In need of a creative writing catalyst?

Even professional writers can use fresh tools to exercise the parts of their brain that may not have been used in a while.  Meryl Evans wrote a post last week about muscle memory and writing. She made the point that as writers we need to continually work our brain to keep it limber and strong. If we’ve gotten into the habit of writing in one particular style or genre, maybe research writing or SEO focused web writing, we need to cross train, if you will. We need to continually keep our brain, our writing muscle, in tune by working different parts periodically. Meryl ended her post with this question:

How do you pump your writing muscle memory?

Here’s my suggestion. This is a writing exercise that I came up with when I taught college level Composition I about 14 years ago, but it is also a great journal exercise for any writer, amateur or professional.

It was always a challenge finding interesting exercises for my students that made writing a lot of fun. Usually I brought in a controversial article or a thought provoking aphorism and asked them to put their interpretations onto paper. Sometimes these exercises were turned in for grades. Sometimes they weren’t.

One exercise that I created was particularly effective in jolting their creativity to life. I brought in a portable CD player. I told my students to take out notebook paper and a pen and nothing else. This was a free writing exercise. No dictionary and no editing.  Their job was to put the pen to paper and write without concerning themselves with editing or revising.

I played Cursom Perficio by Enya. I had two reasons for choosing this track. First, the lyrics are in Latin, so they couldn’t influence my students’ interpretation of the song. Second, it has a haunting melody that lent itself perfectly to what I was trying to do.

Here’s the process:

With their pens down, I played the song through one time so they could become familiar with it.  All they had to do at that point was just listen to the music.

Then I played the song again. Pens were still down. This time, however, I told them to close their eyes and focus on the music. I wanted them to really let go and allow the song to penetrate their imaginations and tell them a story. Their job was to let the story unfold in their minds and to remember everything they saw, smelled, heard, etc.

Once the song was over, they were to pick up their pens and start writing.  And let me tell you they couldn’t write fast enough. The words spilled out onto the paper. When they were all done, I picked out a few students who were comfortable reading their stories to the rest of the class.

This exercise turned what my students thought was barren land – their creative minds – into seriously fertile ground. They honestly didn’t think they were capable of writing the compelling, creative, and in some cases bizarre stories that they scribbled on the paper in front of them. Many were older students who had given up on school years ago but reentered college out of necessity because they needed new skills. Some were moms who stayed at home to raise their kids and wanted to do something for themselves for once.  No matter what their life experiences, they entered the class convinced that writing wasn’t for them. By the time they left class that day, their perspectives were altered.