Annika has apparently been struggling with writing at school, so she’s been working on it at home a little bit. She’s decided to write when I write here, which would be fine if she’d actually write. I’m good with a couple distractions: how to spell things, what word means … , that kind of stuff. But now I’ve been getting the running commentary on how her story is going, as well as requests for “what should I write next!?”

Today I couldn’t think of what to write immediately, and Annika looked over me: “got writer’s block?”

“Mmhmm,” I replied.

“I get writer’s block at school a lot.” She nodded understandingly.

“Tell me more about that,” I prodded, thinking maybe I was getting to what was keeping her from doing her writing as well as she could at school.

“I cannot think of what to write in school.” Well. That cleared it up.

I kind of understand that though. Sometimes I have writer’s block and I just don’t want to do anything and nothing sounds or feels right. We’ll have to look for some strategies to help her.

In the meantime, I’ve done my writing and I think Annika’s almost done with her writing too. She’s been quiet since she asked me to spell “instrument” aloud for her. I’m falling asleep between each sentence, so I need to finish.