As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m currently managing a tracking journal. There are twenty-one actions I’ve been tracking since early September, and I’m really pleased with my progress. Though not perfect (which I wasn’t expecting, especially given current circumstances), I feel my pencils reflect the measure of my success.
At the moment, I am keeping a form of tracking journal – I’m sure I’ll explain more over the coming weeks – and, if I leave it out on my desk and Auri sneaks into my room, I sometimes come back to find a little hand has used my fountain pen to carefully make a mark, and then coloured it in, just like I do.
Students are not fools. They were, after all, once young children who if they reached too close to an open flame might well have gotten a smack on the hand, or a scary lecture about the dangers of third degree burns (skin grafts, my child, unimaginable pain) and never did it again. Decades later they too often apply those same lessons to writing: red ink = bad. Do not do that again. Which, in turn, risks molding a young writer into someone who forsakes creativity into someone whose core skill is avoiding pain.
Writerland Chapter 79: Don’t Be So Mean by Michael Shapiro
Emphasis mine.