Lately you've felt like you've been writing the same words, phrases and paragraphs over and over, without any fresh direction or ideas. So you're looking for ways to juice up your writing, make it more stimulating, enjoyable and interesting.
Creative writing prompts and exercises are a fantastic way to give your writing that boost you've been looking for.
The problem most of us who write have with using writing prompts or writing exercises is we feel it's somehow cheating or a shortcut.
I'm sure you've probably felt this yourself at some time: "If I use someone else's prompt or exercise, then it's not my writing. What kind of writer can't come up with their own words and ideas?!"
Well, it's not quite so simple as that. Here's why:
Imagine you want to play some music. You have electricity running to your house, and you have a CD. But you don't just go and hold the CD against the electricity socket on your wall and expect to hear music!
Or you want to make some toast. So you get out a couple of slices of bread, put them on your kitchen worktop near an electrical socket and hope when you return a few minutes later the bread has become toast. It's never going to happen!
In both of these situations there's a crucial missing link. You have raw power - the electricity. You have the raw material, in these examples the CD of music, and the slices of bread. But what's missing is a way to channel the electricity in a meaningful and useable way to allow the raw material to become what you want it to become.
That's what your CD player and your toaster are for.
So how does this apply to your creative writing?
The situation is very similar. You have the raw power in the form of your writing talent and potential. You have the raw material, the words and letters. What you need now is a way to channel that raw power to shape the letters and words into something meaningful, something useful.
Creative writing prompts and exercises are a great way of doing this. They give you that channel, that conduit you need to allow your writing talent to create wonderful formations and sequences of words. If you don't have that initial prompt or exercise as a way to channel your writing talent, it's just going to sit there inside you doing nothing. In the same way electricity just sits there waiting in the sockets. It doesn't start flowing until something is plugged in and switched on.
So plug in and switch on your creative writing today by using prompts and exercises!