You Only Screw It Up If You Leave It Empty

byAmyESparks

262 followers

7 years ago

My 10 year-old son is applying to private school for 6th grade. He has a couple of small essays he needs to write this week to turn in before his official visit to the school. Instead of sitting down and whipping through one of his usually beautiful essays, he sat at the table in tears unable to write anything.

I'm trying to be the wise sit-com mom who says the perfect thing and makes everything work. The problem is, I don't live in a sit-com. Or I live in a sit-com, but it's one of those where the ditzy mom makes tons of mistakes and gets laughed at by everyone else.

My son brought me 3 papers. He got a 4 (above grade level) score on one of them, and he told me that paper met his standard. Then he showed me a paper with a 3 (grade level). The final paper he showed me had a below grade level score.

I pointed out to him that he is in the gifted program at school, and that he was only satisfied with how he did when he scored above grade level. When he got the middle score, he had just felt OK. And the lowest score was because he left a bunch of the answers blank!

I noticed something important as I looked at those papers. He got the low grade just because he left the answers blank. He had just taught me a huge lesson.

You may be satisfied when you write something excellent. You may feel like you wrote something that was just...fine. But the only time there's really a problem is when you don't write anything at all.

He has finished both essays. He wasn't overly enthusiastic, but I thought the essays were terrific. Not only did he answer the questions, but he showed his sense of humor and vocabulary skills. The admissions office wanted to get to know him through his writing skills. Mission accomplished.

So your writing might not be good today. I'm sure Mark Twain and John Steinbeck had days like that too. You just have to keep trying. The only way to screw things up is to leave the page empty.