Imagination Sparks Blogfest

I do love a good blogfest, and this week the lovely Charmaine Clancy gives us the Imagination Sparks blogfest, where we can learn writing exercises and warm ups from other writers, and share our own. I’m not very creative in my own writing exercise. It came from a self-help book called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and is called morning pages. Anyone who has read my blog probably already read about it as I tend to blather on about things I love.

Morning Pages are meant to be written longhand and are typically three pages long. What do you write? Whatever you want! If it flashes through your brain while you are doing your pages, it goes on the paper. A lot of great ideas suddenly come to me while I do my pages in the morning. Also, I’m able to get any gripes or worries out at that time so that I start my day out fresh and free. It gives you room to create.

If you are like me and prefer typing over keyboard, you can justify 750 words as your three pages. There’s several way of doing them. I started out with Word, but moved on to 750.com for a while. It’s a great site that keeps track of your morning pages, and gives you statistics on what your mood was throughout your pages. It’s a lot of fun! After getting Scrivener beta for Windows, I moved my morning pages over to that platform. My binder has the folders as the months, and then each page is numbered with that days date. It’s easy to go back and find a page I may need for writing, since I do a lot of brain storming through my MP’s. If I am doing notes for a WIP I often write in the margin “reference to MP’s” and then the date so that I can go back and snag that idea.

My husband loves my MP’s too. He says he can see a huge difference in my attitude when I do them as opposed to when I don’t. I’m much mellower.

So there you have it, my writing exercise. What are some writing exercises you use?

Ta!

A.McBay