Baby Steps and other not-so-silly exercises

There's a scene in the Bill Murray film, What About Bob? in which Murray's character – an anxiety-ridden, obsessive compulsive, hypochondriac – visits his new psychiatrist (played by Richard Dreyfuss) in hopes of receiving an emergency treatment. The doc, with one foot out the door and on vacation, blows off Bob's repeated attempts for help and instead proscribes a book to read. In his blissful ignorance however, Bob opts out of reading the book and instead gleans what he can from the title, Baby Steps. And this is the point where the comedy picks up steam. We see Bob taking little baby steps around the office, out the door, on the elevator, so caught up in the trivial act of taking tiny steps that he forgets for a brief moment about the germs on door handles, his agoraphobia, and his fear of elevators. So many times, the writing classroom takes on a similar scenario: the "expert" writing teacher wanting to be doing something else, gives his/her students some bullshit exercise meant more to occupy the students' time than to lead to fruitful writing. However, much to the surprise of the teacher, there is an occasional student that (mis)reads the bs with a straight face and finds something more useful than busy work. I say this at the beginning of the semester, not so much as a disclaimer that my advice is lousy, but that often the best answers for what to do with your writing are 1) simpler than your think and 2) right in front of your face. It may seem silly, but remember, you taught yourself to speak a language all by yourself. This semester try to keep a lookout for simple clues in the most unusual of places. If a solution seems overly complicated, then it's probably over-thought. Sometimes, all you need is a word or phrase, like Murray's baby steps, to get your mind off its anxieties.