Go on a marathon!

Here is a writing exercise you can try with a small group of family, friends, and/or associates, or alone (Hey, it worked for Ernest Hemingway.): It’s called a writing marathon.

No, you don’t have to run anywhere. 

I thought that too at first and I said, “No way am I doing this exercise.”

So what’s a writing marathon? 

It comes from Natalie Goldberg’s *Writing Down the Bones.

It’s the idea of going to a restaurant, bar, bakery, cemetery, or anywhere else you want to go and just write. You might sit for 20 minutes or so and just let your fingers record what you see, hear, think, smell, and so on.

If you’re working on a particular topic, let’s say a research paper on Egyptian mythology, put the topic at the top of your page and go. Write!

After 20 minutes or so whether you’re with a group or alone, read what you wrote.

Don’t judge it. Just read it.

After everyone shares or you read to yourself, circle an interesting phrase and consider putting it at the top of your page and write for twenty more minutes—but in another setting.

That’s right. Leave the restaurant, bar, bakery, cemetery, or wherever, and go to the one next door or a few blocks down. The atmosphere will be different. 

Don’t have an interesting phrase?

That’s OK. Keep writing anyway.

*Take a look at the slideshow above and you will see a copy of this book.

Photo Source:
By Ch. Pagenkopf (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons