Snow Day Exercises

For my Tuesday workshop group, who will be missing class this week, and for everyone else stuck inside during the blizzard who can manage to find an hour or two to write:

What are you working on right now? What's the main thing—the one you really want to get done? Whether you're in the planning stage, are hip deep, or have let too many days go by without looking at it, I'll bet there's some project on your mind. That's what you should spend your time on today.

Here are some exercises that might help. Choose the one/s that fit the stage you're at. Many of these I've posted before, and there are also some new ones:

Planning:

Try these Exercises to Help You Draft a New Story.  Do them in order, or pick and choose according to your needs.

Here's more on planning and plotting.


Going full steam ahead:

You don't need an exercise. Just keep going.


Theoretically ready to go full steam ahead, but keep failing to make time to write: 

Try creating a tiny habit and building on it. After you spend your hour or two writing today!


Theoretically ready to go full steam ahead, but keep freezing up at the keyboard:

Dare to suck. That's all.


There's so much you want to put into your story; you just can't figure out how:

This again. (And read these later, when it's not writing time.)


Story seems okay, but you/your readers just don't care about it that much:

Maybe you're not writing naked.


You care about the story and the characters; you're just not sure what they should do:

Try adding some suspense.


You've finished your draft; you're ready to revise:

Try these Revision Exercises.


You're done with the draft, you've revised as much as you can, and you're ready to send out your story, or essay, or an excerpt from your novel:

Send it to this great new literary journal, Origins.  Call for submissions here.

Cuno Amiet, Winterlandschaft, 1910