I can definitely agree with Steve's comments about relating this article more to myself than to my students.  But his comments also made me wonder about what my students would have to say about all this Boicean advice.  So I asked them in conferences today.  They were quite honest about their writing practices and how they felt about writing in general.

I have a really awesome group of students who come from a variety of different writing backgrounds; some say they love writing while others claim to hate it, some told me they had excellent writing teachers in high school and others told me they felt their high school English/writing courses were a colossal waste of time.  Almost all of them gave me a weird look when I asked about their writing processes.

Again and again I received similar answers about feeling nervous about starting a paper and putting it off.  This seems to support Boice's comments about writers' fear of failure.  The common consensus seemed to be, the more nervous they were about a paper, the longer it took them to actually start working on it.  Just to hear this line of reasoning, it doesn't make much sense.  But I also remember feeling/acting the same way with papers when I was an undergrad (slash possibly as a grad student, with certain confusing/frightening professors).

My conferences today were presented to my students as casual, get-to-know-one-another type meetings. I told them they didn't need to have anything prepared for our meetings, but that it might be helpful if they started thinking about their first papers (the first drafts of which are due on Wednesday).  No one came to me with any semblance of a draft.  A few brought up some half-hearted ideas of what they might write on.  Almost every single one left with a [new] idea and notes on something they were [or at least appeared to be] excited to write about.  Those moments in each meeting when the student would dig in his or her bag for paper and a pen to start jotting down notes.....well, I'm going to start gloating so I'll cut myself off.  But those moments were awesome.

Basically....I think my frustration with Boice's piece is that he seems to be positing some kind of scientific, will-work-for-everyone process of writing.  And I'm not sure such a magical process exists.  But I do think that writing becomes much less frightening when we move away from the "recalcitrant child" model and into the arenas of our interests (5).  I find it hilarious when students say things like, "I really hate writing, but I actually enjoyed this project..."  I just tell them, "you don't hate writing.  You've never been invested in your writing before."  And I think that's where the true motivation comes through.  Not through garden walks or hypnosis (those maybe that works for some writers), but through the simple desire to put your thoughts and opinions into writing.