Writer's Block

"L'angoisse de la page blanche"
C1 writing exercise

Lucille talks about coping mechanisms to circumvent the dreaded writer's block.

Pay attention to the hints!

Some vocabulary you may want to look up before or during this exercise: "writer's block", "to corroborate", "a creative writing class", "a writing topic", "to pop into [one's] head", "a timer", "to take the leap".

I’ll give you some sentences to translate into %s

  • I’ll show you where you make mistakes
  • I’ll keep track of what you need to practise
  • Change my choices if you want
Start the exercise
How the test works

Here's a preview of the text for the writing challenge, when you're ready click the start button above:

Writer's block doesn't exist I've often heard people say that, and my personal experience would tend to corroborate it. Indeed, a few years ago, I took some creative writing classes during which our teacher would use a particularly interesting exercise: he'd write three writing topics on the board, then we'd have ten minutes to answer the first topic. He wanted us to write what popped into our heads as fast as we could. And although the majority among us thought they had no ideas, as soon as the timer started, we'd all put our heads down, and we'd start writing. Without us realising it, the time pressure gave us the motivation and confidence that we needed to take the leap.

Let me take a look at that...