Kitchen Timer

This weekend, Ms. Leom was reading a book for fun, and the author was talking about being stuck as a writer. The author visited with another professional writer for some advice and was told to use the strategy, "kitchen timer". The professional writer, schedules his writing time the day before. He blocks it off on his calendar, like he would do a meeting or lunch day. He communicates clearly with his family and friends that he is not available during this time, and he turns off his phone, wi-fi, and writes. He sets up his piece of writing he is working on and his journal. If he can't think of anything to write on his current project, he journals, even if it is to write the phrase,"I can't think of anything to write" or the example we used in class, "Turtle. Turtle. Turtle."

We tried it in our writing class. We set our timer for 15 minutes. If there were students who weren't able to write on their project, that was a signal to Ms. Leom that she needed to step in and offer support to that / those student (s).

We didn't use an actual kitchen timer ... but the sense of productivity and pride from students who were writers was fun to see! It was a good day for writing!