WRITER'S BLOCK: PREPARATION FOR USING WRITING EXERCISES

I have avoided the topic of using writing exercises because until now I have not wanted you, the reader and writer, to falsely believe that you need writing exercises in order to write.

Sometimes we do need to be externally prompted – reading a book on writing often does it for me.  Others I know get going simply because they have been given a writing assignment, whether as a professional,  in school, or for some other purpose.

So, I do NOT want to discredit the vaue of writing exercises.  Still there are so many possible exercises available that we can distract ourselves – and I've often seen it – into believing that without writing exercises we cannot write.

I will, in other posts, talk about writing exercises (for a starter, you may want to look at Natalie Goldberg's Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life) if you haven't already done so.

One of the excellent aspects of Natalie's Wild Mind is her identification of what she calls "The Rules of Writing Practice."  (p.1)  The major idea behind these rules is "It's better to figure out what you want to say in the actual act of writing."    She's quite clear in saying that "If you learn writing practice well it's a good foundation for all other writing." (p.5)

There are seven rules, the details of which can be found in Chapter 1 of Wild Mind:

"(1) Keep your hand moving.

(2) Lose control.

(3) Be specific.

(4) Don't think.

(5) Don't worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar.

(6) You are free to write the worst junk in America.

(7) Go for the jugular."

Natalie Goldberg is best known for Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within.  A good and important read if you haven't read it yet.  Still, Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life needs to be added to the "Natalie Goldberg set."