5 Quick Writing Exercises to Boost Your Output in 2019

Hey all, it’s a brand new year and I’m sure you’ve all set some monster writing goals for the year. Or even you didn’t set any massive word count goals (I didn’t) you’d still like to get that word count up this year, right?

So where do you start?

Well, first off, I’m going to warn against trying to “NaNoWriMo” the year. If you set a word-count goal too large, you risk burn-out and failure. So instead, I’m going to say start small.

And with that, here are 5 Quick Writing Exercises to Boost Your Ouput in 2019.

1. Generative Writing

Generative Writing was a concept I first heard about at the Nebraska Writers Guild Fall Conference from a presentation by Lucy Adkins and Becky Breed. It’s a great method for brainstorming, where you take a prompt word and then list 4-5 items triggered by the word. After that, you incorporate one of those words into a “starter sentence” prompt and write for 20 minutes uninterrupted.

Check out their book Writing in Community: Say Goodbye to Writer’s Block and Transform Your Life, for all the information you need to use this method to jump-start your writing.

2. “Writing Excuses” Writing Prompts

Here’s another writing prompt-based exercise to try, only this one is much more specific than the Generative Writing exercise above. If you haven’t heard of Brandon Sanderson’s Writing Excuses Podcast, you certainly should go listen to a few episodes. It is, after all my second favorite writing-related podcast. (Click here to see my favorite one, haha )

At the end of each fifteen-minute episode, the hosts give you a writing prompt based on the topic of that episode. Listening to an episode and starting one of their prompts while it’s still fresh in your mind is a great way to stay motivated and make some progress.

3. Write a short story for an anthology

Use an upcoming anthology as a prompt and set the goal of getting a first draft done this weekend. It may seem like a pretty big goal to write an entire shorty of a weekend, but can be done. And using a themed anthology as a prompt to help you come up with an idea should help quicken the process.

You can find open submissions for anthologies in all sorts of places, but the two I’d recommend the most are Duotrope and The Submission Grinder.

4. Blog about something–anything

Write Good Books is a blog with a specific theme, but not all blogs need be that. Personal blogs and Facebook posts are still a thing. So try writing a quick 300-500 word post about anything you feel like writing about. Write about the last movie you saw, or the last book you read. Share a story about your kids or your favorite video game. Anything will work, really; just use this to practice some free writing and see how quickly you can push out some words.

And if you’re having trouble coming up with an idea, check out this post by Molly Greene with 101 Fabulous Blog Topic Ideas.

5. Set a (small) daily word count goal

I’ve warned time and again about the potential dangers of setting daily word count goals. I feel like you’re just setting yourself up for failure. A missed day feels like a setback and a couple of missed days in a row can be crushing. No matter how serious you are, things will get in the way. And I don’t even mean non-writing things like kids, cats, or breaking your tow. Writing things like editing and submitting (which are just as important as actual writing) will need to be done and some days you don’t have time to do both.

So if you do want to try the daily word count goal, thing, I’d recommend setting a low–painfully low–number. I chose 250 words as an example in a post way back when and I still stand by that. Because it’s not like you need to stop when you hit that daily goal. If you can crank out 250 in 30 minutes, you’ll be on a roll and keep going.

And that’s it. I hope you’re having a great year so far, and if you’re one week in and not feeling a accomplished as you hoped with your writing, try some of this stuff and see if it helps.

So until next time, if you’ve got any other quick writing exercises you’d like to share, drop a note in the comments section.