Write three pages longhand every morning, before you get out of bed, about anything, no matter what
This reminds me of an exercise one of my high school English teachers had us do one semester. The first 10 minutes were spent writing as much as we possibly could (longhand, of course), about anything that came to mind. I can only assume it was for a similar purpose. He'd put a phrase, question or keyword on the board at the start of each period, and we could (but weren't obliged to) use it as a jumping off point. I stumbled across that notebook a few years back, and what was immediately noticeable was that I was using that time to write things like "I wonder how much time is left?" and "This is stupid" and "Hmm, what can I say about today's keyword?" and minor things about the day. Very amusing in retrospect, but hardly profound, nor did it have any impact that I could see on my creativity or ability to write something else. Now, granted, that was a time limit, not a page limit, and we were encouraged to write constantly in that time, not sit and think a lot, but still - I can see how the forced "write about anything" time doesn't work for everyone.
A more helpful bit of advice for specific writing projects came from heinous_bitca, who suggested that if I was struggling with a story, to write at least three sentences every day for it, even if they sucked. Something about how, once you get three sentences in, your brain often writes one more, and one more, and soon you have two paragraphs. Sometimes I got more and sometimes it was only the three sentences, but at least it was forward progress of some sort.
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Date: 2005-06-09 10:39 am (UTC)This reminds me of an exercise one of my high school English teachers had us do one semester. The first 10 minutes were spent writing as much as we possibly could (longhand, of course), about anything that came to mind. I can only assume it was for a similar purpose. He'd put a phrase, question or keyword on the board at the start of each period, and we could (but weren't obliged to) use it as a jumping off point. I stumbled across that notebook a few years back, and what was immediately noticeable was that I was using that time to write things like "I wonder how much time is left?" and "This is stupid" and "Hmm, what can I say about today's keyword?" and minor things about the day. Very amusing in retrospect, but hardly profound, nor did it have any impact that I could see on my creativity or ability to write something else. Now, granted, that was a time limit, not a page limit, and we were encouraged to write constantly in that time, not sit and think a lot, but still - I can see how the forced "write about anything" time doesn't work for everyone.
A more helpful bit of advice for specific writing projects came from