Category Archives: Writing Exercises To Exercise Creativity

3 Surefire Writing Exercises To Keep Me Sharp This Summer

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Photo by Ellin Beltz

Photo by Ellin Beltz

Ah, Summer!

Three months of siren song luring us to laze at the beach, the ballpark, the multiplex. When our brains crave the pinch of an inch in their midsections before the first chill of Fall begins to freeze off the intellect’s fat.

Alas, we writers…

If we’re going to look ourselves in the mirror at the end of each day with only self-loathing and not also unsightly spritzing tears, we must not succumb to these sunny pleasures so insalubrious to our work ethic.

It is true that writing can be such a lonely endeavor, and gosh this time of year is rich with the potential for shared experience.

No…must…resist….

Which is why I’ve created some new writing exercises! Not only to maintain my skills this summer, but also to bring me that much closer to my community without having to leave my desk.

To paraphrase George R.R. Martin, it’s not enough anymore for writers to rely on the stifling inner pressure of their own neuroses; it’s the onslaught of the outside world’s needs that will ultimately drag their projects over the finish line.

Everybody’s process is different, but I offer these up to you as well. Feel free to modify according to need, available resources, and current mental state.

3 Surefire Writing Exercises To Keep Me Sharp This Summer:

#1 Inciting Inspiration – Occasionally during the course of working I get stuck on a story issue, a plot point, or even just the rhythm of the sentences in a paragraph. It can be like walking into a brick wall, again and again and again. And again. Wouldn’t it be nice to go out and grab a frozen yogurt and then browse the antique cheese shops on Venice for a few hours?

Nice try, Summer, but you’re no match for the arrangement I’ve made with the friendly folks at Blooming Little Daisies Day Camp. I’ve got an hour to bridge my creative impasse or a busload of kids dangling over a sinkhole will know literally what the deep dark abyss of writer’s block feels like. Nothing greases the wheel of my imagination like blinking the stinging sweat out of my eyes to watch them plead with me via webcam. I mean, here’s hoping. Thanks kids, keep your heads covered and fingers crossed!

#2 Crafting Memorable Characters – Characters are the lifeblood of story, so if my protagonist or antagonist or a supporting player comes across lacking specificity, it weakens the whole body of the book, so to speak. Weakening one’s resolve to keep his hindquarters in his writing chair, to not stray when Baby Geniuses 3 beckons from the mall cinema.

Ha. Summer, you’re going to have to try a lot harder than that now that I’m collaborating with Peter Gruntergo and his doctors at This Dying Old Lady Memorial Hospital. I’ve got 45 minutes to spice up a dull character or Peter’s going to feel a little incomplete himself when he doesn’t get that new kidney. I can’t tell you what a lift it is when I’ve got medical staff and the Gruntergo family on Skype screaming me to victory.

Seriously, I can’t tell you yet. So at least I hope it’ll be a lift. We’ll see. Let’s maybe hold off awhile on ordering those balloons.

#3 Building Stamina for the Second Draft – It’s hard for me to read a first draft without agonizing over those areas that in the moment felt so magical now ringing false and flat. How do I gut up and build the stamina to tackle a rewrite? It’s a period where I feel most vulnerable as a writer, and perhaps most susceptible to the sweet-nothings of ocean air and a Nora Roberts novel, and burying strangers up to their necks in beach sand.

Wow. You almost got me, Summer. Almost. But you’ll need an extra biscuit for breakfast if you think you’re going to overpower my teaming up with an unquenchable passion, indefatigable imagination, and ironclad discipline. And my good friends at Callus Realty who’ve generously provided a closed-up home with two hundred baby rabbits trapped inside and a pernicious gas leak set to go off if I can’t finish by September 30. They are pretty cute animals, even on this grainy CCTV monitor, it would be a shame to see them…well, golly, I better stop writing this and get to it!

Happy Summer Everyone!

Spring Writing Prompts

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Photo by Benjamin Gimmel

Photo by Benjamin Gimmel

Happy Spring! Or for those of you reading this in the Midwest or on the East Coast, Happy Second Winter!

Well, regardless of the weather outside, have you taken your creative temperature lately? If you’re a writer like me you understand that the “flow” can vary widely, from steady bursts to meager trickles to tipping back your canteen and swallowing a mouthful of desert.

If you’re in a rut and spitting up sand, do what I do and stop what you’re struggling with and write something radically different. Just to goose your juices a little bit and reassure yourself that your creativity is still intact.

Here are a few of my favorite spring-themed writing prompts that never fail to light a fire under my brain and get me back on track. I’d love to hear if any of these help you out. Happy writing!

1. Imagine you’re Peter Cottontail hopping down the bunny trail with another Easter on its way, but this year you’ve got a raging case of genital warts from messing around in Farmer Glen’s radish patch. How will you explain yourself to Mrs. Cottontail?

2. You’re a hitchhiker picked up by two Grinnell College students on their way to Florida for spring break. Even though you have severe gastrointestinal problems you don’t want to disappoint your new friends and not enjoy a burrito and cheap tequila shooters. How’s the last 5 hours of that drive to Cocoa Beach going to go?

