: writing 500-750 words of flash nonfiction.

That was it. That was the prompt. No specifics, no restrictions. I could write about anything, as long as it wasn’t made up. So easy, and yet. So. Hard.

What was I supposed to write about?

For at least half an hour I sat there, staring at the blank Google doc while searching my equally blank mind for something—anything—before I realized that if I wanted to get at least a start on this assignment, I was just going to have to write words.

So I found one of those writing websites that deletes your progress if you stop typing after a few seconds, set a timer for fifteen minutes, and started aimlessly typing the only thing on my mind.

When I was done, there were at least 500 words of my ramblings on not having any idea what to write about for the assignment.

And somehow, by then, I knew exactly what I actually wanted to write about. So I labeled the word-vomit document “ignore_this,” saved it to be forgotten for nearly the rest of the semester, and moved on to writing what would become my real flash nonfiction submission.

Fast forward to the end of the semester. Finals week was approaching, and I had about twelve hours to finish a writing portfolio (basically the final exam for Intro to Creative Nonfiction) that was supposed to be no less than twenty pages long, comprised of some of the essays I’d written throughout the semester. I was currently eighteen pages and three essays in, and I didn’t have time to come up with two more pages of something new.

But maybe I didn’t need to.

I went through my writing homework folder and found the document I was supposed to ignore. And I opened it, and I read it, and I asked myself, What if I included this?

I hadn’t used it for any of my writing assignments before, because why would I? It was messy. Half of it wouldn’t even have made sense to anyone but me.

But it was expressive, which, as I had learned by now, was what creative nonfiction was all about. It was real. Most importantly, it was two pages.

I could work with it, and I would make it work.

After several tweaks, my 500+ word brain dump that I had wanted to ignore was turned into something that I could include in my final portfolio without cringing. As it was technically the very first thing I’d written for the course, I figured it would be fitting to have it be the last part of the portfolio as a reflection of how far I’d come.

I finished and submitted the now twenty-two-page assignment within an hour of the deadline and allowed myself to breathe again. It was done.

Just two days later, I got an email from my writing teacher.

I was expecting this email. My teacher had mentioned everyone in the class would get one once we submitted our final portfolios, to give us feedback on our writing and let us each know our final grade for the course. Which was exactly why I was nervous to open it.

Three of the four essays in my portfolio had been read in class before, for the various writing workshops we did throughout the semester. But the fourth one, the brain dump which I’d officially titled “Writer’s Block,” was only seen for the first time by my writing teacher. What did she think of it?

I opened the email and found out:

“This is a fantastic essay. For someone who sat down to write about why they didn’t want to write, you wrote something superbly reflective. I wish I could teach this essay (I might reach out to you in the future to see if you’d be ok with that). I think a lot of students would benefit from reading this essay. Thank you so much for including this in your final portfolio! Final grade: A”

It took me a minute to process what I’d just read.

Teach this essay.

Teach my essay.

She wanted to teach. My. Essay.

The essay I had sort-of-accidentally come up with at the beginning of the semester while having no idea what else to write, which I had been convinced would never see the light of day.

Maybe this creative nonfiction writing thing wasn’t so bad after all.

In case you were wondering, this was the essay—born from the brain-dump I had tried to ignore.

Writer’s Block

For someone who loves to write, this assignment should be easy for you. You’ve written dozens of stories. Probably enough academic essays to publish a journal by now. So why are you still sitting in front of a blank computer screen after hours of racking your brain for something to write about? Is it so hard to come up with just one thing interesting enough to describe or relive in 500-750 words of vivid detail?

“Write what you know.” Isn’t that what they all say? And you know a lot of things, don’t you? Life as the oldest of five kids. How to survive moving from Michigan to North Carolina as an eight-year-old. The joy of holding for the first time the puppy you had spent years waiting for. Graduating to college after being homeschooled your whole life. The reason why you want to be a veterinarian. How you became a writer in the first place. A bunch of random, smaller things. It doesn’t even have to be anything deep or serious; it can be a funny anecdote, such as the time Grandma accidentally knocked an arm off that mannequin in Kmart (actually, no, that one’s been used too many times already).

You know you’re overthinking this. Why can’t you just pick a topic and write about it? Why does it always have to be some intense process just to come up with an idea? Why can’t you be the kind of person who can start scribbling or typing away as soon as a prompt is given—or even better, when there is no prompt?

It’s not supposed to be this hard. You have the freedom to write about anything. So why can’t you think of something? Maybe it’s your fear of heights, because when the sky’s the limit, you prefer to stay on the ground. (Wait, that was…kind of good? Maybe you’ll end up putting that in your piece—once you actually write it.)

There are so many things in your life you could choose to write about, yet at this moment, you don’t want to write about any of them. Why? Because all of it directly has to do with you. Your life. Your experiences. That’s what this is really about, isn’t it? You don’t want to write about yourself. You would much rather be writing a story about mythical creatures or people and animals with superpowers or epic adventures in worlds that only exist in your imagination. Even a tedious lab report, or a literary analysis essay, would have been much easier. As long as it’s nothing about you. That would be too boring, too close, too real.

Of course, it doesn’t necessarily have to be something about you, but then what else could you write about without making it sound too much like a factual, emotionless essay? Then again, it shouldn’t even matter what it sounds like. How are you already judging something you haven’t even written yet?

Maybe one day you’ll get better at this. Maybe one day you’ll see your life and your story—your real story, not a fictional one—as something interesting enough to tell. But right now, you have no words. You’ll try again tomorrow.