Reluctant Writers

Reluctant doesn't even begin to describe it. Let's check the thesaurus:

Resistant?
Resentful?
Recalcitrant?
Unwilling?
Balky?
Obstinately Averse?
Antagonistic?
Hostile?

That would be more accurate, if you're talking about my son. He hates to write.

You wouldn't know it from watching and listening to him. He has always been a voracious reader. He has a deep and varied vocabulary and speaks in sentences that are positively Joycean. He'll talk your ear off--stories, arguments, descriptions of his Minecraft world, you name it. He's a language fiend. My great uncle was an author and poet, my other great uncle was a published theologian, my brother is a sports journalist, I am a writing teacher. When Tai was little, I could see another writer developing before my eyes. I was so excited to have another writer in the family.

And then he went to school and learned to write. And I watched my vision of a writer-son crumble before my very eyes. Put a pen in his hand and my language lover turns into a lump of clay. A resentful lump of clay. With nothing interesting to report about anything, if you take his word for it.

So here, once a week for the next year (that's my goal right now), I will record and hopefully share everything I am doing to turn this lump of clay into a writer. Or at least into a boy who doesn't hate to write.