The Make Writing Easier Toolkit
This is the written version of a talk that I gave with REEL 2e, titled “When Writing Feels Hard: Science-Based Strategies for Managing Emotions in 2e Writers.” You can view the recording here.
Featured image credit: Unseen Studio on Unsplash.
Meet the Writers
Henry, a third-grader, has a love-hate relationship with writing. When he gets to focus on his favorite topics–medieval knights, trebuchets, and toads, in that order–Henry dives in eagerly. The words pour out. But when he doesn’t like the assignment, he descends into a full-blown meltdown.
Ava, an eighth-grader, used to see herself as a strong writer. Lately, though, she’s been struggling. This year’s assignments are complex and graded more stringently. Ava’s dyslexia and slow processing speed make analytical writing a challenge, and her perfectionist tendencies don’t help, either. As soon as she jots down a sentence, she immediately deletes it, certain that her writing isn’t good enough.
Evelyn, a high school junior, can’t focus on her assignments for more than a few minutes. She chalks this struggle up to ADHD and low frustration tolerance. The moment a task gets hard or boring, she’s out. She’s tried every strategy the internet has to offer. Nothing works. Evelyn wants to apply to college this fall and take several AP classes, but until she finds a way to motivate herself, none of that will be possible.
If these struggles sound familiar, you’re in the right place. For the past six years, I’ve been helping students who, like Henry, Ava, and Evelyn, struggle enormously with writing. Through this work, I’ve developed a robust toolkit of strategies to cope with the tricky emotions that writing can bring.
In this post, I’ll share four essential strategies, each grounded in a scientific theory of emotion and cognition. Each strategy includes:
A background on the psychological framework
Concrete tactics
A mini case study
Strategy 1: Calm your body.
Background: The Stress Response
Emotions are deeply connected to our bodies. When we sense a threat, the sympathetic nervous system springs into action, readying us for fight or flight. Our hearts race, blood pressure rises, breathing becomes rapid, and adrenaline surges.
Stress isn’t inherently bad, but too much stress is undeniably harmful. By taming that fight-or-flight response and activating the body’s rest-and-digest system, we can soothe intense emotions and get ready to write.
Solutions
Tactic 1: TIPP the scales.
TIPP is an acronym originating in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). While this modality was originally developed for borderline personality disorder, everyone can benefit from DBT’s wisdom.
TIPP offers four ways of quickly calming the body:
Temperature: Ice water activates the diver’s reflex, rapidly lowering heart rate and shifting blood flow. To reap the full benefits, you can stick your face in a bowl of ice water (yes, really!). In a pinch, ice cubes and cold packs also work.
Intense exercise matches intense emotion. Try jumping jacks, push-ups, a short sprint, or running up and down the stairs.
Paced breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system. You can follow a video, search for a GIF, or simply count: breathe in for four and out for eight.
Progressive muscle relaxation involves clenching and relaxing the body’s muscles, one group at a time.
Tactic 2: Take a breath.
I know, I know. We just talked about breathing. But the paced breathing found in TIPP is intended for extreme emotional states, while breathing is universally beneficial. I have a breathing gif saved to my desktop, and I encourage my students to breathe along with it during moments of stress.
Tactic 3: Get a dog.
You may have heard of dogs before. You may even have one. Dogs are furry and cute, and while they might occasionally eat your food, they make life better overall. If you lack access to a dog, consider substituting a stuffed animal, chinchilla, guinea pig, mouse, friendly parrot, or cat.
Case Study
Eight-year-old Henry enters a state of full-blown panic as he starts a writing assignment. Within just a minute of sitting down at the table, his heart is pounding, thoughts racing, head spinning.
Fortunately, Henry knows that jumping on the trampoline in his backyard helps him self-regulate. 10 minutes of bouncing later, he’s much calmer and ready to start writing.
Strategy 2: Change your mind.
Background: Appraisal Theory
Every year, someone wins the Super Bowl. Certain viewers are overjoyed, and others are devastated. Why? How can one event elicit such drastically different emotions?
Well, a situation alone doesn’t produce emotions. Emotions come from the meaning we attribute to that situation. If your team wins, then the game represents a major triumph that fills you with exhilaration. If your team loses, that same game is excruciating.
The technical term for this emotions-depend-on-beliefs idea is appraisal theory, and it forms the basis for modern emotion research.
Now, let’s extend appraisal theory to writing. Imagine that Ms. Whoever, a high school English teacher, assigns her students a four-page essay. Bill and Jill, two students in the class, react very differently:
Bill thinks, “Okay, four pages is a lot, but I got through the last one. I can do this. Oh, and I’ll see my cousin this weekend. He’s an English major, so he can definitely help me.”
Jill thinks, “Four pages! How could she? English teachers are evil! The bane of my existence! This essay will take a century, and I’ll hate every minute. I probably can’t do it at all. I suck at writing.” [insert moan of abject despair]
Now, these two diametrically opposed reactions don’t come out of nowhere. Writing may not come as naturally to Jill. Maybe standard teaching approaches don’t meet her needs, or she’s struggled with assignments in the past, or she tends toward anxiety and self-criticism. Although her response to the essay is extreme, it reflects very real struggles and skill gaps, so simply telling her to change her thoughts a) won’t work and b) may invalidate her (entirely valid) distress.
