Exercises and the Threat of Ideas

A forum thread about practice got me thinking about doing regular writing exercises again.

At one point, I was doing them weekly. But that was when I was planning a novel, and could tie the exercises into that planning process. Not much of what I wrote ended up in the draft, but they helped me work out the plot, develop the characters, and build the setting.

Doing exercises without a particular project in mind is tougher, since I have to pull character/plot/setting out of thin air, and that raises the threat of pesky Ideas coalescing and wanting to be written. I keep hoping the queue is long enough that they’ll move on to another writer, but so far they’ve proved pretty patient.

Still, I’ve got things I need to practice, so it might be worth the risk.