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a different gender. If you're female, be your grandfather. If you're male be Paris Hilton.

5. Write from a photograph
Find a photograph on-line or in your yearbook or somewhere else of someone you don't know and write about what is taking place in the picture. What are the subjects thinking? What happened before the photo was taken? After? What will the subjects think about the picture 10 years from now?

4. Write as though eavesdropping on a phone conversation
I found this one on-line and thought it would be interesting. Write from the perspective of someone eavesdropping on the one side of a phone conversation in the other room. Let it take you wherever it will.

3. Be a people watcher
Go to the mall food court, the DMV or another very public place. Bring a notebook and a pen and write a couple short sentences about a few different people who are NOT interacting.Write whatever you can quickly glean from watching them (but don't let them catch you). Go back home and write about each person in more detail- imagining what would happen if the interacted as a group or even just on their own. Imagine what they might do when they go home, who they live with, what they did last Friday night.

2. Begin a piece with "What If"
'nuff said.

1. Describe a scene with every sense but sight...
...(or at least save it for last) What does the scene smell like, taste like, sound like, feel like (emotionally or physically). Describe the people in the scene, the objects, the room the scene is in, etc.

My best suggestion for writing exercises is to keep a notebook or a box of index cards with exercises and prompts written on them. Find some prompts in books, or on-line, brainstorm occasionally and glean ideas from other writers. Keep your box or notebook handy for when you can't think of something to write about, or just as an exercise to get your juices flowing before you start another project. Keep character profiles and scenes in your box. Most importantly set aside regular time to write. Twenty minutes a week, or five minutes a day in which you can't do anything but write. Use the time to come up with ideas if you must. You don't have to write but you can't do anything else.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth Fields.
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