Even so, it’s still worth taking a moment to examine her beliefs. We may not transform her mindset immediately, but we can lay the foundation for a gradual change in perspective.
Solutions
Tactic 1: Check the facts.
When we’re stressed about writing–or anything else–our thoughts often become distorted, rife with errors and fallacies. We saw several of these in Jill’s initial response to the English essay:
Labeling: English teachers are evil.
Jumping to conclusions: This essay will take a century.
Black-and-white thinking: I suck at writing.
We can (gently) challenge these thoughts by inviting Jill to make predictions. On a scale of 1 to 10, how awful does she expect the essay to be? Then, after she finishes it, we can ask her to rate the essay’s awfulness on the same scale. That number might still be high, but it probably won’t be quite as high as Jill expected. This little expectations-versus-reality exercise gives her concrete data to recalibrate future beliefs.
Tactic 2: Loosen your grip (on thoughts).
Sometimes, struggling against thoughts can be as painful as the thoughts themselves. Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) offers helpful strategies for stepping back from worries rather than battling them:
Use the script, “I am having the thought [insert thought here].” This phrase reminds you that thought is just that–a thought, not absolute truth.
Introduce young writers to the “inner editor,” a term for the voice in your head that points out everything wrong with your writing. Encourage them to notice when their inner editor pipes up.
Treat the thoughts as background noise, like static on a radio or crows cawing outside a window. We might not be able to get rid of them, but we can set them aside and focus on what we need to do.
Imagine that your thoughts are pieces on a chessboard. Or passengers on a bus. Or leaves on a stream. Or sushi on a conveyor belt. Or a beach ball in a pool. ACT is big on metaphors. More on that here.
Tactic 3: Plant seeds.
Certain writing beliefs are deeply entrenched and near-impossible to challenge directly. In these situations, I take what I call a sideways approach, gently floating a new perspective without belaboring the point.
To an elementary schooler who despises writing, I might say, “I wonder if we might be able to help you have a different experience of writing.”
If this were a sentence in a written piece, I’d object to the wordy vagueness of “I wonder if we might be able to.” But when the goal is to avoid confrontation, verbal fluff helps.
To a middle-schooler who loathes outlines: “Maybe there’s a version of outlining that works for you.”
To a high-schooler who resists asking for help: “I wonder if the benefit of reaching out to your teacher might be worth the discomfort.”
Case Study
13-year-old Ava is trapped in a cycle of writing, deleting, and rewriting. Nothing she writes feels good enough. No matter how many times she revises a sentence, she is still nagged by the thought that it isn't good enough.
Recognizing that this cycle hasn’t relieved her anxiety, Ava decides to try something different. She reframes her thoughts as background noise and reminds herself that her inner editor is never happy with her work. When the voice in her head tells her, “That sentence is dreadful! Delete it at once!” she takes a deep breath and reminds herself, “Just because I think it doesn’t mean I have to do it.”
If Ava really can't stand looking at the offending sentence, she highlights it in black. It's still there, but she can't see it, so it bothers her less.
These strategies carry Ava through two full drafts of a challenging essay. Although writing feels uncomfortable, she’s gradually building her tolerance for the anxiety of imperfection.
Strategy 3: Lighten the load.
Background: Cognitive Load Theory
Our brains can only handle so much information at once. This is true of all humans and is especially relevant to neurodivergent and twice-exceptional kids, who often have limited processing speed and working memory.
Writing assignments often overwhelm students’ working memory with:
Too much information: Think complex, multifaceted assignments with multiple pages of instructions, materials, rubrics, and requirements. These can be overwhelming enough for neurotypical kids, let alone neurodivergent ones. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed just looking at my students' assignments–there's so much to sort through!
Too little information: Paradoxically, a lack of structure can also produce overload. Open-ended tasks like “write a story about whatever you want!” impose massive executive function demands. There are too many options, decisions, and unresolved questions. In the face of this ambiguity, students often freeze up or shut down, unable to begin.
Whether we’re facing too much information or too little, it helps to start with small, clearly defined tasks.
Solutions
Tactic 1: Find the first step.
Here’s a dirty secret of writing, one of many: it doesn’t really matter where you start. You just have to start somewhere. Choose a first step, ideally one that takes under two minutes, and run with it. Here are some favorites:
Free-write any and all ideas that come to mind, including the “bad” ones
Write on Post-It notes, paper, a tablet, or a whiteboard
Talk through initial ideas
Gather all relevant materials in one place
Break assignment instructions down into a checklist (more on my love of checklists below)
Tactic 2: Add structure
Consider using brainstorming tools, graphic organizers, and checklists. I love checklists. I swear by them. I’ve got one open right now. And don’t even get me started on the Google Docs checklist feature–innovation at its finest.
Tactic 3: Declutter a messy doc.
I’ll post my full guide to decluttering Google Docs later this week. Headings, section breaks, bullet points, and checkboxes always help. I’m also fond of gentle pastel palettes.
