3 words, 5 minutes

My brain is like cotton wool at the moment, which is OK until you HAVE to work. As a writer I have to write if I want to earn money, so having a cotton wool stuffed brain is not a good thing.

Some people may call this kind of fuzzy headed thinking "writers block" I just call it frustrating.

So I went back to a beginners writing trick I was taught.

It's called: 3 words, 5 minutes

and it's a great exercise tool if you need to jump start your writing brain.

   Find a dictionary - yes a hard copy dictionary, online ones don't work for this exercise.
   Open the dictionary at any page and write down the first word you see
   Close it and repeat that twice more

You now have 3 words or 3 sets of words - now don't "choose" the word from the page, but the first word you see on the page whatever it happens to be.

You now have 5 minutes to write. The first word of the piece needs to be one of the 3 chosen words or a variation of it (plurals etc) with the second word in the first sentence and the last word coming within the first paragraph. Sounds hard, but it really isn't. With just 5 minutes for the exercise you have to write fast, and believe it or not your writing will be tight with little or no editing to be done afterwards.

With long hand you can write about half a page. Please avoid the keyboard while you are kick starting your writing brain - believe me it is important.

So what did I get?

My 3 words were:

Cast Iron | Lawn | Roller Skate

Rollerskating on lawn was impossible decided Ann Marie. She desperately wanted to go to the rink with her friends but she'd given her mum a cast iron pledge that she would stay on the yard or risk being grounded for the entire summer. She wasn't happy, the path was too small and littered with her little brothers toys, so she'd tried the grass and that just didn't work AT ALL.

It didn't help she was small for her age and couldn't even reach the latch on the gate to get down the driveway.

She sat of the wicker chair under the patio, the big, heavy and old fashioned skates she'd found at the back of the shed dangled off her feet. Idly pushing them backwards and forwards, the bearings grating against the metal shoe. Tears slowly welled up in her eyes "I hate being poor" she sobbed ...

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Did it help me? absolutely.

How can a piece of fiction help my professional world? Well it helped write this for starters :-) it also gave me chance to look at the client piece I needed to write. I took the topic, worked out the keywords that could fit, chose in this case 4 relevant words as there were four points I needed to cover, wrote it, and it's now with the client for feedback.

And the trick works for longer pieces including books, that process does take a little longer - we don't choose random words from dictionaries for instance - but once you get the hang of the technique it can make a massive difference to your completed body of work.

Try it, you might find it's a tool you can use.

With love and light

Elle

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