Writing Practice
I was unintentionally very fortunate in having to write clear, concise documents for various jobs I've had. It started with memos or project reports to my managers and graduated from there. I often had to prepare written and sometimes oral presentations on issues of importance to the Portland City Council, Oregon Environmental Quality Commission, and the Oregon Legislature. Initially intimidated, I gradually grew more comfortable with those writing tasks being part of my job and didn't really look at it as writing practice. But it was.
It was good practice for straightforward, fact-based, non-fiction writing, but didn't allow for much creativity. A big step forward for me was when a good friend of mine, Barbara Rozell, signed up for a beginner's memoir writing class and asked me to join her. I did and it helped me immensely. There were only eight of us in the class and our wonderful instructor, Lyssa Tall Anolik, created a writing space that was inspiring, challenging, and encouraging. We had several short writing exercises in each class and could share our work if we wanted. Lyssa's gentle guidance helped each of us build confidence as writers. Writing classes like that can be very helpful, especially when you lack confidence in your writing ability.
One of my favorite exercises was working from a prompt. A prompt can be just one word, a short phrase, or a setting and is helpful for any kind of writing, fiction or non-fiction. It frees up your mind a bit. Lyssa would give us a prompt and tell us to write whatever came to mind. For 5 minutes. It didn't even have to be related to the prompt. Maybe something totally unrelated would pop up. Ok, write about that. It really helped each of us get out of our own way. No time to mull it over. Just write spontaneously. No barriers. No rules. No editing. See what comes out. It also helped us to write more creatively as we worked on a longer memoir piece for the class.
The internet has plenty of sources for writing prompts. If you write, want to write, or just want to have some fun, give it a try. Here's a little exercise to get you started. First, set the timer on your watch, phone, computer, microwave, whatever for 5 minutes. Look at words 5, 6, and 7 in the first sentence of this writing (not coounting the title). That's your prompt. Ready? Go! Have fun - no one else is watching!