[-writing, exercise-]

Writing takes activity. You have to write the words down on the page. Everyone knows that. But what’s going on inside as you make that effort to put a story together? Think about the issue of control and how it does or doesn’t work for you. We tend to think of energy, activity, the doing part of it as the most important. But consider another viewpoint. Here’s what Brenda Ueland says about it:

Willing is doing something you know already, something you have been told by somebody else; there is no new imaginative understanding in it. And presently your soul gets frightfully sterile and dry because you are so quick, snappy and efficient about doing one thing after another that you have not time for your own ideas to come in and develop and gently shine.

In this spirit, here’s a daydreaming exercise to foster the idea of letting go so that you can dream something up rather than just jotting something down.

Sit in front of your computer. Look at the keyboard for a few moments. Put your fingers on the keys and type a sentence. Type ANYTHING.
For example:

your thoughts:
• I am typing a sentence.
• This is a stupid exercise.
• I hate this.
• What am I doing this for?

whatever comes into your head, no matter how weird:

• Dogs with feathers would create nests in their sleep.
• Wallpaper hides cracks and peels when it’s old.
• My teeth might crumble before I die.

the most random nonsense you can come up with:
• Jumbled crossover blinks always allay floods.
• Accessing liverwurst can be the answer to pink socks.
• Everyone jousts because the ghostly phone didn’t ring.

Now here’s the hard part. As soon as you’ve put the period on your sentence, delete it.

As fast as you can, type something else.

Delete that.

Keep doing it for at least ten minutes, more if you can tolerate it.

Now begin your writing for the day.

This exercise does three important things:

1. It loosens your mind by making flighty associations and spurring imaginative juxtapositions on the page
2. It clears the mind of the top layer of dry, tired dirt so that the underlying fertile soil is available to you
3. It provides practice in letting go of words.
   This is a valuable lesson for a writer because we all tend to love what comes out of us. Our words are our babies and we don’t like to make them disappear once they are on the paper. But we have to know how as well as when to delete. This will help.

[-tip, practices-]

simple practices have profound impacts

Most of us tend to work better and - more importantly, finish! - if we have a deadline. If you don’t have a *real* one, try this as a mental trick.

Seek out a real world or an online individual or group. Set imaginary, but realistic, deadlines for yourselves and then urge each other to stick to them.

You’ll be surprise how much it helps even when the deadline has no consequences associated with it.

It’s also amazing how much it motivates to know that someone *out there* cares whether or not you keep going!

Don’t be discouraged if you have to try several groups or people before you find the right rapport. Discovering like-minded people is worth it, so keep looking if you haven’t found them yet.

If you belong to a group that helps in this way, post a comment to let others know.

For writers: NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month
For artists: Illustration Friday

[-exercise, writing-]

If you’re having trouble getting started in fiction or need a helpful exercise, try this:

ONE TRUE MEMORY/TWO LIES

• Choose one real childhood memory.
• Make up a lie that relates to that true incident.
• If you think of them as lies instead of ‘using your imagination’ it won’t throw you into a creative crisis of confidence.
  Lie innocently … as a child might.
• Then make up one more lie, this one more brazen. Have fun with it!
• Write for 20 - 30 minutes about these three and see what happens. Try this every day for a week without looking back at what you’ve written. Next week you can evaluate if you have anything that you’d like to expand upon but as a beginning, keep it in the realm of - you guessed it - practice

.

TRIGGERS

Is your MIND BLANK? Suddenly you can’t think of anything that happened to you in your childhood?
Here are some triggers:

• * source of heat
• * what we ate on Sundays
• * report cards/grades

Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces