The Write Blog

This week we have some advice passed on to me from best-selling author Karleen Koen.  Your assignment:  Write something, anything, every morning.  No need for prompts like those we gave you in a recent post.  No, this exercise is completely freestyle. 

Keep Your Mind and Fingers Nimble Every Day

As a writer, even if you aren’t working on a particular project, you will benefit greatly from daily practice, like Hemingway’s write-500-words-every-single-day devotion we mentioned in a recent post. And as we’ve also said before, even the world’s greatest musicians practice on their instrument every day.  They hone their skills, keep their artistic inspirations fresh, and even discover new things about their talent. 

Writing can actually be a lot like playing an instrument. Imagine sitting down at a piano and just playing around with the keys, plinking out a light, brief little ditty off the top of your head.  Now compare that to sitting down in front of your computer and tapping out a few words, whatever comes to mind.  You’re just goofing around, right?  No pressure.

But you may stumble across a good setting, a useful piece of imagery, or some clever dialogue.  You may even get to meet a character screaming out that she has a story to tell you, speaking to you from your brain to your fingertips as you “jam” on your instrument of choice, be it your computer or one of those yellow legal notepads or a beautiful moleskine.  (Have you ever heard of a moleskine?  They are legendary little pocket journals used for scribbling inspirations and ideas, cherished by artistic geniuses like Van Gogh, Picasso, and our pal Hemingway.)

Open Your Mind As Soon As You Open Your Eyes (and Maybe Yawn and Stretch, Too)

Koen believes in writing first thing in the morning.  To Koen, it’s an exercise to get her brain going, not an attempt to generate useable copy.  She suggests taking just about fifteen minutes, or maybe just three pages, whatever comes first, and simply writing whatever comes to mind.  Best of all, she does this even before the coffee is ready.  You can do it while you’re still in bed, even.  At that time of the morning, your mind is still half-asleep, with one foot still in the wonderful, bizarre world of your dreams, where some of the best ideas come from.

Wash Your Face, Comb Your Hair . . . and Brush Up Your Writing Skills

Add to your morning ablutions a rinsing of your thoughts.  Let them wash away from your mind and onto the page.  It may just be a few hundred words of randomness, a jumbled mix of what you dreamt the night before and what’s on your mind about what you have to do that day.  But there’s more than one reason this little exercise is so valuable. 

Yes, it is a wonderful way to sow and eventually reap some great ideas, and practice is always beneficial, no matter what you are practicing.  But you’ll have also put your thoughts in a writer’s mindset, right from the minute you wake up.  You’ll be able to spend the rest of the day seeing the world through your writer’s eyes, even more sharply and acutely than you usually do.  You will find a symphony of inspiration everywhere you look. 

I guess it’s like waking up and putting on your glasses right away so you can see more clearly.  Oh, I could compare this exercise to a million different beneficial behaviors, but the bottom line is: it’s great.  So tomorrow morning, give it a try! 

Hemingway made sure he wrote no less than 500 words a day, every day.  Faulkner always drank whiskey when he wrote, while Balzac is known to have sometimes consumed more than ten cups of espresso per day while he was working.  Thomas Wolfe allegedly prefers to write while standing up.  Getting sloshed while working may not guarantee you’ll be the next Faulkner.  Still, you may find that you’ll produce better, more effective work under certain circumstances.  Here are a few suggestions for creating the best writing conditions for you:

1)      Tune In or Tune Out

Some people need absolute silence in order to work. Go into a quiet room, shut the door, and even turn on a fan or a white noise machine to reduce all ambient noise.

Some people prefer to have a little company while they work, perhaps with some inspiring music, or just the soothing murmur of a turned-low TV.  Whether or not noise is bothersome or helpful, you can easily manipulate your environment to suit your needs.  If you are working in public, headphones can offer gentle background noise or white out the hustle of your surroundings.   

2)      Easy on the Eyes

Your mother’s admonition that you’ll “strain your eyes” if you try to read or write in dim light is really just an old wives’ tale.  In fact, you’ll no more strain your eyes trying to work in dim light than you would strain your ears if you try to listen really hard.  However, dim light will make you have to work a little harder to see (but it won’t cause any damage to your eyes).  So, make sure you have just enough light for you to comfortably see what you’re doing.  Many modern laptops come with a little work light built-in.  Just check your manual to see if yours has one, and how to turn it on.  It comes in handy if you want to work on an overnight airplane flight, or while your spouse is trying to sleep next to you.

3)      Comfortable Creativity

Speaking of sleeping, I prefer to write while in bed, propped up against lots of pillows, with my computer on my lap.  If my body is comfortable, my mind is able to concentrate on the work at hand.  But perhaps other writers might find themselves too comfortable in my preferred position, and may wind up drifting off to sleep.  So, perhaps try sitting up at a desk or a table, back straight, feet flat on the floor, hands poised above the keyboard at the ready.  It may take some trial and error, but you’ll find your most comfortable writing position, probably somewhere in between my cozy-in-bed style and Wolfe’s standing up. 

All the great novelists will admit to at least one little habit that binds them to their work, which makes it their own.  Joan Didion says that: “when I’m near the end of the book, [I] sleep in the same room with it. . . . Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it.”  But before you get to those really personal idiosyncrasies, you have to start the basic creature comforts of writing.  And once you satisfy your sensory needs, your thoughts will turn inward and you’ll find yourself doing what you set out to do: write.

Even the world’s greatest musicians practice daily and spend time warming up before every single performance.  As a writer, you, too, need to work your creative muscles with some exercises designed to challenge your creativity, stretch your limits, and rev your writing engine. 

Spend no more than ten minutes on each of these prompts.  Set an alarm to snap you out of your writing frenzy, and then take a look at what you’ve created.  It could be trash, or it could be treasure.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s practice.  But it’s pretty fun practice.

1)      Every writer has a target audience, whether you are writing marketing material to a specific demographic or you are writing a novel you want your father to love. Take a few minutes to describe your target audience, working your way to your one ideal reader.  Is it a he or a she?  Is he reading while sipping a mocha latte?  What does he want to know; what’s important to him?  Does he tend to wear the same belt every day, even if it doesn’t match his outfit?  If you create your ideal reader in your head, you may almost feel like you are writing for just that person, and your copy will take on a great personal tone. 

2)      Select a random picture from a magazine or even from your family photo album.  Now try to recreate that picture in words.  Describe not only what you see, but what you sense: If there are people, what are the thoughts going through the people’s heads?  Is there drama, tension?  If it is a nature scene, get the reader to feel the sand between their toes, hear the rustle of the wind through the leaves, or shiver in the clammy mist that rises from the wet grass.  If a picture is worth a thousand words, a thousand words should be worth a picture, right?

3)      Pull out the thesaurus and randomly choose five words.  Now, whatever words you’ve got, try to write a short piece that uses all of them.  It’s a writer’s challenge that inspires some serious creativity and some very interesting short stories!

I’ll end with my favorite anecdote about a writing exercise similar to #3:

The urban legend goes that a college professor challenged his creative writing class to write a short essay containing each of the following elements:

• Religion
• Royalty
• Sex
• Mystery

The only A+ essay read:

“’My God,’ said the Queen.  “I’m pregnant!  I wonder whose it is?”