Get your thoughts flowing and your memoir started with these life writing exercises that only take a few minutes.
Creative Writing Practice: relationship pairings
Look into the bonds your characters share with others by following these exercises and prompts.
tips for your travel journal
Traveling can be life changing. A single trip can alter the course of your life and give you your most memorable experiences. It can also be stressful, mundane, and make you want to go home. Your journal should show every angle of traveling, the highs and the lows. It should not look perfect, because traveling is not perfect.
7 things that surprise me about living on a military base (in Europe)
1. Flying out of Maine, landing in Munich, then driving onto an American army base created an eerie sense of culture shock. The base is a tiny piece of America in the middle of Germany, with fast food restaurants like Popeye’s, Subway, Dunkin Donuts, Southern accents, and the National Anthem playing before every movie on post. American flags.
4 creative writing prompts to stress out your characters
One of my worst writing habits is the inclination to write happy and descriptive scenes, rather than action filled, stressful ones. In my head, it seems to all fall into place so neatly, though when I take the time to write, I realize how unrealistic it feels. People, and characters, experience pain in their lives. How they confront these stressful experiences is what molds them, and ultimately, what makes them interesting to read. Check out these prompts to give depth to your characters.
3 writing prompts that use books around your house
Sitting down with a notebook or a laptop and immediately feeling inspired to write is a huge expectation we put on ourselves, and not one that is easily achievable. I’ve found that focusing on my physical environment can kickstart the flow of ideas. Do you have a book lying around? How about a whole library? Here are three ways to use the literature existing around you to write your own.
what i wish i knew before traveling to rovinj, croatia
Rovinj is an eclectic mix of colorful shutters, winding, white stone pathways, laundry hanging from multiple stories of windows, and a summer breeze. It’s almost more Mamma Mia than the film itself. Like with any location we’ve traveled to, there were many lessons we learned during our four days in the idyllic (former) island city of Rovinj.
Creative Writing Practice: adding a new character to the mix
While drafting a timeline of chapters for your creative writing story, create another character with the help of a few random idea-generating lists. Will this character belong in your story?
Creative Writing Practice: putting the pieces together
Today we’re zoning in on an exercise and a prompt that will begin the process of putting together the pieces you’ve been building. We started at creating a character, now we’re filling in the gaps.
Creative Writing Practice: facing fears head on
We can learn a lot about each other by discovering our fears. The same can be said when developing a fictional character. You’ll be creating a list (rooted in their history), then creating a confrontational situation for your character.
Creative Writing Practice: feeling all the feels
Struggling to write your character through an emotional experience? Follow this series of writing exercises and prompts to open your character up to emotional experiences.
Creative Writing Practice: dig deeper into your character
Dig deeper into your character by following these writing prompts. To create a well-rounded character, you must include a range of traits, positive and negative. Choosing their zodiac sign can be a great tool for this, along with writing them through a stressful situation.
Creative Writing Practice: bringing your character to life
Let’s continue creative writing by putting your newfound character into situations and see how they respond. Follow these quick exercises and prompts to get the most out of your character writing.
Creative Writing Practice: creating a character
If you’re like me, you love the idea of writing stories. Having your words be read by others. Publishing your work. If you’re like me, you’ve figured out how difficult that can be, especially if you’re creating characters and a story line from scratch. Today can be the very start of this journey – the seed that will grow into something beyond you. Let’s start with a character.
Life Writing Practice: intrinsic and extrinsic character traits
Ahhhh, another Wednesday writing session. This is a time where you shut off the white noise in your life, reflect, and hopefully end up with writing you’re proud of. Since we are focusing on life writing still, we’re now honing in on intrinsic and extrinsic qualities of character building. The twist is, you’ll be writing about someone you intimately know.
Life Writing Practice: memory and sensory details
We’re officially in another week of life writing practice, this time focusing in on including those key sensory detail that make your writing come alive.
Life Writing Practice: exercises and prompts to energize you
Need ideas to unblock your creativity? Interested in writing but you don’t know where to get started? You can follow this life writing playbook with a friend, a group, or by yourself.
turning 26: a quick list of lessons learned
1. You don’t have to tell everyone when you’re making a big decision. They might try to include themselves in…
fear of forgetting
I’ll never forget a statement made by Damien Echols while leaving prison after surviving death row, wrongly convicted, for 18…
the train ride home
You open your eyes. Out the window of the train you see gleaming cities in the sunlight, sunflower fields stretching…
how I saw the best of edinburgh for free (and you can too)
When people think about Edinburgh, they think about the historic architecture, the cobblestone roads, and the haunted legends. Personally, I…
a strange holiday tradition
It was my favorite night of the year. As my mother had me turn off the lights, she lit every…
should you return to a place you once loved? // part 2
This question proved to be harder to answer than a simple yes or no, as most questions are. I suppose…
should you return to a place you once loved? // part I
To me, memories exist as a warm, blurry, slow-motion filmstrip. They live and breathe in the past, but I find…
success: target practice
J and I sat in our small car while driving back to base, over hills and valleys, an expanse of…
moccasins: the truth about marriage
As a fourth grade teacher last year, we read the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech in my classroom.…
a glimpse into life on a military base
With this in mind, I realize that the majority of the population doesn’t know what it’s like to live on…
List of Relationship Pairings for Creative Writing
Choose a relationship pairing on this list. Write your character through interactions within this pairing.
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List of Names for Creative Writing
Pick a name on this list and start writing.
