sentence1: For two  1) When the writer stoops to cover his own family, you can bet he's stuck for ideas; 2) Unless one's family is terribly unusual, such efforts violate a great unspoken but true  Other Peoples' Kids Are Boring.
sentence2: You know a writer is running out of ideas when he decides to write about his own family; unless his family is really unique, it violates an unspoken rule about how other people's kid are boring.