Just be you

What tips can you offer a student who tells really good stories in the playground but, in the classroom when everyone has been asked to write, the ideas are just not flowing for him?

You know, if you are telling really good stories in the playground then just try and remember some of those things you have been telling your mates. Try and remember some of the incidents that happen in your life, because you know, those are obviously things that have meaning for you, and write it down. So there you go.

Don’t disregard your own thoughts. Everything you think of is important. You may not think it, but it’s also a good starting point, and if you can tell a joke you can write drama. It’s pretty simple from that point of view (Lynda: I’m not very good at telling jokes) Oh, you don’t have to tell them well.

I don’t know if you guys notice with writing too, I think there’s that wonderful mental block. Like you might think you are the most articulate, funny person in the world, and then you are at a school dance or whatever, and then you are suddenly standing next to this woman or this man that you think is wonderful, and suddenly you’ve got nothing to say. Suddenly everything you say sounds so stalky and clumsy, and it’s like I’m never opening my mouth again. That’s it. I’m just going to tape it up and go to a colony of mutes or something. I can no longer speak. And it’s exactly the same, sometimes you get a pen and paper in your hand, and it’s like there’s pressure on, like you’re meant to do something different. And I think it took me ages to realise that the voices in my head, and the ones I just use casually on the phone, it’s okay to put those ones down. It’s not like a new language you have to learn, called the ‘writing’ language, or the ‘chat up’ language. In fact it’s just be you. And if they like it, well and good, and if they don’t just move on.