Writers Workout

1. 01 Intro: Hello and welcome to the Skillshare class. We're going to do a little bit of a writer's work out, much like exercising our physical bodies are actually muscles also needs to be worked out daily in order to remain fit and usable. In this class, we're going to start off with what I think of as rightly cardiovascular exercise. One activity that can take quite a while to do but will really improve your writing fitness. Then when we wanted to strength training exercises, one to challenge the muscles of imagination and another to build our recall and detailed muscle. And finally, like any good workout, we'll move on to a gene pool. Cool down. If you've never done a writing coercive, medial, and skill sheet, then welcome. And if you have done some of my other classes, I'm really glad to have you back. My name is Angie and number writen artists are quite short stories published in print magazines, as well as a number of guest blog posts on the Internet. I've also written a freelance articles for magazines in South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. This class is designed with beginners in mind or anybody who's trying to get into the habit of daily writing. It is mostly designed with creates a riotous in mind. But exercises 1 and 3 can really be done by writers in any genre. So let's get our workout gear, phenotype in this case and get going. 2. 02 Project: Before we get started with now right-to-work up, wanted to read for you a little paragraph or two from a wonderful book by a writer called Patricia Reed. And the book is called lead on writing. And she gave some wonderful, really short bits of advice on writing in general. And she starts her book off with a little section called How to be a writer. And I'd like to read this for you now. How to be a writer? Right? Now, really, that's it. It's kind of a definitional thing. In order to be a writer, you have to be someone who writes. Period. You don't have to follow a bunch of rules. You don't have to be educated, you don't have to be nice. You don't even have to be particularly professional in your attitude. Though, if you want, you can expect to have a much harder time selling your stuff to an editor. You certainly don't have to be willing. All you have to do is right? On the flip side, if you aren't writing, you aren't a writer. Talking about writing is not writing. Reading, how to write books is not writing. Research, it's not writing. Telling stories is not writing rights as rights. And that's the definition says right, which is plenty enough, believe me. And I'd like to add on to that. Taking classes on how to write is not really writing an issue, actually doing the writing that goes with it. So with that in mind, for your project, I'd like you to take three weeks and commit to daily writing habit. You can use these activities that I'm providing in this course and you can pick one and do it every day for three weeks. Or you can pick all three of them and do them with three weeks. So it's up to you, but try and get in the habit of writing every single day. In the attachment section, you will find that little calendar that you can download. I find it much more helpful if I can physically take off day incipient working on a goal rather than just keeping them in mind. So off every day that you write. And it really doesn't matter if you write for ten minutes or four or five hours. Just write every single day and getting into that habit. And at the end of the three weeks, you will see that you pulled a really lovely habit and it will be hard to stop. In the meantime though, I'd like you to submit a photo of either your completed calendar if you don't want to shade the writing or just any of your pages of writing that you've done. You can say one page or you can cheat three weeks with the pages. It's entirely up to you. But do share with us, I'd love to see your writing. 3. 03 Cardio Training Copy Writing: Okay, So I hope you're ready to start exercising what our cardiovascular exercise. I wanted to propose that we do this task, which I do very often. And I think of it as cardiovascular exercise because it can take quite a long time and you do feel like you've had quite a workout off to it. It is not training a particular rights in the muscle. It is just sort of a general writing too. So the tool that I want to share with you, copyrighting as in copying other people's writing. And the reason why this is so effective is because not only do you get to copy word for word, the way that somebody that you admire, row to put together a piece. But you also get the benefit of that piece having been edited by professional editors. So what you're copying is actually a really polished piece of work. So we will copy other people's writing. We have to copy it word for word. And we also have to copy the grandma and all the commas and the punctuation marks and all those things. You have to copy everything. So this activity can obviously be done in any genre with a writing poetry or if you want to write blogs. So if you want to write non-fiction reports or creative writing, it doesn't really matter. It can be done by anybody. And it's a really, really excellent to add. I think these and other writing tool that