Exercises
Sometimes I have a lot of trouble getting down to writing. There are too many distractions in this world and I'm a procrastinator and The High Priestess of Excuses.
That's why I really like writing exercises - there's less pressure, and you can assign yourself a starting point and see what happens. I work well in these sorts of constraints. So tonight - instead of writing - I'm collecting some useful (I wouldn't go so far as to call them favourite) writing exercises, and compiling them so I can waste less time worrying about NOT writing, and just write.
Sometimes exercises seem goofy or trite, but you make them what they are. In my experience, inevitably, something good and useable generally results. It's just a question of trusting yourself to get started.
So this is the challenge I put out to you - you being all ten or so of my readers - send me your favourite writing exercise. I might even try them. But I will eventually post a list of good ones that we can all use and twist and manipulate to our needs, and none of us will ever stare blankly at the screen or page only to mope off instead to do the dishes (or rearrange your collection of antique clothespins, or stare aghast at CNN, or take up a new substance, etc).
Together, we will become prolific.
Cheers.
NOTHING TO SAY by Pony da Look
posted by j-love @ 9:18 p.m.
11 comments
11 Comments:
Okay, I totally read that as, "I am a huge fan of homophobic translation" at first. I wonder how that would go.
I don't have anything off the top of my head, but I have used Natalie Goldberg's "Writing Down the Bones" and "Wild Mind" over the years when I've been stuck and I need a push. I can lend one or both to you sometime if you're interested. We need to get together anyway!
Cola
My favorite was inspired by a friend who said to me, in criticism of language, "you could never describe a colour to a blind person".
In similar words:
choose a particular colour and try to describe it as you would to a person who is blind.
For bonus points:
choose a particular hue . . .
Lawrence here--didn't want to spend the time just yet to create an account....
I use something called "freewriting" which you've probably heard of. You sit at a keyboard or a pen and paper--perhaps preferably the latter--and just write, the only rule being that you can't stop or pause and you have to keep up the speed. You don't need a subject, and it doesn't have to make sense. What generally happens is you start free associating, and it wanders off in its own direction. It tends to kind of loosen up the brain a bit.
I too read the first comment as homphobic and wondered....
A very useful endeavor! I don't often work from exercises, apart from the freewriting that Lawrence describes. Sometimes interesting stuff emerges that way, especially if you put a couple of day's sessions together and look for patterns. Regardless, it's a good warm up exercise that works for getting the crap out of the way so that the real writing can begin.
I came across an exercise recently in John Dufresne's The Lie that Tells a Truth: A Guide to Writing Fiction that I've been meaning to try. He advises the writer to look for a photograph to start from, either in a collection by a favourite photographer or among old family photos. Pick a photo that intrigues you, give it a title, figure out what mood or emotion the photo suggests to you, and what time and place it depicts. Figure out which person in the photo is your main character and give that person a name. Tell a story about that character in that setting.
Then Dufresne flips it around and advises the writer to speculate about the photographer who took the picture and to imagine a story for him or her.
This is not really an exercise per se, but well, you be the judge at how successful it can be. From Maud Newton.
The late Charles Willeford (Miami Blues) on the secret to writing:
Never allow yourself to take a leak in the morning until you’ve written a page. That way you’re guaranteed a page a day, and at the end of a year you have a novel.
I'll be digging into my myriad writing books this weekend to see if I can dust off a few gems.
Found your site from Kate's Book Blog.
An exercise I recently did was writing about a found object. I did this with a group of writers, each selecting an object from a pile and then writing for about 20 minutes about said object.
I too found you at Kate's Book Blog. And like Anonymous, I'm a fan of Natalie Goldberg. I also like Pam Painter's book What If?--a whole book of exercises.
One I use for my class:
Read some poetry (it could be fiction, but poetry is better because more nonnarrative); write down words or phrases or images that you like or that strike you--a list of maybe 20 or so. Then start writing, with the intention of using the words from your list.
There's something about the focused randomness of this that works very well at opening up the floodgates.
One useful exercise is slow motion writing: you describe an event as it unfolds moment by moment. It can be as dramatic as someone drowning and as pedestrian as someone falling asleep, or catching a fly ball, or opening a letter, or sweeping the floor. Generally, though, this is something that works best for moments of great urgency. The thing I've discovered doing this exercise is that it gets you to focus on sensory details. If you are working on a project, you might use this technique in a scene.If you aren't in the middle of something, it's a fine way to sharpen your skills. (And thanks to Kate for directing me here!)
Hi! I too wandered over from Kate's Book blog. My hubby's from Texas and "Wayward Armadillo" got me curious:)
As to writing exercises--one of my favorite exercises is to take a random list of words, pick an emotional theme, and then work the words into a scene/vignette while trying to show the emotion without using the title of that emotion.
For instance, without using the word "Love" try to show love while using this random list of words: lamp, squirrel, rock, plane, shop, monster.
What's really cool about how this works is there are so many different ways to use words. For instance, rock could be a physical object you throw, or an action. Plane could be up in the sky, or what a carpenter uses. Shop could be a location or an action, etc.
I normally flip through a dictionary and jot down six or seven random words. It's a great vocabulary builder and helps me stay away from 'favorites' in my writing.
Hope this helps and that you have a blast trying out all these cool exercises :)
Warmly,
J.R. Turner
My favourite exercise comes from a workshop I took some time ago. Write down the first and last line of a poem by someone else, then fill in the middle with your own writing, striving to connect the first and last line.
I found the link to your blog on Mark Truscott's blog.
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