It’s not as dangerous as ski jumping or skeleton of course, but we all know that sitting to write for long periods can cause significant damage to the body.
Here are some easy exercises to incorporate into your writing day.
Wishing you a happy, healthy and inspired year of writing!
Clasp your hands behind your back. Pull your Continue reading
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
Fanny Fanny
by César Baldacinni
Feel like it’s time for a change in your writing? Looking for portals that might lead you to different kinds of stories or different styles of writing from your usual? Try this exercise!
The exercise has two parts. The first – how to write this exercise – comes courtesy of Montréal poet Blossom Thom*, the second – the prompt – is from me.
You will need plenty of paper (I’d suggest good sized paper, not an itsy-bitsy notebook), and a pen or pencil.
But first, a warm up to power up both sides of the brain!
Warm Up
Clasp your hands in front of you. Note which thumb is on top. Open your hands and clasp them again, this time with the other thumb on top. Clasp and re-clasp your hands, alternating thumbs on top, as fast as you can.
Now do the same hand clasping exercise behind your back! Faster!
Part 1: Get Ready…
Using pen or pencil, you will write with Continue reading
Site/Interlude by David Moore
In life we constantly shift between different ways of experiencing the world – between inner and outer lives, between doing and thinking, dreaming, remembering, talking, between being (in one’s body) and interacting with people, things. We shift between emotions, between judging, enjoying and complaining, between sensing and moving.
Forcing a character to experience similar rapid shifts disrupts linear thinking, often producing Continue reading
Shadows II by Jaume Plensa
MMBA on loan from Georges Marciano
Nothing perks up a piece of prose – and a writer – more than playing around with sentence structures.
A fun exercise I especially enjoy is to take a sentence that feels totally alien and try to write my own sentence in exactly that same style. Why? To surprise myself. To kick myself out of my same old same old ho-hum sentence habits. To discover new rhythms.
“I’m playing with words” Virginia Woolf
The Exercise Continue reading
Yesterday, at the National Arts Gallery in Ottawa, we were walking up the ramp along the glass wall to the galleries behind two young boys with their mother.
An elderly, very smartly dressed couple started down the ramp. The man stopped as he and his wife were about to pass the boys. He leaned towards them. Pursing his lips, he started to Continue reading
Caught up in the flow of writing, the last thing on my mind is how I am sitting. I only think about that when an actual pain starts interfering with my writing. An aching shoulder, a stiff neck… Continue reading
Susi Lovell 