Jumping Jacks for Writers

January is a time when thoughts turn to exercise, it’s time to get your body in shape, one of those New Year’s Resolutions that you hope will actually be accomplished this year. Indeed, last year, I did the Couch 2 5K program which takes you from Couch Potato to running a 5K in 9 weeks. It’s simple: the first week you run 1 minute, walk 1.5 minutes and repeat that 8 times. The slow build is great. In fact, I had surgery in July, and repeated the program in September to get me going again. Yes. I can run a 5K. S-l-o-w-l-y. But I can run it.

January is also a good time to get your writing in shape. Do you need an exercise program for your writing? Do you need to make yourself write every single day, without fail? Here are some options.

750words.com is a website that will send you a daily reminder that you should write 750 words today. It’s great fun because you get badges for each level that you pass. You may get a badge for writing 3 days in a row or 7 days in a row. These extrinsic rewards aren’t the reason to write, but they are playful and fun and, yes, motivational. Of course, the real reward is the writing that you’ll get done.

You may want to pick up a book of writing exercises, instead, and slowly work through it. I like Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir, by Natalie Goldberg. I haven’t used it to write memoirs, exactly. Instead, when I am stuck on a character issue, I will flip through the pages to find a likely prompt and write it from that character’s POV. And I’ve used it just as writing prompts for certain periods of time.

Here’s Goldberg’s prompt for “Something” (p. 122):
“Go. Find something ordinary and tell us about it.”

I'll add that you should repeat this for each point-of-view character in your new novel. Try to find a place to insert it and make it work.

Or, here’s the prompt for "No" (p. 141):
“Begin a ten-minute writing with No Thank You. Every time you get stuck, write No Thank You again and keep going.”

What offer(s) do your characters need to keep rejecting? Why are they rejecting the offer(s)?

Write! Exercise your vocabulary, use some words that stretch you and your readers. Think of three other things where you can reach out of your comfort zone for the words you put on the page.

Exercise. After all, isn’t the point to get ourselves going—exercising our writing abilities—and to keep going?

What is your favorite book for writing prompts?

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Darcy Pattison blogs about how-to-write at Fiction Notes and blogs about education at CommonCoreStandards.com