Back in March, I mentioned that I’d been doing weekly writing exercises. Well, like most things that I don’t actually schedule a time slot for, I started procrastinating and then lost the habit.
But a couple weeks ago I decided to write x number of new words a day, whether or not I have a project to put them in (I believe I said last week that I spend a lot of time revising). To do that, I need things to write, so I’m back to exercises, which double as thinking about plot and character for future projects.
Right now I’m working through exercises from Ann Hood’s Creating Character Emotions. I described this book in Vision a few years ago, but never posted much about it here. It has 36 chapters, each covering one feeling, with examples of how not to portray it and some better examples from a variety of other writers. Each chapter also has three exercises. I’ve poked at them before, picking the book up once or twice a year, doing a few, and then forgetting about it. This time I’m curious to see how many I can get through before I start writing my next book.