can improve your writing as much as this one can. So before we actually get to the writing, I wanted to share with you and that a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of copying. But I wanted to keep in mind that the copying that you're doing is going to be in your journal, in your notebook. This is not to be published. Obviously, you're going to be copying somebody else's words directly. So it's not co-publishing. It's simply for your own learning. And also keep in mind that many people copy. In fact, anybody who's really good at something has copied someone else. If we think about the sports world, sports stars, soccer stars, stars, it doesn't matter. Yeah, athletics, gymnasts, it doesn't really matter which field they're in. They do spend a lot of time also watching people who are better than him at the skill. And they watch them very closely and analyze exactly what it is that these people do, that they heroes do that, make them so good at the sport. And they went to emulate that and copy that and so that they can be as good as that. Artists also from hundreds of years ago have been copying. I'm the masters, the ones that I apprenticed with to learn how to paint like the master. And even now, it is common practice for students to take a masterpiece done by somebody that they had Maya and tried to copy it. They try to match the colors, they tried to match the technique, they try to match the drawing. They try to copy it as closely as possible because it really is a very excellent way to. So writers are not exempt. And if you do this regularly, you'll find your writing very soon improves. I wanted to read for you an article that I found on this very topic at it from a website called, called Art of Manliness.com. I've never been to this website, but I enjoyed this article so much. I think I'm paying too, browse around the symbol. And they also have a podcast, so it might be worth listening to you. I'm not sure if it's only for me, but we'll have a look. So the article is actually called one to become a better writer, copy the work of others. As Jeremy detailed on Monday, many colleges are turning out graduates to, even after four years of higher education have cognitive skills that are still sorely lacking. Of particular note is assuming decline in graduate tracking abilities. 1 third of students see no improvement in the writing skills from freshman to senior year. And 80% of employees, which colleges would put more emphasis on this area. Even if you have no plans of becoming a professional writer, being able to write well is one of the most important skills you can have. From typing up memories that a corporation to pinning blog posts that accompany your online store to write, to writing grant proposals for your non-profit. It is a skill that will truly come in handy no matter what line of work you end up going into. I won't read every single paragraph because it is quite long. So today we're going to explore what we consider the very best way to get started with becoming a better writer. Copying the work of others. Copy work, as it's often called, used to be the standard method by which students learn to write. And it's the secret to how many of history's greatest writers mastered the cropped. While it might sound unsexy and unoriginal, the gradient works. And today we'll show you how to get started. While it might sound though and ineffective on the surface, imitation is the primary way we learn things. When we were babies, we learned how to talk, interact with other humans and walk through imitation. When we learn an athletic skill, we begin by simply imitating others. When we want to know how to act in different situations, we watch how others act. So why do we shun the idea of coping when it comes to writing? And issue is our modern infatuation with the idea of originality and creativity. I believe that good art of any kind will spring unabated from a place of passion within us. Yet ironically, many of history's greatest writers achieved that status, not from harkening to the muses, but by laboriously copying the work of others. And maybe goes on Philippine examples. I think these three of imminent writers who used copy work to become great prices. And I hope you take some inspiration from this. So we often believe that history's greatest writers would simply put pen to paper and wait for beautiful prose to Europe like a Giza from the fountain of inborn talent. We believe that only a truly gifted writer, a real heck, we'd have to learn how to write by copying other people. The truth is, my script writers began by being just that painstakingly writing out in longhand the works of the Great Sioux had come before them. They understood that one's writing style does not emerge fully formed, like Athena, forms uses heat, but it has to be cultivated. Imitation of another style was not the end of this cultivation process, but a means to an end, like a shift. We never stop sampling and dissecting the delicious dishes of other cooks in order to find inspiration to appease our end game and creates his own new recipes. Great artists been the underlying elements of other style into something uniquely theirs. And I specifically wanted to review that section because feel