Writing exercises that work!

I'm halfway through my Hero's Journey creative writing class -- did the small group plotting exercise* which, as always, was lovely, exciting, energizing and fun. It's so easy when you can set them up and then... they practically teach themselves.

Meanwhile, hope you'll forgive my presenting you with the big bouquet sent me from Helen who describes herself as a new-ish creative writing teacher and follower of this blog.

thank you sooo much for your brilliant book which is making my class preparation/delivery a cinch!... I've already used the 'write the names of 6 people from your childhood' (and they developed one of those into a character sketch or poem) and the character profile form, based on picking a first name, surname and age at random. They all really enjoyed that - we had some fabulous names (eg: "Desiree Daniels"!! which sounded like a pole dancer, we all agreed...!) and it took ages (bliss!) for everyone to feed back because the'd all been so inspired.

If only I'd had your book when I started out 2.5 years ago... it is going to be my 'bible' for quite a while!

Thank YOU to Helen, who's given me permission to quote her here. And all best to her for carrying on carrying on. Thanks to her students, too.

* this is on pp 74-76 of Creative Writing: the Matrix -- Mini-lecture 8 and Exercise 66