Writing Everyday Exercise - Remembering Smells

WRITING EXERCISE -

Remembered smells. What’s your earliest memory? How old were you? Try to remember the smells around that memory. Describe it and why you remember it.

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Here's another exercise that will get your mind working overtime. Try to describe something intangible that's subjective to each person. Then recall it from your past.

They do say that the olfactory memory humans are capable of is the strongest, most reliable connection to past memories when there's a smell attached to it.

If I ask you to remember your grandmother's house on a random Saturday afternoon from your childhood, chances are you recall the smell. The very distinct association with that memory.

Have fun with it.

Time to turn the page.

Writing Everyday Exercise - Write about Red

WRITING EXERCISE - Write about the color red without using the word 'red'. Describe it to someone.

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This exercise will really push your mind to the limits. How do you describe something that no one else knows how the other sees it. How do you know that your color red is the same as what other's see? We assume but that's it. Perhaps in our brains the shades are identical but the actual color processed is blue for you where it's red for me.

Another twist on this exercise is thinking about try to explain a car to someone from the 1600s.

This exercise was a good one and from the challenge was the lowest word count productivity that I have done with these 10 minute sessions.

How will you do?

Time to turn the page.

Writing Everyday Exercise - What time is it?

WRITING EXERCISE - What time is it right now? Take the time and write it down at the top of the page. Create a story around the time. 10 to 20 minutes.

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1:35 PM was my time. I started off with a story of a guy called Wally Plugman being asked for the time. From there I spun out of control and the short turned into a pair of terrorists ready to attack a train station.

I am currently back into political, military thrillers so I had that on the brain. Either way I started off with one idea and I freestyled myself into something completely different. That's the point of these exercises. Break the analytical mind from the creative side and let your creative processing take over before you stop and analyze if it makes sense or not. These exercises aren't supposed to make sense. They are designed to get your brain out of the processing ditch of normality to work in new and fast ways.

Don't think, just write. Your brain will figure out the rest as you go.

Time to turn the page.

Write Everyday Exercise - How Does It Taste?

WRITING EXERCISE: How does it taste? Look around the room you are in right now. Take an object that may or may not be edible and describe how it tastes. Good or bad be as descriptive as you can in 10 minutes.

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This one I had some fun with and grossed myself out writing it. I was in a conference room at work and the only object that was in there worth trying to eat was the whiteboard eraser.

This exercise is more challenging the less edible the object is. Flex your brain, stretch your imagination and put those into words.

This probably won't spawn into your life's work but who cares, you are writing.

Time to turn the page.

Write Everyday - Nearby Streets Exercise

WRITING EXERCISE 

Fun with addresses. What are the three streets that border your neighborhood? List them. Take the there names only, numbers for streets, and write something silly with them. Keep writing.

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Writing is writing and not every exercise has to make sense. Let go from your norm and have fun. This one is designed for just that. Take the streets around you and go nuts with silliness. 

The streets around me are full names, not numbers, so I created three characters and made a goofy short about them meeting in a universal fate angle. At the end, in the 20 minutes I spent on it, I tried to build up that their meeting was for a reason. At the end they bumped into each other on a street corner, said excuse me and went about their day. The silliness was with the characters I created. The first was an accountant that collected bottle caps but only ones that have been removed, dented, by a bottle opener. The second guy was a pierced out bike mechanic in his mid 20s that dreamed of having children running around his house one day. But when he hangs around the Children's Museum staring at the boys you could see he is not getting a family through marriage, a little morbid but I blame the news tonight from that idea. The third guy is a monster of a man, Russian circus performer, that is currently the bearded woman but looks forward to his promotion to dwarf tosser. 

Silly enough? If you are going to go silly, might as well go silly.

Time to turn the page. 

Writing Exercise - Nature's Song

I was sitting on my porch reading a book on my iPad. Behind the house there is a pond and each summer night the frogs' chorus drowns out any other noise. So I broke out the thought journal and wrote this.

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   Nature's song flowed through the deathly still swamp. The rhythmic sounds were hypnotic, as if being led by a conductor they would stop and start in perfect unison. 3 nights he sat listening to life's chorus surround him, oblivious to his presence. That's how he was trained, that's how he functioned, in complete silence. When the frogs and birds are unaware of you starting at them from 2 feet away a passing human had no chance. 
   The drop off in such a remote, rugged location was necessary. The package required such measures, information that would change the course of a silent war is very valuable to everyone. Simply sending a car to a dark, downtown parking garage was not an option. This exchange had to be perfect, precise, no room for any errors. The only dependable option was him. A man in their employ that always delivered and left no trace. An invisible man, no one has ever seen him or spoken to him. Correspondence was over anonymous, secure electronic communications, monies transferred to Swiss bank accounts, packages delivered intact. 
   When they contacted him for this job his only condition was he chose the drop off location. A remote, rugged bog in Northern Minnesota, miles of grasses, muck, scattered trees, an area only accessible by foot or noisy ATV. Two ways that are not going to come up and surprise you. It's the last place on the planet the nosy intellects at Langley would ever suspect. 3 days and nights he has sat in the muck, getting the lay of the land memorized, learning the patterns of nature, waiting for the package to arrive. 
   The instructions were simple, one man, one package, one set of GPS coordinates where the payment would be waiting. The men would never meet, although he would be watching. After the exchange if the package was not left or incomplete there would be plenty of time and open space to send a .50 caliber reminder of what it would mean to cross him. 
    He sits waiting, scanning the horizon, invisible to nature, patient. He summons the control for days, focusing on silence. A control that can be shifted into any thing at anytime. Like down the scope of his Barret rifle toward 3 approaching men that don't know how to follow the rules.
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Time to turn the page.