January, 2009 Exercise: A Day in the Life

One of the most rewarding aspects of creative writing is the freedom to invent. You're inventing not only people, but the circumstances in which they find themselves. Sometimes a great way to exercise your creative juices is to spend fifteen or twenty minutes jotting down a journal entry from one single day in the life of (fill in the blank). Here are some examples...

I'll give you a few to choose between. Plus, once you've seen these examples you'll be able to quickly come up with your own.

For instance, what if you spent a few minutes writing a journal entry that focused on one single day in the life of a taxi driver? What interesting things happened to them on this particular day? Did they meet someone famous? Did they get lost while trying to help someone who was late? Did somebody leave something valuable in the back of the taxi? Jot down a day's journal as if you were that taxi driver.

Or what about a day in the life of a crew member aboard a deep sea exploration? What did they stumble across in the dark depths of the ocean? Did they find a sunken ship? Or maybe a giant squid? Was there an accident, and water began rushing into their vessel?

There are countless others:  A day in the life of a famous rock star; a day in the life of a Navy Seal; a day in the life of the President of the United States; or, if you wanna really get funky and creative, how about a day in the life of a conductor aboard a train that travels backwards and forward in time?

The idea of this exercise is to stretch your creative mind. It's very similar to stretching before you physically exercise. You don't need to spend a lot of time with this; in fact, I would recommend not going beyond those fifteen minutes. But when you're finished, you'll be ready to turn your attention to your primary writing work, and you'll be amazed at how smoothly that flows! Have fun!

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