Free The Words

If like me, you’ve spent some time looking at a blank page, hoping for, WILLING some inspiration into being, have a look at the ten tools below, designed to fire up the dormant creative juices. Some, I’ve made up and some I’ve read about, as being beneficial to other writers caught in that awfully scary place, where words fear to tread.

1. If you can, visit a real graveyard, preferably an old one and using the oldest inscription you can find on a grave, construct a first person, present tense point of view paragraph about the person during the time they lived. If you can’t visit a real graveyard – close your eyes and imagine the words that would appear on an imaginary gravestone.

2. Sit in a room, with the window open as wide as it can. Listen. Just listen. Switch off your other senses. After five minutes, write a paragraph about the sound that resonated most with you during that time.

3. Take the opening paragraph from your most recently read and loved book. Change the POV and rewrite it, seeing if it frees anything – an idea, a character?

4. Using a favourite lyric e.g ‘Been down to the bottom of every bottle’ and write a third person past tense paragraph on a person who might have said those words.

5. Imagine your favourite male and female celebrities. Write a love scene – One page of dialogue only which must end on a cliff-hanger.

6. Light several candles and sit in a darkened room. List the first thirty words that come to you e.g. haunt, flicker, light, scared. Choose your favourite, most evocative word and write a flash fiction story of only fifty words. It must have a beginning, middle and end!

7. Conduct a Parky style interview with a pretend celebrity. Ask the questions you know no real host would dare to ask! Make the celeb’s responses honest and instinctive.

8. Examine a photograph - preferably one from a magazine and preferably one with unknown people in it. Write a list of the personality traits of the person you feel to be the main character in the photograph. Now describe him/her physically, write down their birthday, birth sign, favourite food, the job they do. Enough at least for a short story!

9. Write a love letter. It must start with ‘My dearest...’ and end with ‘sending you all the love in my heart’. Other than that, let your fingers tap the talking.

10. Pick your favourite word in the dictionary. Mine is ‘serendipity’. Read and re-read the dictionary meaning. Look it up on Wikipedia. Google it. See if there’s a google image for it? Write one paragraph where your favourite word appears, either in script or in theme.


See now, I’m all inspired. I feel a tale coming on. One of a serendipitous meeting of an ex alcoholic D list celebrity falling for his dead lost love... Only it’s all in his head, see? Oh and it takes the form of love letters heading each chapter.

Been done before? No problem. Change the POV. Make it emails/texts/ Facebook status reports instead. OMG, imagine a ghost that can only communicate through Facebook! Love it!

As usual when I write posts that are aimed at helping - moving people along, I end out worrying for myself...

Guest Blog by Colin Mulhern - Why Blother?

I’ve noticed the question, ‘Should writers blog?’ appearing on several writing forums. The thread usually follows the line of what a writer’s blog should contain, whether they have anything useful to say or advice to give and what sort of numbers are reading. If the readership is low then it seems to reimburse the right to question, why bother?

No one ever asked that question about keeping diaries, so why blogs?

I’m guessing it’s because a blog, unlike a personal diary, has a potential audience. It’s out there; it’s published. And for the writer, that’s a good thing. Just having a blog puts a pressure on you to update the thing. If you include “writer” as a hobby or occupation, then there is added pressure to make sure the posts are something half decent. Not only do you have to think of a subject worthy of posting, but have to edit it and kick it into shape to prove you really can do what you claim.

And that, for me, is enough reason to sit in front of a screen and bash out updates to a blog that perhaps only one or two people ever read.

There is always the chance of an editor considering a manuscript to Google my name and end up on my blog, so I have to maintain a certain quality of narrative. Sometimes I post about writing, sometimes about personal stuff, and sometimes I post book reviews. But it’s all writing. It requires planning, drafting and polishing to a level you might not do if the work wasn't going on show.

So, should writers blog? My opinion - yes, because the more a writer uses those fundamental skills, the better those skills will be.

But, if you are a writer who blogs, bear in mind that you really are putting your wares on show to the world. It really is essential to produce work you’re proud of, because the bottom line is as simple as this: if your blog stinks, maybe your fiction will too.

Colin Mulhern writes dark fiction for Young Adults. His first novel, The Devil's Prayer is currently with publishers. While waiting for the millions to roll in, he works as a teaching assistant in a primary school. Check out Colin's blog here.