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Writing practice ideas

I’ve been having a lot of fun with Write or Die these past few days. I always choose the Kamikaze option, and the best I’ve manged is about 600 words in ten minutes, but that is also cos I’m a lousy typer! Well, the output is hardly presentable, but between this site and Onetwofiver I’m all sorted out where writing practice is concerned. Not stuff you would send to an editor, but the kind of garbage that needs to come out before you start your writing day. Today’s onetwofiver led to this:

The joy of writing lies in letting a world, people and events emerge in my head, and then jump through the portal of my hands on to a screen or paper, from where they can make the transition into another head, another imagination. They then transmute, change, take on different appearances. For no two heads can ever have the same fancy, and fancy colors all to which it is a home.

On some days it is hard, and meaningless. There is no thought, let alone creation. But who knows, these could be good days too, because it is in the land of no thought that the biggest ideas are born.

Thought is an enemy to a certain extent, it can be allowed in only when the muse has done her mad dance, her hair flying, her laughter ringing in the imagination. She adjusts her clothes, changes her stance, and spreads her cloak holding all that shine and sparkle and darkness under her, giving birth to people, to ideas, to entire worlds.

And then comes thought, with its twin blades of logic and reason, and sets about cutting and snipping and trimming. And finally they are ready, the children of my muse, to travel using the written word, to invade curious minds, to make new homes in different arbors of imagination.

How do you like to do your daily writing practice?

Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

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  • indigobunting says:

    That was lovely.

  • DarcKnyt says:

    If I did writing practice, I would probably do it like this, or free writing. That makes the most sense to me.

    Thanks for the links. I think I’ll bookmark them.


    You are welcome, Darc. I hope you find them useful.