like a lot of writers always trying to find their own unique style and become scaled at the thought of copying somebody else's writing because they don't want to take on someone else's style. They want their own style, but your own style will come. It will simply emerge through practice, practice. And like Patricia Reed said in our introduction, you just have to write. So this is one way of doing it. Anyway. He goes on to say, here are a few of history's great writers who mastered the craft through coffee work. Jack London. Jack London was largely self-educated and these first attempts at writing professionally resulted in a thick stack of rejection dated year he had to improve his writing and he was willing to apply himself with single-minded devotion and told me he had achieved his goal a large, what are the self-improvement program London sit up when himself involved studying the work of other great writers of these literary remain tools. London most admire the style of Rudyard Kipling. For hours at a time and days on end, he would make his assignment to copy page after page of Kipling's work in longhand. Through such feverish if it, he had to absorb his heroes rhythmic musicality and energetic cadence, along with the master's ability to produce what one contemporary critical threat grabbing praise. London's labor was not in vain. And later in his life he openly and gratefully acknowledged the day TOD to this single exercise. And then he also mentioned Robert Louis Stevenson, winning author of classics like Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde decided he wanted to learn how to really write. He copied word for word. The great pros of those who had come before him. Steven said, we take capacity from a great fighter and carefully read it twice. He didn't turn over the passage and try to reproduce it from memory. Word for word and punctuation mark, poor punctuation mark. At first the exercise was a tremendous struggle and he's attended, we're riddled with errors. But with practice, he was able to read huge passages and reproducing from memory with exactitude. He continued to practice even after he became a literary success. So that is proof that it's not just for beginner writers, but anybody can do this. Um, and lastly he mentions Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin was not only an invented statesmen and publisher, but also a prolific writer. Besides getting his famous autobiography, he produced numerous magazine articles and several scientific treatises. To master the writing croaked Franklin created a copy work like exercise for himself when he was a teenager. About this time, I made it an odd volume of the spectator. I thought the writing excellent and wished if possible, to imitate it. With this view, I took some of the papers and making shootings of the sentiment in each sentence late in by a few days. And then without looking at the book, tried to compete the papers again by expressing each insert sentiment as clean and as fully as it had been expressed before in any suitable words that should come to hand, they not come paid. My spectator with the original, discovered some of my thoughts and corrected them. But I found that I wanted to stock up words or a readiness in recollecting and using them. Therefore, I took some of the tiles and turn them into booze after a time when I had pretty well forgotten the price to enter back again. So I will put a link to this article in the, in the project section as well so you can go read it for yourself. So after all that, our task for today, I'll cardiovascular exercise for today is going to be you can write it that you really, really admire the kind of writing that makes you wish you could write like making sounds with a paragraph and see how are you good. Because attention to the words to the commissar at those all in, every single thing you find in your ad in and see afterwards how you feel. Happy writing. 4. 04 Strength Training Character Attributes: Welcome to your string training workout. We're going to do an exercise to strengthen the muscles of imagination. This, this activity is really best suited for writers of creative fiction. I have here a book called The Magic of Mexico. And it's 77 stories, but it's written by Nick own. Before we start our strength training section, I wanted to read this passage. Here is a very short passage on the Philosopher Wittgenstein, where he writes. As a philosopher, he can sign is 9. To have appreciated a piece of advice. He was given one day on one of his visits to Trinity College. He was a tailor. Sitting at dinner on top table. He was faced with a rather creamy texture and indeterminate, putting him, as he speculatively explored the surface structure of the desert, a member of the waiting stopped mean diamonds it. If you dig a little deeper so you'll find the pH, they can start in situ. Have considered this as good as any philosophical advice he received while at Cambridge. And I thought that was a really lovely story for the activity that we're going to do. Now. The activity goes like this. You start by making a simple list of five characteristics for your character. Just make them up. They can be anything. If you're feeling brave, challenge yourself. There