Discovering the Writer Within: 40 Days to More Imaginative Writing

Discover the writer inside you who only needs encouragement to turn the secret thoughts and special moments of your life into enduring words on a page.
This 40-day "workout program" of imagination-stretching exercises will let you throw open all your inner doors, release your creativity, discover surprising connections and spark fresh ideas. By turns sober, off-the-wall, deeply emotional, thoughtful and playful, these exercises will nudge your originality into stimulating explorations. For example, you'll learn how to find something fresh and exciting about such unremarkable places as a shopping mall, a McDonald's, a bank (Day 9); write punchy first sentences for imaginary stories: mysteries, thrillers, romances, news accounts (Day 15); retell a classic fairy tale - like "The Three Little Pigs" - from a different viewpoint: the wolf, the wolf's psychologist, the third pig's stockbroker (Day 20); and give a voice to inanimate objects (such as a household appliance) and find out what they'd say if given the chance (Day 23).
In an enjoyable, entertaining way, these 40 exercises guide you in such essential techniques as brainstorming, clustering, freewriting and revision. Whether you're a hesitant beginning writer or an experienced writer whose wellspring of wonder seems suddenly dry, this book will recharge and refresh your imagination and liberate you, through confident, effective writing, to follow wherever your dreams may lead.

Messrs. Ballenger and Lane, each coming from the non-fiction and fiction sides of the fence, respectively, take the Biblical "40 day" timeframe and slap a step-by- step program upon it, filled with exercises and techniques designed to make your "inner writer" face light of day, embrace confusion, develop an eye as well as an ear, and finally, face the ultimate test: writing regularly, even when you don't feel like it.