I have taken a leaf out of Vikki at the View Outside’s book and have invested in a couple of books on writing. This one just arrived in the post this morning.
Now obviously I can’t share the whole book with you but what I intend to do for the next few Thursday is to give you a brief summary of one of the chapters and the attached exercise and show you what I came up with. There are 58 chapters in total but I only intend to do half a dozen or so on here picked at random then I shall do an overall review of what I thought of the book as a whole in terms of structure, exercises and then if you like what you have read you can pop along to amazon or your local bookshop and get your own copy.
I have not had much chance to look through so far but the quick skim I did have it looks fascinating and as all the exercises are designed to be completed in 5 minutes then there is no excuse for not doing them, of course this does mean I need to pick up a new note book specifically for these exercises lol.
So what do you guys think are set exercises a good thing to warm up the brain and push you for your comfort zone?
Paula Acton 
Great idea! I haven’t seen this book before.
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Sounds interesting. I’ve never thought of doing exercises like that, but it would be an interesting thing to try.
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i am thinking of trying it as sort of a warm up like you would do for sport 5 minutes before getting stuck into whatever is on the agenda for that day
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Let us know how it goes. Maybe I’ll try it too if you find it works well. 🙂
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I’m interested in your opinion on the exercises and look forward to seeing them. I do this in my creative writing class – we start the class with 5- minutes exercises (or what I call ‘short shorts’). We all love it, and it does get our writing mind in motion.
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I haven’t done any type of writing exercise to warm up before working on my book. I’ve had to stop in the middle and write a short story before, or take on one of the WP writing challenges before writing, but never a writing exercise. I’ll be interested to hear what you think about them. What I do do is … before every time I sit down to write seriously, I play a couple of computer games. They give my brain a workout and help to clear away everything else.
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I start every writing session with some kind of writing exercise. Either one from a book like The 3 a.m. Epiphany or one of my own making. My muse needs to warm up just like muscles do before a run. 🙂
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I have that one on my wish list for amazon along with a couple of others as this only has 58 chapters will order another next pay day 😀
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Sounds like a great idea, Paula! I’m in 😉
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Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
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Loving the sound of this Paula
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I’d be interested to hear if the exercises are just to ensure you write at all or are a form of discipline as to what or how you write.
I have two quite distinct forms of writing; writing for me and serious writing. Frequently I’ve come across the advice to overcome writer’s block by writing anything – personal letter, emails, even shopping lists!
Well, no problem, I thought, writing for me can be my way of overcoming writer’s block on serious writing. But it doesn’t work like that; it quickly becomes a distraction and excuse.
You sound so disciplined anyway, Paula, I’m intrigued to hear what you get from this.
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Hi Paula,
I’m nominating you for blog of the year. It will go up later today.
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I LOVE this book Paula! 🙂
It was the first writing book I ever bought and I thoroughly enjoyed working through all the exercises. You’ll have great fun!
Xx
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