Exercises
- Write prose. Write a few paragraphs describing a photograph, write a rant that's too funny to be angry, just write whatever. Some of your writing may blossom into songs, the rest will simply be good writing practice.
Object Writing
Object writing is an exercise (best performed daily), whereby we set a timer for 10 minutes, pick an object at random, and write about it. Our writing doesn't need to stay focus on the object. Meandering from object to object is in fact preferred. Write using access to the five senses, plus two more:
- Organic - crawl; crouching; ducking; scrunching shoulders tight; stand up quick; tingling along back and neck; when I squint
- Kinesthetic - tingling along my back and neck reminding me; avoid rusty nails waiting patiently above for my back or head to forget them; don't stand up; I could feel Mom above me
Object writing is best done in the morning, so that we can gain the benefits of being in that mode throughout the day.
We can thinking of Object writing as "what" writing (also, to lesser extents, "who", "when" and "where")
- "who" is good for character development. Go people watching, ask yourself questions about the people you see. What did they dream of being when they were younger? Do they get along with their younger sibling? Try writing from the perspective of someone else
Metaphors
- Choose 5 random nouns, and 5 random adjectives and make noun-adjective pairs at random
- Write a short piece that uses the combination to attempt to extract its meaning
Example pairs:
- smoky conversation
- refried railroad
- decaffeinated rainbow
- hollow rainforest
- understated eyebrows
Example:
- "everything about her was subtle. Even her very existence. She'd walk into a room, and you'd hardly know she was there. It wasn't just her presence that made you feel a lack of any kind of emotional response. It was her face. Her hair was a shade of non-descript brown, and she wore glasses that lacked any sort of definitive shaped, all topped off by her dull, yet understated eyebrows"