For those ten minutes, I felt like a struggling graduate student again with the self-doubt and the "I have lost my edge" fear. Shivers. I only got out of it because I told my husband, "Dude, I think I have an honest to goodness writer's block. I can't think of anything." The confession worked.
In the end, I came up with two questions, and I m looking forward to the essays. Ironically, the students have to write for an hour and twenty minutes, by hand, so they really cannot waste any of their time.
I don't have any pregnant writing advice. Mostly, I want to go into a sleep cocoon, but I have a nasty chest cold that is dragging me down. I have however, taken small steps, like downloading old comments by generous friends, comments I will incorporate, but realistically, I will have to wait until the break to work on this book and really polish it.