If you haven’t had a case of writer’s block before, you may contract it while trying to write your personal statement. Some of my students came in blocked to the point where no amount of parental lecturing or pointing at calendars made a difference. If this sounds familiar, you are not uniquely flawed, and there is a solution. In years of 1:1 counseling, I’ve found that writer’s block is never due to a lack of decent material or a lack of writing skill. Rather, young writers are paralyzed because, whether they’ve consciously done so, have imposed a bunch of red tape on what and how they have to write.
Here are some common rules my students (and their parents) have found their hands tied up by: