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. 

Write Everyday - Through The Window Exercise

WRITING EXERCISE  

What’s out your window? 

Write about the weather, sky, buildings, treetops. Let your writing take you wherever, place and time. Write for 10 minutes.

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For the next several posts, about 20 or so, the exercises are designed for the busy, career laden writer. 10 minutes is what's required but the longer the better. No planning, no thinking, no editing. Just write, let the mistakes flow, write as you think. The point of these exercises is to break your mind from analytical overthinking and let the subconscious creativity take over. 

My output for this exercise I wrote while I was working at home and in between meetings. I got about 15 minutes of silence and what I wrote started out to be what i saw out my office window but turned into having mysterious undertones of a single man who was in the middle of this suburban neighborhood surrounded by families. Working on something secret where during the day the streets were silent as everyone was at work, kids were at school, but soon they would all return to make noise. I think the character came from one of my neighbors who is just like that. A single guy, no one knows, someone that we rarely ever see, his house is always dark and everyone in the neighborhood is a young family. What is he doing here? Who could he be?

Anyway, that's where this exercise went for me. You let your mind take you on your own journey.

Time to turn the page.