Wake up to writing

Take a pen and paper to bed with you tonight. The moment you wake up, put pen to paper and write for the requisite 10 minutes. New brain energy makes for interesting words!

Fantasy room

Take a moment to really look at this rather magical room, then write a scene set in it. If you need help to get started, consider these questions: Who lives here? Clearly there's a meal about to take place, but what's the occasion? Is someone coming for a visit? And what are the stories behind some of those interesting bits and pieces? 

Description

Find an object in nature. A rock, a branch, a shell on the beach. Use all your senses to explore it. How does it smell? feel? look? sound? Write for 10 minutes without naming your object, describing it in detail to someone who has never seen one. (Perhaps they're from another planet?) If a narrative theme introduces itself, go with it.

Self love (or not)

Write two poems, one to your favourite body part, another to your least favourite body part. They do not have to rhyme.

Sensory exercise

Close your eyes. Run your fingers over your face and neck, focusing on receiving touch. Write for five minutes. Carry out the same process, but this time focus on how your fingers feel giving touch. Write for five minutes. The trick is to try and isolate the "receiving" to your skin from the "sending" of your fingers. Tricky, but fun. Fear not if you go off on a tangent – that's the fun of writing.

Verb Ate Him

Consider the lyrics below. It's a song I wrote during a writing exercise where verbs were forbidden, about the day I visited the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art and watched a video of David Beckham sleeping. It's not the world's greatest song, but hopefully it will give you a sense of what can be achieved (mostly) without verbs.

Write for 10 minutes without a verb, beginning with "Rain on my face...". Don't get too hung up if the odd verb pops out – "is" and "are" are particularly difficult to avoid :)

David Asleep

Buskers down on Circular Quay
Coffee in the air, sunlight on the Manly ferry
A cafe, soup thick with roasted chestnuts
Two courses for just thirty nine bucks.

Far above this literal world
On the fourth floor of the museum
Impossibly fair, those lips, that hair
Just he and I
David asleep.

Fashionably unshaven
I would that mouth a kiss
Lick of lip and turn of head
Grow in me this silent need

So unfair, such lush perfection
Orb of eye safe beneath that shining skin
A perfect nose, this silent child
Mangoes ripening on the wind

Golden chain upon his skin
I am (damn! a verb!) hunger
I am every woman
If those eyes be open, death for me
Too much, that look
David asleep.

Copyright Jane Cornes May 2006

Adjectives are us

Many of us use way too many adjectives in our writing. Without getting too tied up with grammar, adjectives are used to describe nouns, as in "the red dress" or "the grumpy man". I love this quote from the grammar.ccc website, "Let your broad-shouldered verbs and nouns do the hard work of description". Take the following sentence as an example: "Her red dress rose in the cold wind, sending pinprick shivers up her slim, brown body." Without adjectives it reads thus: "Her dress rose in the wind, sending shivers across her body". If you're interested in seeing how a published author does it, check out the work of Raymond Carver, whose short stories are renowned for their lack of adjectival flounce. Such writing allows the reader to "see" the action more clearly - it's almost like reading a screenplay with directions to the actors. Have a go at writing for 10 minutes without any adjectives, beginning with the words "There were pigeons on the window sill". A useful overview of adjectives is to be found here: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm