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!

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.