When Writing Starts to Feel Like Homework
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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Homework has been the bane of my existence lately.
My oldest child is in second grade, which is still very young, but his homework load is starting to increase. As far as I’m concerned, the amount of homework he gets is very reasonable for his age. He only has one fairly short task to complete each day during the school week and the entire packet is turned in on Friday so there’s time to catch up if he wants to skip a day.
We’ve been doing this for months now, but I still refuse to accept how this homework thing is going to work each week. I always expect each day’s homework will take about ten minutes (which objectively it should) and then we’ll move on with our day.
What invariably happens instead is that he hems and haws, talks to his pet fish, asks questions about Santa Claus theory, launches into unsolicited descriptions of pranks played by YouTube personalities, and does anything and everything other than actually completing homework.
You know, he does stuff 8-year-olds do.
I’ve gotten better at just rolling with it and not letting the slowness, boredom, and frustration get the best of me, but it’s not easy.
Another thing that hasn’t felt easy for me lately is writing. It’s starting to feel more and more like second grade homework and less and less like something I love to do.
Instead of buckling down and pushing through my minor writer’s block, I’ve started taking the easy way out. When I have a few free minutes during the day, instead of working on creative writing projects, I opt for social media or copywriting work. At night, typically my peak writing time, I’ve been watching tons of basketball or re-watching episodes of Fleabag.
Part of it is mental fatigue — kids are exhausting, yo — but another factor is with two of the kids in school full-time now, we don’t do as many things as we used to.
I take the kids to school in the morning, play with my daughter mostly at home, I do laundry and housework, we pick the boys up in the afternoon, and then we do homework and they play and watch TV until dinner time and bedtime. The routine is comfortable, but since I typically write about things that happen to me, I’m starting to feel like I’ve covered most of the available territory.
Many nights when I actually feel half motivated to write, I often don’t know what to write about. So, here we are. I’m now writing about not writing. Perhaps it was inevitable, but it doesn’t make it any more fun.
During a particularly difficult and swampy homework slog recently, I was trying to encourage my son to stop complaining and just write. One of his weekly tasks is writing a paragraph from a writing prompt. This is by far his least favorite task and we always put it off until Thursday night.
He usually complains that he has nothing to write and he can’t do it (sound familiar?). We go back and forth for an hour or more sometimes. I encourage and try to motivate. I tell him it doesn’t have to be perfect and he doesn’t have to like it, he just has to get it done.
He pushes back and whines and complains. I get frustrated. I leave him alone so I can calm down and stay cool. We repeat indefinitely until we are both as broken as most of the Christmas tree ornaments my 3-year-old got her hands on. He always gets it done in the end.
This time, while we were negotiating, he asked if I could get a piece of paper and write something while he was writing so we could exchange papers and read each other’s writing. I was like, “OK, sure. Whatever.”
Of course, I wanted to say, “I don’t have anything to write about,” but I thought that would be unwise considering our current predicament. Instead, I grabbed a piece of paper, a pencil, and a book to write on. I sat down next to my son on the couch and I started writing about…you guessed it…not having anything to write about!
Here is a transcript of what I wrote…
When I don’t know what to write, I just start because waiting is sometimes the worst thing you can do. When you wait, your mind starts to play tricks on you. It tells you that you can’t write anymore. That you’re not good enough. That you’ve already written all the good stories you have to tell. This paralysis happens again and again but it never gets easier or less frightening. But it all comes down to getting one word down on the page (or screen). Then another. Then another. Then an idea might come or it might not. The important thing is that you’re writing again. And the voice has been quieted. If only for one night.
It’s cliché. It’s pretty boring. It’s quite unoriginal. My son said he didn’t understand what “has been quieted” meant and he’s right. It’s a dumb phrasing. But, it is words on paper. It’s something. It’s getting the homework done because that’s what you have to do to move forward.
As promised, we exchanged papers and my son read my scribblings out loud. I cringed a little. As much as I’ve written and published, I still hate when someone reads my writing in front of me. Apparently this even applies when it’s my 8-year-old. It feels like being spied upon.
But ultimately, we survived the ordeal and the experience was actually a positive one. For me and my son. He got his homework done, we shared a little moment, and I got a story to tell. Even if it’s not the most compelling one I’ve ever written.
Because sometimes you just have to get the job done and turn it in. Or push submit or publish or send and move onto the next thing. It’s really the only way to survive as a writer or a second grader.
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