3. You’ve been recruited to help your doddering grandmother spring-clean her sweet little cottage by the lake. When you’re alone sweeping up the hall you hear a voice coming from the attic that sounds just like your grandfather who allegedly ran off when you were 9 begging for someone to loosen the screws on his head vise. What’s the rest of your afternoon look like?

4. Write from the POV of a pollen cloud coming of age during the great Hay Fever Festival. What’s it like to learn that you’re essentially the “semen” of the flower world?

5. You’re sixteen now and believe you’re too old to be receiving kites for your birthday, but there you are unwrapping another friggin’ kite and smiling real big just so Aidan Welke doesn’t get his feelings hurt. What might happen if when the cake comes out and everybody starts singing you grab the cutting knife with no intention of using it on the cake?

A Winter Writing Exercise

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Photo by Stu Spivack

Photo by Stu Spivack

It’s winter time once again, when the weather often keeps us indoors, and we tend to indulge ourselves a little more than we should. Because, well, because we can’t eat just one package of Oreos while staring contemplatively into a pile of logs aflame in the fireplace, can we? And then throw in the holidays and of course who among us can resist the festive tradition that is letting ourselves go?

We writers are no strangers to this affliction and it’s not only our waistlines that require a watchful eye. Have you seen some of the sentences lumbering about this time of year? In between exercising our bodies we  must also exercise a little creative restraint.

Case in point, take a look at the chunky fellow I’ve written below:

Was it so unusual to keep the head of a snowman alive in his freezer, he wondered, the coal eyes and the carrot nose moldy with frost from 47 days’ age in cold storage, the Scottish plaid scarf around its no-neck as frigid and stiff as his wife when she left to pick the kids up from school and never came back, or was it a cruel world unsympathetic to a traumatic melt thirty years prior—“puh-uh-uhddles, Mommy!”—that had also dissolved the part of his brain that would have, among other things, prevented him from embezzling from his children’s thriving fruity-chews vaccination business to keep building a corncob pipe collection to find the one pipe, the one pipe, Mr. McShivers wouldn’t spit out of the place on his face where presumably his mouth should be?

Whoa. Talk about junk in the trunk. Does one sentence really need to carry all of that weight? Let’s see what happens when we force it to miss a few meals:

Was it so unusual to keep the head of a snowman alive in his freezer, he wondered.

Better than the paleo diet! Trim, concise and still compelling enough to pull you into the next sentence about the coal eyes and the carrot nose. Speaking of coal eyes and a carrot nose, have you ever wondered where the tradition of building a snowman came from? No, you haven’t? Oh, well, never mind, back to the writing exercise and our slim new opening sentence.

Was it so unusual to keep the head of a snowman alive in his freezer, he wondered, the coal eyes and the carrot nose moldy with frost from 47 days’ age in cold storage, the Scottish plaid scarf around its no-neck as frigid and stiff as his wife when she left to pick the kids up from school and never came back, or was it a cruel world unsympathetic to a traumatic melt thirty years prior—“puh-uh-uhddles, Mommy!”—that had also dissolved the part of his brain that would have, among other things, prevented him from embezzling from his children’s thriving fruity-chews vaccination business to keep building a corncob pipe collection to find the one pipe, the one pipe, Mr. McShivers wouldn’t spit out of the place on his face where presumably his mouth should be?

Whoa! What happened? I take my eyes off you for a minute and you’ve ballooned.

Well you said it, you can’t just eat one package of Oreos. And you know the cookies with the Hershey kisses on top? I had about 70 of those. Also, I’m taking my cereal with eggnog these days.

Oh my. How about celery sticks for a snack instead of all those commas? Maybe a light jog around the park to lose that “or” in the middle?

Was it so unusual to keep the head of a snowman alive in his freezer, he wondered, the coal eyes and the carrot nose moldy with frost from 47 days’ age in cold storage, the Scottish plaid scarf around its no-neck as frigid and stiff as his wife when she left to pick the kids up from school and never came back.

Very nice, now you can see your toes without that big old question mark hanging out. By the way, have you ever wondered about the origin of the question

Hey, pass that tub of frosting over here! 

No. Stop it. Put it down. Not with the big spoon!

Was it so unusual to keep the head of a snowman alive in his freezer, he wondered, the coal eyes and the carrot nose moldy with frost from 47 days’ age in cold storage, the Scottish plaid scarf around its no-neck as frigid and stiff as his wife when she left to pick the kids up from school and never came back, or was it a cruel world unsympathetic to a traumatic melt thirty years prior—“puh-uh-uhddles, Mommy!”—that had also dissolved the part of his brain that would have, among other things, prevented him from embezzling from his children’s thriving fruity-chews vaccination business to keep building a corncob pipe collection to find the one pipe, the one pipe, Mr. McShivers wouldn’t spit out of the place on his face where presumably his mouth should be?

Aren’t you at least embarrassed by all the hyphens? You can’t even fasten the top three buttons on your shirt.

You know what? I’m okay with how I look. I’ve got shape, I’ve got rhythm, I feel like a boulder rolling downhill, even though I usually drive. I think I’ve even got room for more words. 

Okay, that’s enough.

How about you make me a nice bacon-wrapped Thesaurus?

(Writing) Exercise over!