Exercises

Wondering What to Write About?

Try out these writing exercises and best practices to get your pen moving over writer’s block

1.) Keep a Journal: The School for International Study requires that all its program participants keep a cultural observations journal. How might you record your experiences through journaling to better articulate who it is that you are and what it is that you believe?

Keep in mind that the distinction between a diary and a journal is key. A diary is typically for the recording of events and interactions only. The writing is often very personal and full of reactions and stream of consciousness. It is primarily a private, emotional outlet. A journal, on the other hand, can serve as a worthwhile literary activity and invaluable resource for later writing. It is an act of meditation and reflection; it is a philosophical exercise and a first attempt to use language to articulate and reflect the complexity of human experience. It serves both an emotional and an intellectual function; it documents your observatory and participatory research with an eventual product—the piece written for the public—in mind.

2.) Writing Exercises and Prompts

Timed Writing: the basic unit of the writing practice is the timed exercise. Writers are often encouraged to start small and then increase their time, but since you likely have a goal of producing an article, dive in for an hour the first time. Again, have an idea of what you want to say before you sit down to write. If you kept a journal, read through it and see what speaks to you. Have some concrete idea or image such as these before you sit down to write.

1. Do a free-write, which is to keep your hand moving. Do not pause to re-read the line you just wrote.
2. Do not correct your grammar, punctuation, spelling.
3. Do not cross out.
4. Don’t think or get logical.
5. Go for the heart—it has lots of energy (your head will come in soon enough for revision). If something comes up in your writing that you didn’t expect, see where it takes you.

Stick to these steps, because they will empower you to burn through first thoughts to your subconscious, where social politeness and your internal censor are turned off. Your mind will express what it actually sees and feels, not what it thinks it should see or feel. This is particularly important for those of you who studied abroad in countries very different from the U.S. and where you might be struggling with issues of identity, cross-cultural understanding, adaptation, and reverse culture shock.

Not only will this exercise help you to stay present and to write
with vibrancy, it may also be a therapeutic way of reflecting on and processing your study abroad experience. Until you start writing you
may not even realize what about your experience has made the greatest impact on you.

If you are not sure what to write about—perhaps because you have so many topics to choose from—consider using a writing prompt. You could either write a list of all the topics you’d like to write about, and then choose one for a free-write or consider the following:

1. Begin with “I remember.” Record all the small memories you can think of from studying abroad. If you find yourself relaying one large memory, keep with it.
2. Take something from your study abroad experience that you feel strongly about, whether positive or negative. Write about it as though you love it and then write about it as though you hate it. Then write about it neutrally.
3. Write about the best meal you ate while you were abroad. Be specific with your details. Where did you eat this meal? Who made it? Who were you with? Was it in a certain season or for a certain occasion? What ingredients went into the meal? What is their color, smell, taste?
4. Write about loneliness. Were you in the midst of a Greek wedding, with friends and family eating, drinking, singing, and dancing and suddenly you felt completely alone? Were you traveling on your own for a weekend in Barcelona, sitting in your hotel room on a Saturday night, when you realized you had no idea why you were there, what you wanted to do, or where you wanted to go?
5. Visualize the place you loved most while studying abroad (it could be where you lived, a place you visited, a café you frequented, a running route, your village’s river). Put yourself back there, tell us what you see—all the details. What are the colors, sounds, smells of the place?
6. Write about leaving your host country or community. Did you do something ceremonious or were you rushing to finish a term paper? Did you count down the days before departure? Did you have a final meal with your host family, friends, boyfriend/girlfriend? Did you go somewhere to be alone? Did you revisit a favorite place or site? Approach it any way you want, but ground your feelings in a specific memory.

Flash Fiction: Find a story on the fly and writer about it in less than one page.

Stranger Studies: Sit and observe. Write a fictitious profile of an interesting passer-by

The following are recommended by Doug Reilly and Stefan Senders, Hobart and William Smith Colleges:

"The Observation Deck” is a deck of cards of writing prompts. It spurs ideas and assists in freewriting. Doug and Stefan find it useful because it does not present their students with any models or cliches to fall into.
http://www.observationdeck.com/deck/index.htm

"I Though My Father Was God" by Paul Auster came out of the NPR National Story Project. This collection of 180 personal, true-life accounts come from people of all ages, backgrounds, and walks of life. Doug and Stefan have found that they are valuable for their students in that they challenge the idea of what a "story" is, and they tend to be inspirational. Most bookstores should carry this title.

