“There are Idea Starters on the right side of page 231. You can use these ideas, mix them together or even come up with a new idea. It’s all up to you.” Mr. Patrick explained to his sixth period class. Both hands holding the big Language Arts book, he walked around the small classroom full of eight grade AIS students. Olia, who was sitting in the front row was excited about the assignment. Sure her stomach hurt from eating too much in lunch time but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Mr. Patrick was giving a writing assignment and Olia loved to write.
“You guys have twenty minutes to brainstorm and fill in the “Pre-write” worksheet. What you can’t finish now will be your homework.” As soon as Mr. Patrick said that, Olia took out her pencil and started to brainstorm.
After five minutes, Olia finally thought of what she called an average story.
“A story about a dead girl.” She said to herself. “That might work.” And she started filing in the worksheet. But minutes passed and Olia still couldn’t fill in the events part of the worksheet.
For the whole afternoon, Olia’s head was busy filtering her ideas, throwing bad ideas out and taking possible good ideas in. What she learned in Life Science or what she read in Chinese class was totally forgotten for the whole afternoon.
By the time Olia came home, she was too tired to brainstorm and admitted to herself one thing: She was stuck.
“Huh.” Olia sighed and went upstairs to her room.
“Hey.” Olia greeted her sister, Tania who was sitting on the bed of their shared room. “I need your …”
“Wait.” Tania cut her off. “Where’s Cirque Du Freak that you promised me.” Olia sighed and took out Cirque Du Freak volume five that her sister was so eager to read. Tania snatched the comic book out of Olia’s hands and started flipping through the pages.
“Hey, I have a short story assignment. I came up with something but I’m not sure if it’s god enough. Can you…” Olia glances in Tania’s direction. “Are you listening to me?” Olia put her hands on her hips and puffed her cheeks. Tania was too busy reading to notice what ever Olia did.
“I have a lot of homework today. Can you please let me read in peace before dinner?”
“Fine.” Olia exclaimed and went to take a shower. “I’ll just ask her later.” She thought and slammed the bathroom door.
“… and then she finds out that her family really loves her and goes up to after life happily. What do you think?” Olia was sitting next to her sister in their room after dinner. Her sister as sitting at the big wooden desk surrounded by pink walls that Olia was so annoyed with.
“It’s okay.” Tania said, her eyes never leaving her homework.
“Can’t you give me a better comment than ‘OK’?” Olia said feeling frustrated.
“I don’t like it.” Tania said. Her eyes were still on her homework.
“Then give me a better idea.” Olia said, raising her voice a little bit.
“Write about ethics.”
“What about them?”
“The super factorial number 1! x 2! x 3! x…x 12! can be written as a factorial times a perfect square, that, is in the form m! x n2. What is m… I think m should be six…”
“What are you talking about?” Olia leaned over her sister just in time to see Tania circle option B.
“Math homework? Come on, is your homework more important than me?” Olia finally exploded.
“I told you my idea and you didn’t like it. What else can I do?” Tania sighed.
“Come up with a new idea, of course.” Olia said in an exasperated voice.
“I’m no writer, sorry.”
“You don’t need to be a writer!” Olia shouted and sat on the bed that was right next to the table.
“You know, if you struggle so much just to think of a plot, why don’t you write about how you struggle? There’s a conflict and there are characters right?” Tania said, finally looking at Olia while speaking. A light bulb turned on on top of Olia’s head.
“Tania, that’s a genius idea!” She exclaimed and started to fill in her worksheet, this time, with no difficulty.
“Hey Tania!” Olia yelled from the first floor of her house the next day.
“What?” Tania yelled back from the third floor.
“I got 100%.”
“On what?” Tania yelled.
“Arg.” Olia said. “Forget it.” She yelled and went to eat. Tania will never change.