Case Study
12-year-old Micah has slow processing speed and working memory limitations. It often takes him 30-40 minutes to understand his English teacher’s assignment instructions–a major barrier to writing. Micah’s dad helps him use ChatGPT to break the assignment down into specific bullet points. Micah now has a clear, easily digestible set of instructions that he can understand and work with.
Strategy 4: Rethink rewards.
The Background: Behaviorism
Training my service dog taught me a lot about psychology. Dog training relies heavily on operant conditioning, which I had learned about in psych classes but didn’t fully understand until I used it every day.
Central to this theory is the idea that dogs do what is rewarding. When Tiki runs off to chase squirrels or chomps on a stick, she’s not choosing to annoy me; she’s just performing a behavior that pays off.
(My sister’s reaction when I explained this: “Lucy, you can’t say that during a new client consultation! People will think you’re comparing their kids to dogs!”)
I’m not saying kids are dogs, I promise. Still, both species do what’s rewarding and avoid what isn’t. This framework offers a powerful lens for understanding the trade-off of writing avoidance.
In the short term, writing avoidance is rewarding. It provides instant relief from the discomfort of writing.
In the long term, avoidance comes at a cost: stress, skill gaps, and missed opportunities for learning.
Thus, a vicious cycle ensues:
Writing is hard.
A kid avoids writing.
They miss opportunities to build writing skills.
Writing gets harder.
Avoidance increases.
And so on, and so forth.
By this logic, if we can make writing more immediately rewarding, we can motivate students to write. In theory, this should trigger a virtuous cycle:
Writing is easier, if only a little.
A kid engages more.
They learn.
Writing gets a little easier.
Engagement increases.
Etcetera, etcetera.
Solutions
Tactic 1: Cheerlead!
I like to counteract negative self-talk with brief, frequent encouragement: “Great. Looks good. Nice work.” Occasionally, I’ll throw in reminders: “It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just a couple more minutes. Rough drafts are supposed to be rough.” Don’t go overboard here. A few simple lines are all you need to keep the momentum going.
An important disclaimer: for certain teenagers, praise from parents will almost certainly backfire. I get away with it because I’m a tutor, but parents should use this tactic with caution.
Tactic 2: Picture the payoff.
Imagine I gave you $1,000 right this minute, no strings attached. On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy would you feel?
What if I promised you $1,000 a month from now? How would you rate your happiness right now?
What if you get the money in a year? Five years? A decade?
If you’re like most people, your present happiness dropped as the reward got pushed further into the future. The amount of money remains constant, but as the delay increases, we value the money less.
This phenomenon, known as delay discounting, contributes to procrastination. When the rewards of a difficult task are far away, we discount them.
We can make those rewards more immediate through visualization. For instance, I might tell a high-schooler,
Let’s fast-forward two hours. Imagine that you’ve finished this essay. You’re done. How would you feel? What will the rest of your weekend look like?
Or, conversely:
Let’s fast-forward to next Friday. I want you to imagine that you haven’t worked on the essay. You have to write the whole thing the night before the deadline. How do you feel as you sit down in front of your computer?
After the visualization, I’ll ask, “What can you do to make your future self happy?” Now that we’ve taken the time to imagine the payoff, the rewards of writing feel closer and more real.
Tactic 3: Treat yourself.
I define “treat” expansively. A treat can be anything that feels even remotely pleasurable. Favorites include:
A break. If writing is sufficiently unpleasant, then not writing is a reward.
Checking items off a checklist. It’s not Disneyland, but crossing things out is satisfying.
Interacting with dogs (see strategy 1).
A cupcake, assuming the parents are on board.
Time outside.
The site Written Kitten, which shows you a kitten for every 100 words you draft.
You can also ask kids to find their own rewards: After I finish [hard task], I get to [fun thing]. Elementary and middle schoolers might need some redirection (no, you can’t bribe yourself with three pounds of chocolate), but with encouragement and prompting, writers of all ages can identify creative, effective forms of self-bribery.
Case Study
Evelyn, a high school junior, struggles to motivate herself through a heavy homework load. Her ADHD makes it especially hard to start non-preferred tasks, and her previous attempts at self-bribery have backfired. No amount of chocolate can power her through hours of work, and five minutes on YouTube can easily become five hours.
Evelyn decides to list out small things she genuinely looks forward to each day. Origami tops the list; she loves folding cranes and other paper creatures, and she’s just received a beautiful set of origami paper for her birthday. She decides to use origami as her reward.
She sets a Pomodoro timer, and after every 25-minute work session, she spends five minutes folding a crane. This strategy is so effective that she starts using it for other tasks, and soon her room is filled with turtles, cranes, frogs, and the occasional koala. If that’s not a raging success, I don’t know what is.
Closing Thoughts: Practice, practice, practice!
Students often tell me, “I tried [insert strategy here] once. It doesn’t work for me.”
That’s like saying, “I took a violin lesson, and I still can’t play a Beethoven concerto. Violins just don’t work for me.”
These tools aren’t magic. They don’t work of their own accord; we have to work them. Repetition is key, and practice makes progress.
