Finding time to write

I go into a lot of schools all around the country. I do big assemblies, and I do classroom writing workshops. One of the things that I hear from teachers is that there’s not a lot of time for creative writing, and so there might be one opportunity in an entire school year for the students to write a story. It’s the story writing unit, and there’s one story to write, and the problem with that is that it puts a lot of pressure on that one project.

Students feel as if they have one chance to write this story, and it’s very difficult to do. So I think that not having a lot of opportunities then makes it harder when it comes time to actually do it, so I would say that’s the biggest problem that teachers talk to me about.