Several times in my writing career I have attended workshops/writer meetings in which the chairman or leader or speaker for the evening gave his/her audience a "command" to writer for ten/fifteen minutes.   Somehow under such an "order" my mind, feelings, and gut FREEZE.   Nothing comes to mind except blank and a certain "resentment." 

In some, the suggestion came:  "Write about your first memory of your grandfather."  (or some similar named subject.). Now there was a handle I have managed to latch onto and do something with.   And in one particular group I was inspired and rewarded by the quality writing that was read )voluntarily) from the group under such an order.  Last night at a meeting in which the order was simply "write for 15 minutes," My pen was "tongue-tied."

However, I was inspired by the man who sat next to me.  He began writing at once. He wrote steadily, filling two pages of lined paper.At the end of the period, I asked what he had written about so diligently.  It seems that on the floor beneath the chair occupied by the person in the row just ahead of him was a magazine cover showing a man in a white hat with a black band around it.  My neighbor  wrote the beginninf of a short story about this man.It made me realize that–if nothing else–I could have composed a little essay about a person sitting two rows ahead of me whom I have always admired as a writer and a person.  I could have even written about why I feel resentment and freeze when told to "write for 15 minutes."  I could have written about the people I saw around me who were diligently following the speaker's instructions.   : 

Something to think about.  And I will.