might be characteristics, things that he would never consider writing about. The kind of character you don't normally write about. So make a list of five characteristics. And after that you spend some time just writing about this basin, this one that you've been painted with five characteristics and see if you can make those characteristics reveal a really well-formed character, as in Wittgenstein's deserved. Sometimes you have to dig a little bit deeper just past the surface to get to your peach. So and that's really what it is. This is, this is a really fun thing to do and you can do it like a SQL 15 minutes or 10 minutes or even half an hour. And you'd be surprised at what your imagination can conjure up from five little characteristics and how much deeper you can really go with this. And you never know a character that you create, Yeah, might become something bigger for you in your future writing. So I want to share my own, but I can't read my writing. So I thought I'd share with you one of my own characters that I wrote doing this very activity. And because I did it by hand, it is not very legible, but we'll see how we go. So I invented a character and I gave her characteristics that I wouldn't normally identify with. I wanted to do something completely different. So my five characteristics, once she's a female, she's a grandmother, which was completely new territory for me. Greek. I don't know where that came from, but giving you 90 years old and married. So these are my surface fats. And now if I can manage to read my handwriting already, some of his story, I ended up calling her Nana because I think that's what the Greek word for grandmother. So not necessarily lead over time. The laces of a sneakers meticulously in a triple, not firstly, if one didn't the right one, she straightened up using her left hand to support the small upper back and the right hand to push up from her needs. There's a lot of stretched out with a soft warm breeze came in through the open window. It was going to be a great day with the Mediterranean sound soft and warm on her skin and the smell of the olive groves, her beloved olive groves, they can do outside. Then I reached over to the bedside table, hence expertly finding their way around a wild practice routine. First, the teeth. None. I knew that some women in her circle of friends didn't bother putting in the teeth when she can repurpose it. They thought she wouldn't know, but she could always tell. Words spoken without a mouth full of teeth just sounded different. Sloppy. She always knew. Next the straw hat that she kept in the bed side door. Lastly, the stick with the last maple note that she had permitted to tie her laces three times and putting her teeth and pop on their hats. She smiled to herself and using her Science Handbook for support, she stood up. She didn't need her stick to find her way out of the need sparse cottage. Nice all the way in between olive groves. If you have cottage had a gross floor, she would have walked a neat clean the air trail from bedroom to front to wherever the US are following the same routine. Her feet knew the way I've named the front door. The first thing that I did, as always, was to lift away that face up to the sun and enjoy at soft, easy warmth on his skin. She smiled and turn the heat in the direction of the birds and the other trees around them, noisily greeting the day and undoubtedly helping themselves to break this. Now that put her stick out in front of her to take our first steps on the familiar route through the olive grove. And it was just about to start when her sick heat, something, an obstacle in her way. Frowning, she felt around, tap tap, tapping the stick to get the feel for the shape of it. She product GNP muttering to himself. Ranking the routine by sidestepping the obstacle was not something that easily. Let's stick together with her routine is what keeps an old woman safe in an uneven terrain of an olive grove. Any obstacles in iPod could prove fatal. The last time she laid eyes on her childhood olive grove was at the age of 27, the day that the accident happened. So before non-equity side with a decisive side, stick the obstacle or turn around and go back into the cottage. The obstacle regard at main sound, a sucking sound, like a hungry baby dreaming of sweet MOOC. So that is what I wrote. It took me about 10 minutes. And the idea of this activity is really not to come out with a polished piece of writing. As you could hear, they were plenty of mistakes in a, but that's fine. It's just what finally, it's in your journal. And if you happen to create a character that you really like, well, you can carry on polishing them. So at the time of recording this class, my daughter is busy reading a really fabulous book. It's called mix and crannies, and it's by a writer called Jessica Lawson. And she has her character in the book do exactly the same thing. I will read to you just a little bit. It's quite short. It's a little girl called Tabitha, and she's talking to the pig mouse called pen-based tablet HealthTap touching. Well, Emily, that gives us, that gives us little to nothing in terms of expectation and mysterious lady. Indeed, what could she worked with us and what shall we do with