My six year old looked a little troubled last night. Scratching his head, he kept staring at his notebook. His twisted mouth did tell me the intensity of his problem.

When he noticed me watching him, he spoke with his forehead all crumbled between both his eyebrows; “it isn’t easy to be a writer.” With that expression of his, he did somewhat look like a writer.

I agreed to him with a nod.

He continued “I can’t write any more now…” and I loved the way he said it; shrugging his shoulders, shaking his head and the corner of his lips went down and innocently blinking his eyes. “Nothing is coming to my mind…I think I am out of Idea”

“Ah!! It must be Writer’s block.” I nodded again but I dared not laugh…

He didn’t hear my say anyway; instead, he turned to his sister, who was quietly reading her diary of a Wimpy Kid, and said: “her life is so easy…”

“Really? And how is that?” I asked a little surprised.

“Yes, just look at her, all she has to do is sit and read, but for me….” Scratching his head again he continued “it is so difficult to come up with new ideas.”

His sister shot him a look, I knew if I didn’t intervene now the war was on for sure. I gave her a wink, which did help her calm down and thankfully she went back to her Gregory Hefley’s journal.

“It’s ok, we need someone to read whatever we have been writing, and didi will do that. She is a good reader.”

All this conversation did raise my interest to have a look at his creation.

“May I?” with his permission I flipped through the pages he had scribbled. They were filled with sketches and a few lines of writing. I looked at him with an appreciating nod. And found him waiting for my feedback patiently.

“Wow! You write well…”

Yes, he did give his best in it. The pages were filled with his heroic deeds, trying to save his elder sister who always somehow managed to put herself into some serious trouble.

I really loved his detailed work, especially the last page that had a sketch of, something that looked like a boy who stood under the heading.

WRITER FOTO

“That’s me….every book has the writer’s picture in the end.” Pointing at the drawing I had just landed.

“OK!”I agreed to him.

“But it should be PHOTO, not FOTO.” I said circiling out the error. “Here… WRITER’S PHOTO”

He looked at me for a few seconds, and his gaze went back to his drawing…

“Okayyyyy…” with this elongated last syllable ‘OK’ he said with his stretched forehead, slightly tilting his head to the left. This was the expression he gave whenever he came out with some conclusion of his own. “so that is how F came to existence…when P and H came together becomes F.”

“Yes, it could be.” I didn’t have any better reply to this.

“Go ahead, you are doing well. If you think you are stuck, just go through whatever you have written, right from the beginning…that will help you…” I said this to bring him out of the F and PH thing before he began digging into it any further.

He silently nodded and went back to his book.

“Hey, what have you thought of naming your book?”

A sudden mischievous smile crossed his face.

He replied with a grin that ran right across from ear to ear…”Diarrhea of a Didi Kid” his sister looked up at him with the widest possible eyes.

And from the role of a proofreader, I was forced to switch to the referee mode.


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