One of my favorite growing-up road trips was to see Christmas lights each year. Fortunately we only had to travel a few blocks from our home to find “Merry Christmas Circle,” a seasonally renamed street that featured light displays that drew tourist buses from hours away. So many visitors showed up that the out-of-the-way small-town street had to be converted into a one-way for the month of December, and traffic jams were a nightly occurrence.

My mom was friends with one of the participants, who talked about the friendly rivalry that grew up among that neighborhood’s households in a bid to showcase the biggest and best display. She said their family talked each year about letting go of the tradition—the electric bills alone were enough to make anyone think twice—but in the end, they didn’t want to let down (or be out-shown by) the neighbors. So instead, the displays only became more elaborate each year.

It’s certainly not a new psychological insight: we want to fit in with whomever it is we identify as our “group.” And it’s also secretly satisfying when we manage to outdo the guy next door.

I’d argue that you can use both of these truths to make your students’ writing “bigger and better.” I always build student-sharing time into my classroom writing sessions. When I first ask “Who would like to share their story/poem?,” I’m usually met with a couple of raised hands and a lot of shaking heads. But by the time they’ve watched one or two of their classmates share their work and then receive my corresponding praise and applause from the group, suddenly hands are shooting up all over the room.

And once students know that I’m going to ask some of them to share each day, they all work that much harder to write pieces that might outshine their classmates.

You might say they are “driven” to write better.

You always hear it around the time of the first fall snowstorm in Minnesota: “It’s like people have forgotten how to drive!” It refers to the fact that even drivers who are diehard Minnesotans—as evidenced by the Minnesota Vikings flags flying from their pickup antennas—don’t seem to have the tiniest clue how to drive on snow-packed roads. It’s as if they’ve never seen winter before.

I guess we just get spoiled during the other six months of the year, when the driving is “easy.”

I find that writing can be like that, too. No matter how many years I’ve flown the “writer” flag from my antenna, there are times when the writing comes easy, and times when it feels like I’ve “forgotten how to write.”

It’s true for me as a longtime writer, and I’ve found it’s true for young writers who are just starting out as well. So what can help to steer a writer out of a creative season that’s forecasting blizzard conditions? Sometimes a simple writing warm-up can melt the creative brain-freeze!

I’ve shared several writing warm-ups that work well for students and classrooms in past posts; you might want to check some of them out. Another of my favorites helps jumpstart the writing process by putting actual words into the hands of young writers. It’s super-simple and fun: I share out words from Magnetic Poetry Kits, hand around old cookie sheets, and ask students to “cook up” a poem to warm things up. I’ll often remind them about some of the poetry-writing basics that we’ve covered in past sessions (this varies based on the age of the students, but might include concepts such as using all five senses, alliteration, figurative language, and paying attention to the sound of the words).

Having preprinted words in hand, added to the simple fun of playing with magnets, works as a kind of anti-freeze. Before you know it, the writing forecast is for clear and sunny.