Creativity Exercise: Get Writer's Block

I was wandering through Borders the other day, and found this wonderful book, The Writer's Block, by Jason Rekulak. It reminded me of the great session I attended at the summer festival for the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

So, in keeping with that, here's a paraphrased example of one of the 786 ideas in the book: As a student, Ethan Canin (who has taught at Iowa), was captivated by the stories of John Cheever. To discover what it would be like to write them, Canin literally typed them out.

It's a brilliant idea -- especially for those of us who process through our fingers (as many of you know, I can't think without a pen in my hand or my fingers on a keyboard).

As Rekulak says, "... this is an opportunity to sift an author's words through your own hands, to feel a fraction of what Flannery O'Connor or Raymond Chandler might have felt as they completed the final typewritten drafts of their masterpieces."

Exercise 1: Give it a try! Exercise 2? Get The Writer's Block.