Writing exercises inspire, educate, build self-awareness, jump-start a person’s writing, and help writers hone their craft. They are all, at their core, about writing, but some of the best exercises take a writer someplace new.
“A good exercise should push you up against a limit or take you to a place you’ve not been before and are uncomfortable with. And then afterwards, you can go there, and it becomes comfortable,” says fiction writer David Gould.
Gould is also an assistant organizer of Virginia’s Arlington Writers Group (AWG). We also belong to the all-genre AWG that started in 2006 and meets in person every Wednesday for two hours. The group alternates each week between critiques and other planned activities, which range from craft discussions to author talks, social events, and writing…