Category Archives: writing prompts and exercises

Jesse Stong’s Writer’s Warm-Up

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Early on in the lock-down for covid-19, the owner of the little local grocery store noticed I was rushing round his store and practically jumping into the freezer or bakery rack when other shoppers came too close.

He told me to relax, slow down. “You must surrender,” he said. “What will be, will be.”

“I’m not ready to surrender,” I told him. “I’ve a novel to write.”

Working on my first novel has been a godsend during the lock-down. The thought that I might die before I finished it gave me new focus and drive, but there came a point when I found I needed some outside energy…especially for developing the back stories of my secondary characters.

Developing back stories is always a slow business for me. So much to explore beneath the tip of the iceberg!

Iceberg off Fogo Island 2018

There are plenty of writing prompts available online, dozens of questionnaires to use when interrogating fictional characters. They just don’t do the trick for me.

Then through the ELAN newsletter (Quebec’s English Language Arts Network) I discovered Jesse Stong’s Writers’ Warm-Ups at Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal.

Jesse’s Writers’ Warm-Ups are speedy (15 minutes) and energetic, and the prompts are terrific. He breaks them down into bite-sized, ‘get to the meat of it’, no over-thinking segments which always spark some kind of useful information or insight about a character. I especially love the Meryl Streep-inspired prompts!

Jesse twins each Warm-Up with a charity. If you donate, you can send him what you’ve written and he’ll give you feedback. How great is that?

Live-streamed every Monday and Friday at 10:15 a.m., but if you can’t make those times, you can catch up on Jesse Stong’s Warm-Ups later, as I do.

 

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End of Year Sharing of Writing and Creative Resources

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In my last post of the year, I’d like to share some links to websites, posts and articles that have been particularly useful for me this year.

Some are helpful in terms of writing craft or writing life or creativity, others are inspirational, and yet others energizing. Some are just fun. Some are all of the above! All make me want to write.

Enjoy! Continue reading →

Writing Warm Up: Choose A Letter, Any Letter

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I love writing warm ups – or any kind of creative warm up – that are fun and a challenge.

My warm up this morning comes from WordPress’ Daily Prompt: Fearful Symmetry: Choose a letter and write with every sentence starting with that letter.

I instantly thought “m”. Of course I then immediately wanted to choose another letter, but I believe (from experience rather than from any supporting scientific evidence) that it’s important to go with one’s first gut response to a creative challenge.

“Should you be writing this sort of stuff?” someone asked me after reading one of my writing warm ups. “Aren’t you wasting your time?”

That’s not the point. The point of a writing warm up is Continue reading →

Writing Lessons From Three-Letter Words

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From WordPress today, a challenge to write a post without using a single three letter word.

I am never able to resist a tightly restrictive challenge!

As soon as I start, I find three-letter words wanting to jump into every sentence I write. I have to include them: not but and the who can are all (*numbers below refer to these outlawed words)

Is there a writing lesson in this challenge? What am I to do in my writing today if I want to keep to these designated guidelines?

  • stay positive (#1*: “I do want to go….”)
  • agree (#2: no objections)
  • state things simply, in short sentences. Insert a period where this word might normally go (#3)
  • give your writing a punch by omitting this word (#3 again). Instead, stack up clauses using commas.
  • experiment with multiples (#4: some, several, those…)
  •  be vague or personal (again #4: “I tripped over a…”  “I tripped over your…”)
  •  go high-falutin’ (#5: “whomsoever aspires to write a post without using…”)
  •  delete whenever it pops up (#6: is it actually necessary in your sentence?)
  •  find those fancy verbs or employ (!) simple forms of verbs (#7)
  •  divide (#8: “everyone except Marianne…”)

Constraints And Creativity: A Coffee Break Writing Challenge

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Want a fun writing challenge for your coffee break this morning?

Here’s a prompt that will put a sparkle in your synapses and a skip in your step.

Author Sharon Callaghan* came up with it for Greene Writers this week. Impossible, no way, you’re joking, we said. The boundaries seemed just too restrictive. But we were bowled over by what we produced.

Teachers of creative movement learn quickly that constraints help creativity. If you say “OK, so go ahead and make a dance” students talk and yawn, and can hardly get themselves up from the floor. If you say “Make a dance in which you cannot move from the spot, using only three parts of your body” there is the usual resistance for a couple of minutes, then you see only intense focus, concentration and energy…and exciting idiosyncratic, dynamic and Continue reading →

The Sound Of Words: Writing Lessons From The Birds

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Frigate Bird - Galapagos

When you hear birds singing, do you listen to what they are saying?

I’m no birder. Not me. I can only identify the most obvious – blue jay, cardinal, nuthatch… Even so, my spirits lift every spring when I hear the birds singing again.

I now recognize some of the bird calls even if I can’t match call to bird or identify many of the birds I see.

One bird I call the ‘bath tub bird’ because its burbly, warbly call sounds like one of those old-fashioned whistles that kids used to play with in the bath, filling it with water before blowing. The quick chit-chit-chit of a pair of birds living in the blackberry bushes is a special delight. And the clear liquid song of another bird high in the maple trees.

This last weekend I decided to try and find out what some of these birds are. A lesson in writing humility. Continue reading →

Go Squeeze Words

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pencils rich in wordsDo you read what artists in other disciplines are writing about?

I am always surprised by how helpful blogs and books about photography or visual arts or theater (or any art form) can be for my own writing or movement creativity.

“Think like a painter. Think like a musician. Think like a surgeon. Don’t think, just write.”  Lisa Moore (Prism International, 2009)

I’ve been receiving ideas, advice, inspiration and encouragement from artist Robert Genn’s always entertaining twice-weekly newsletters for years. His recent passing will be a great loss to those who enjoyed his writings, paintings and teaching.

His daughter Sara, also a visual artist, is picking up the torch and continuing her father’s newsletter tradition. In last week’s newsletter she celebrated her father with a moving and inspiring tribute.

Robert Genn was a master of pithy quotations. One in particular that Sara shared, snagged my attention: Continue reading →

Creative Grocery List: An Evening With Peter Carey and Josip Novakovich

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little wooden man with veggiesI have a very unwriterly reason for having a soft spot for Peter Carey: my godmother was a fervent fan of his.

I remember a wonderful visit with her years ago in her little house (oh how I loved her royal blue bathtub and loo), listening to her talk in great excitement over tea and cake about “this marvelous new Australian writer” and his newly published first novel “Oscar and Lucinda.”

So when I heard the two-time Booker Prize winner was coming to Montreal to discuss “the writing of inspiration” with Globe and Mail’s Arts Editor Jared Bland at Concordia University, how could I not go? Especially as they were to be joined by Booker short-listed author Josip Novakovich, the master, I discovered last year, of the art of hilarious-but-serious anecdotes.

How to begin

Continue reading →

Writing and the Dynamics of Smell

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I watched a mother pass sample pots of dry teas to her young son in a local tea store. Oranges, he said, sniffing at the tin his mother held out while at the same time continuing to tease his little brother. Grapefruit. Vanilla. Mint. He got them all. I thought about writing and the sense of smell.

Smell for Narrative Energy

In Edinburgh last year, I was entranced by the installation “It Happens When The Body Is Anatomy Of Time” by Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The fragrance of spices, cloves, cumin, turmeric, pervaded the room, bringing the visual artwork – lycra ‘skins’, the stitching details, the colour and lighting – alive, and making the installation a sensual and exciting experience. Continue reading →