Writing as Exercise

When I took music lessons, the one thing that every teacher had in common was this notion that I needed to practice between meetings. Of course, in the folly of my youth, I would spend the week playing Nirvana tunes, then have a five-minute cram session immediately before going in so they would think that I practiced my scales and sight reading. In the short run, it appeased my instructors, but the fact that I only practiced one aspect of the guitar made me weaker in all other aspects and set me back quite a bit.

Writing is the same way. I spent several weeks saying, "Keep writing! Write! Don't stop writing!" but that advice can only go so far before it needs to be expanded.

Every writer has a tendency to do well in certain areas and terrible in others. In my own writing, for example, I tend to do pretty good when it comes to dialogue, but when it comes to describing my setting I fall flat. It makes for a ton of work in revision, and the addition of scenic details may interfere with the dialogue I'm so proud of, which means altering that as well. It can be annoying. If I were to simply "keep writing!", I wouldn't really solve that problem because I would still tend towards good dialogue and bad description.

This is where the idea of writing as an exercise comes in. If my writing fails because I have trouble with the scenery, then I need to spend a little time writing exclusively about scenery. Perhaps that exercise is writing a story that relies heavily on various setting elements for its meaning: the main character is a bedroom that is constantly being redecorated by its teenaged inhabitant. While there may be snippets of dialogue in the story, the bulk of it would need to rely on tasteful descriptions of the room's furniture to get its message across.

But maybe the urge to write the easy stuff is too strong and derails the plan to focus on a weak spot. What then? Make it painful. If you're like me and have difficulty with setting, go find a place to sit and describe it. Look, listen, smell, touch; write it down. Find different ways to describe the same thing. Hang on to those descriptions and use them in your writing. Is dialogue your weak spot? Eavesdrop on a pair conversations and pay attention to the specific words that set them apart from each other. Bad at narration? Write about something you do every day, like eating breakfast or going to school. The point is simply to target your weaknesses with specific (if tedious) exercises.

Challenge: Identify an area of your writing where you are lacking. For one week, set aside time each day to focus on that specific area.