ourselves other than wonder about it? The hours pass quickly enough in the hotel. Tablet, PCs on the Fourier's just sit for a bit and in perched on a long bench next to an umbrella stand. And it's from her legs, making a game of figuring out the stories behind each person present. The young woman with a long coat over an apron. Race had just delivered a box wrapped in beautiful white ribbon, dropping it on the front disk along with the notes and the cutscene CD. Tabitha was the Kimberley the front. This man is a spy for the famous friendship happening to seal the pastry recipes of the shop down the street. And the lovely shock go, You just delivered a box of what is most certainly pastries. Is he secret accomplice? Night she passed to him while blushing, has a recipe for the perfect Hasan. So that's a fun way of doing pretty much the exact same thing we're doing. The character Tabitha is being read her mind. And you could do it the same way as she does. Instead of creating your own five characteristics where a character, you could be sitting in a busy place and you could watch the people around you and just pick someone observed in poor little bit and make up a story that you think might be their story. Either way, it's a fun thing to do and you'll still be developing your character and imagination muscle. Have fun with it. 5. 05 Strength Training Writing Location: Lot of strength training section for this writer's work up. We're ready to practice connecting with an Emory and in trying to write it down in as much detail as possible. And this is fast, this as a strength training exercise because it can be really difficult to focus on something in your imagination, that picture that you see, whether it is imaginary or a memory. And trying to get all the details down on the paper and she seen in your mind. So in Julia Cameron's book, the right to right, if you have done any of my writing class and she might have seen me quote from this one before. This was my story is my absolute favorite book on writing. And it was actually the first book of his that I bought. I didn't know about this way at the time. It was well over a decade ago now. And I read this book from cover to cover and I did every single exercise in Europe. And it just got me going on my writer's journey. They'd already, and I still refer to it so often now. If I was going to recommend anyone writing, but that has changed my life, it would be this one. So if you don't have it, you can check it out. It's called the right to right. So on page 122, she has an initiation to and it's called place. And she writes, all right, we place ourselves in our world. We say, this is where I am right now and this is how I feel about that. Conversely, when we focus on the places where we have been, we often connect to deep and specific sense of how we felt when we would aid. In other words, by mapping our literal physical placements, we are often able to more accurately map out psychological placement. Good writers know this. I'm thinking specifically of the grounded, place oriented writings and teachings of Natalie Goldberg. When I think of this tool, I always think of her writing in cafes and encouraging students to do the same. The tool that follows is one that I prefer to do out, sit aside and hours writing time and take yourself out of the house and off to a cafe, restaurant, library, or some other foreign place to work. First sip into page and every single place you have even lived. For some of you, this will only be a few loopholes. For others, it will be a list of dozens of you have listed Indian Open Cases. Choose one that brings back particularly vivid memories. Writing in the first person, in the present tense, which yourself back into the place and time you move the 1.5 hour and i yourself to write out the reality of this younger self. For example, I am 19 years old, a junior in college and are living alone on the top floor of a frame house on ADF and in the Bronx, the apartment test3 rooms and people living room, the bedroom, kitchen, and the bathroom. The wielders of this apartment have a large tree just outside. Squirrels scamper along the tree limbs and come close enough to stay in the Windows and watch me as I write prior to him alone and trying to be great. I love it. When my windows are open, you can smell freshly baked Italian break from the bakery half a block away. This is a powerful and emotional exercise that you may wish to return to repeatedly each time, choosing to place yourself in a different place. Writing works at just this, well, sometimes deeply felt, yield us a sense of continuity and profound connection to the sense of adventure in our own story. Tell a story. So that is a little bit of generic Cameron's book. I've done this activity many times and it really does help to do it some way different than a cafe or a restaurant or somebody else's house. However, at the time of recording this class, we're in a lockdown. So, and you might even be in a locked down by the time you are watching this class as well. So we're going to have to content ourselves with just writing it hurt man. Perhaps you could try writing in a different room of the house. So even in your God, and if you don't normally write the, just try