write regularly

Borrowed from http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/writingexercises.html :

Take this extremely short and dull bit of dialogue. Rewrite it, adding more. First, write it as a conversation between a teenage boy and an elderly woman. What you add may include longer speeches, more speeches, a setting, descriptions of the people, how they say things, their gestures, and anything else you want to add. Now write it again, as if spoken by two people in love, of any age. Then try it again as… ???

Here is the bare-bones dialogue:

Hi.

Hi.

Where were you?

Nowhere.

I found an interesting technique called ‘Writers Tennis’ in which two people write a story together, like so:

One of you writes a few paragraphs of a story. It can be about anything. You then pass it on to your writing partner who then writes the next paragraph and so on and so on. If you both try to keep the two parts of the story consistent you can achieve interesting results.

This sounds interesting enough, however I do not have a lot of friends who would take this as seriously as I would, so I am putting the call forward: I would like to try this technique over email with a stranger. If you’re an aspiring writer who would be interested in participating, leave me a comment! Perhaps this will be the begining of a long and fufilling email friendship.

_{http://www.oneofus.co.uk/index.php/writing_tips/writing_exercises}

Copied from http://shachihoko.homestead.com/1exercise.html :

This is a training exercise. It helps condition the muscles necessary for making haiku.

Write down what month this is.

Next to the month write another single word that names or indicates some feature of today (sun, rain, moon, clouds, wind, whatever).

Now look out the window, or go outside.

Without thinking too much (or at all, if you can manage) write a short description of any detail you see (any thing and/or any action).

Look in another direction. Write a short description of any detail you see (thing and/or action).

Turn your head and write down another detail.

Do this at least 7 more times.

Really.

When you have at least ten little descriptive phrases, none of them longer than a single short sentence, please, go to a comfortable spot and choose one of your phrases and write part of it on the line immediately beneath the line you wrote when you first started.

Write the rest of your chosen phrase on the line beneath that one.

Skip a line.

Write down the same month and the same detail of today you used on the first line.

Write part of one of the remaining phrases on the next line.

Write the rest of that phrase on the following line.

Do this until you run out of phrases.

This is only an exercise, not a test. Do not pass any judgements on yourself, on your performance, or on what you have written. Do the best you can.

_November trees
shadows stretching all the way
across the lawn

November trees
a white car speeding along
the river road_

Put this sheet of paper with at least ten little balls of words out of sight. You do not need to think about them at all for a while.

Tomorrow, repeat this exercise. Completely. Don’t think.

Really.

The day after tomorrow, repeat this exercise. Don’t think.

On the fourth day, after you complete your exercise, take out the first sheet and read it several times (three or four is enough), and put it away.

On the fifth day, read the second sheet.

In one week, a single week, just seven days, you will have taught yourself more about haiku than it’s possible for anyone else to teach you.

Really.