Tracey Lee Writes

Life is chock-full of “shoulds” and “must-dos”—from food intake to physical fitness. Add in quality time with your family, housework, and work work, and you might wonder if you really need to add writing exercises to that list. Well, yeah, you kinda do.

Writing exercises are like pushups and stretching exercises. They fuel your creativity, limber up those little grey cells, and give you a chance to extend your writing beyond your comfort zones.

Writing exercises don’t have to take up hours of your day. Just like physical exercise, 10 minutes can be all you need to boost those creative muscles. You can do them while sitting on public transport, waiting at the school gates, or during your kids’ after-school activities. It’s so much better for your mental health than doom scrolling.

Writing exercises allow you to try new things with your writing—genre hop, gender hop, time travel! This is your chance to play with your writing without limitations. Plus, I hear it’s the best way to attract a stray muse to inspire your next award-winning manuscript.

If you’re struggling with an aspect of the craft, like jokes falling flat, writing exercises are a great opportunity to explore these challenging areas and hone your creative skills.

If humor is your jam, then do writing exercises for the fun of it. Honestly, life is so serious, especially when you’re bogged down in edits or trying to get enough kinks into a plot twist. Get out of your head and take a few minutes to write for the sheer joy of it, like you used to.

Finally, writing exercises are the key to overcoming writer’s block (as is meditation—trust me, you have no idea how many times I’ve sat down to calm my mind for 10 minutes only to jump up 2 minutes later with an awesome idea for that thing I was stuck on for 6 weeks).

Consistency is the most important step in a writer’s journey. If you set aside 10 minutes of your day, every day, just for you and your keyboard, you will be amazed at how quickly your writing prowess will grow.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Image prompts (I’ve got a bunch of them on Pinterest | Fantasy | Sci-Fi |)
• Daily Pages – while not strictly writing exercises, I am a big fan of the early morning mind dump popularised by Julia Cameron in The Artists Way.
• Lists – seriously. Let me explain. Pick a room, maybe it’s in a story you are working on, now start a list of everything that you can think of that might be in that room, don’t censor yourself, there are no bad answers, just write until that 10 minutes is up. Some other lists you can make are character names, or City and town names, just write what ever random combinations come to mind, mix and match from those you’ve already written. File all these lists away because I guarantee, you will come to a point in your writing when you need a character or place name pronto, and you’ll have a list unique to you, ready for the picking.

If you’re sharing any of your writing online, please tag me so I can celebrate the awesomeness that is you. Happy writing.