find something some way That's just a little bit different from initial writing place. I don't normally write indoors. I write longhand on papers, so my preferred place would be outside. So when I did this exercise now recently, I decided to do it in goes by table and cheese, which is not something that is normal for me. So I can read for you my version of it. For my sins of place. I made a list of all the places where I've lived in my life and it was probably my hand. I think it repeat places where I moved back to them. I just put the 12. Yeah, Just put them once each. So these 12 of them. And I've picked my childhood file where I grew up. The first one, as far as I could remember that we are upset. And I write again, my handwriting is not really supposed to be read out loud, so it's not the easiest thing to be, but I mean, the only house off now in this fine my young life, the house I grew up in nine years old. Perhaps tin and I've got my base frame from school either. We're sitting in that study messy classic brownish space with that smells like that and the smell of aftershave and books and stuff that you want to come up. That space is always for love's full of stuff. Bits and bobs like Scrooge washes books. I'm sure, not the anion, right. Typically has a cat. We will insist on having to sit on my writing just as I sit down to do it. So we were we that space is always full of stuff. So the bumps like screws and washes, books, tape, pens and pencils. But never any night books are going up. And that was a little memory that I didn't really notice some time I sat down to do this activity. He never had notebooks and queens elastic and the big beautiful grasshopper that the records and sitting appear reasonable with its wings displayed so we could admire it in its recent colors. At least, that tells us that it's iridescent, but the winds loss, they shine. We never encased in a reason. And now they just showed traces of the Calvinists they once were. That's this keys also chock-a-block full of methods and books. Always lots of newspapers, slips and nitrogen itself. That seems up, that sort of thing. My failed. But Linda and I are sitting on a two toolbox tools leaning back against the bookshelf behind us, riding our jays on a 2D techniques. We're in here because that records plays in here and we're listening to a Kylie Minogue gray code that I just received as a birthday present. We're singing along to the local writer. And BP are anywhere near my age. You'll enjoy, you'll remember that I promoted at the top of our lungs belinda in her posh English accent and me with my very broken English, liberally started with that harsh or of my African sun. No doubt mambo coming shortly and tell us to turn it down. It might be dead. He enjoys loud music and the bookshelf behind me is full. You go difficulty with a collection of books and he's own records and mostly rock and guitar style. Well, maybe the neighbors would hear a cool music as we often deletes. Those boys are excellent fun to spy on. And Melinda and I will guard sees to my appearance large blue and white button just now, once we finish the record and our voices are tired, go and lean out windows and spy on the boys in the PUC. So so here is my own memory, my own sense of place. And once again, it is a really fabulous exercise to do so take the time to do it. Even if you do it at home. And it would be lucky ticket shinier writing. 6. 06 Cool Down: All right, I have to scroll down and I would suggest that you make yourself a cup of tea or coffee. And you go find yourself a nice quiet space, whether it be in the bath or in the garden, in the sunshine opinion on what you have available to you. And you just take your PIN and your notebook and sit aside 10, 15 minutes to just be the pressure to write anything is off. This is our cool-down time. So we've done lots of writing, lots of thinking, learn lots of skills even though is that we don't know, we've learned, we've done some of that. So this is a time to just relax and cool down and just European and paper. If nothing wants to be written during that time, that's fine. The enclosure book finished UT and carry on with your day. However, you might find that you have some thoughts at once to be mentioned. So if that's the case, you'll have your pen handy and just gently drop them down. 7. 07 Thank You: Thank you for taking this writer's work out class with me. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you're looking for more rights discourses are quite a few more here on skill sheet, so please take a look at those as well. If you, if you enjoyed the class, please leave a review. And if you have any comments or questions that you want to ask, you can leave them in the coming section of the class down below, and I'll answer them for you then. Don't forget to download your candidate in the project section. So that should you wish to commit to some form of writing practice for 30 days or 21 days, you'll have a calendar to tick off every day. They will also be a link to the blog article that I read to you from, as well as the names of all the books that are read from in case you want to read up on them yourself. Thank you again and I hope to see you again in one of my other classes.