Writing Exercise from the archives. IN THE SUMMER TIME…
We need to make the most of the summer so today’s exercise is very simple: go outside to write whenever you have the chance. But do it in a way that’s different to previous times. Avoid your favourite coffee shop or if you must go there, don’t sit in your usual seat.
We are such creatures of habit. I know as a creative writing tutor that students tend to sit in the same seat week after week. (And I do too whenever I attend a class.) Of course, as a tutor that makes my life easier as it is a great aid to learning names but one of my jobs is to contrive ways of moving people around, mixing it up a bit and giving the left hand side of the class a chance to talk to those on the right, because who knows a new best friend might be sitting over there or someone who says something that connects with an idea that has floateda round in your mind for awhile and wham! a s story is born.
And doing things differently also applies to how you write. I’ve read a lot of claptrap over the years about how you’re supposed to do it, usually in favour of writing everything out longhand. There was even an argument that the direct connection from the heart to the hand allows for greater creativity while the cold sterility of word processing produces more mechanical results. Double claptrap! We all find a way of writing that first draft that somehow feels right for us, maybe in ways that’s hard to define: if that means purple ink on yellow notepaper sobeit. What works works and there is no ‘should’ about it.
photo credit: Seen of summer. via photopin (license)
I am the only one in my family who has never learned how to touch type, despite the fact that I am the only one in my family who has always earned my living through words in some way or other. Yet ‘real’ writing for me has always been typing or word processing. Handwriting seems too ephemeral; too easy to scribble over, ok for notes but not for a proper well-crafted sentence. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense but that’s the habit I’ve got into so when I write in a cafe or on a train it is because I have my laptop with me.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What I’m suggesting is break the habits that you’ve acquired and see what happens. If you do usually write by hand, discard your notebook (just for this exercise, not completely) and write on sheets of A4 paper stapled together. Or go to a pound shop and buy an old school “exercise book” with lined pages and cheap paper that has the feel of old fashioned blotters. Alternatively, treat yourself to an expensive notebook with thick creamy paper and justify it by committing to covering every page by the end of the week or by the end of the good weather which ever comes first.
Disrupt your writing routine in someway.
Write sitting on a park bench near a playground with squeals of ‘look at me, Mum, look at me’ in the background; write sitting on a bench anywhere, by a bus stop or on the side of a busy road where you can smell hot tyres and the remains of a late night takeaway in the gutter. Catch a bus. Sit under a sunshade in a pub garden. Go into your own garden or sit on your own balcony, carving out half an hour of uninterrupted time for yourself.
And if you do all that and can’t think what to write start off with this line: I don’t know what to write…and keep on writing until something comes.
5 comments on “Writing Exercise from the archives. IN THE SUMMER TIME…”
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BRIDGET WHELAN writer 
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog and commented:
Points to Ponder from Bridget 😀
Love this post just means get on with it any which way, or witch way come to that some writing needs a spell, take care ann
What great advice. I am such a creature of routine, but when I break out (usually by accident) it always feels great. Some new experience is always around the corner. Loved it, Bridget.
I don’t know about the heart but I have read that because theres a physical connection that writing by hand is different to typing. Kind of in the same way proofing work on a screen is not as effective as a hard copy. But then hardcopies are impractical in certain situations, just as writing a novel long hand is. I think it’s kind of like more gets lodged in your brain as it would if you took notes rather than just reading someone elses. Whatever makes you write works for me.
Reblogged this on Barrow Blogs: and commented:
Thanks Bridget. Brilliant suggestions here for all writers (and fellow tutors) Off into the garden !Er – when I’ve caught up on social media, of course.Jx