3.) Test these online links to various writing exercises:

Creative Writing Prompts

Toasted Cheese: A by Writers for Writers site:

Middlebury College Professor Barbara Ganley’s tips for When You’re Stuck and trying to write creatively. A great resource of exercises to overcome writers’ block, with writing exercises, like 5 minute stories, automatic writing and Idea and Image Jottings.

Writing Time

Inspiration for Writers-What Writers have said about Writing:
A list of quotations by accomplished writers about the process of writing. Also includes a list of musings about Fiction, short stories, and characters.

Use the writing that comes from these exercises as a starting place. If you like what you write, dig deeply into it to see what threads you can pull out. Can you stretch the threads and tie them together? Look for patterns. Imbue the growing tapestry with detail, specificity, reflection, research and facts, character, and personal voice until it takes shape. Enjoy the process and be patient with it.

4.) Get Inspired. Read what writers have to say about their craft:

“A writer, like any other cultural worker, like any other member of the community, ought to try to put her/his skills in the service of the community.” –Toni Cade Bambara

"You learn to write by reading and writing, writing and reading. As a craft it’s acquired through the apprentice system, but you choose your own teachers. Sometimes they’re alive, sometimes dead.
As a vocation, it involved the laying on of hands. You receive your vocation and in your turn you must pass it on. Perhaps you will do this only through our work, perhaps in other ways. Either way, you’re part of a community, the community of writers, the community of storytellers that stretched back through time to the beginning of human society. As for the particular human society to which you yourself belong- sometimes you’ll feel you’re speaking for it, sometimes-when it’s taken an unjust form-against it, or for that other community, the community of the oppressed, the exploited, the voiceless. Either way, the pressures on you will be intense; in other countries, perhaps fatal. But even here-speak “for women,” or for any other group which is feeling the boot, and there will be many at hand, both for and against, to tell you to shut up, or to say what they want you to say, or to say it in a different way. Or to save them. The billboard awaits you. But if you succumb to its temptation you’ll end up two-dimensional.
Tell what is yours to tell. Let others tell what is theirs."- “Why Do You Write?”-Margaret Atwood

The Ten Commandments on Writing by Richard Bausch

1. Read
2. Imitate
3. “Be regular and ordinary in your habits, like a Petit Bourgeois, so you may be violent and original in your work.
4. Train yourself to be able to work everywhere
5. Be patient
6. Be willing
7. Eschew politics
8. Do not think, dream
9. Don’t compare yourself to anyone, and learn to keep from building expectations
10. Be wary of all general advice

“Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar.” – Bharati Mukherjee

“Writers (especially American writers, weaned on the luxury of affluence and freedom) often disavow the notion of a “literary duty” or “political consciousness,” citing the all-too-frequent examples of writers ruined by their shrill commitments. Glibness abounds on both sides of the argument, but finally I have to side with my “Third World” compatriots: I do have a duty, beyond telling a good story or drawing a convincing character. My duty is to give voice to continents, but also to redefine the nature of American and what makes an American. In the process, work like mine and dozens like it will open up the canon of American literature.”- Bharati Mukherjee

“Art of the future…will consist not in transmitting feelings accessible only to members of the rich classes…but in transmitting feelings drawing men together in brotherly union, or such universal feelings as can unite all men. Only such art will be chosen, tolerated, approved, and diffused."- Leo Tolstoy What is Art

“To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care … a writer always tries … to be part of the solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.” – Anne Lamott

5.) Listen to your favorite authors talk about their writing online:

Arm Chair Interviews:

Authors in Your Pocket:

6.) Look at some Online Writers’ Communities:


Writer’s Dock:

A Non-Profit Organization of Writers supporting each other in the creation and publication of literary texts

An International Student Publication Online:

An Online Artists’ Community:

 
Travel is challenge. Be courageous.