Ho ho ho, and Merry Writing! Welcome to what I hope will be an annual event here at BarryLyga.com and across my socials: The Writer’s Advent Calendar!
Look, things get busy around this time of year, and for many of us, writing is the first sacrifice to the gods of holiday scheduling. But then we run into Lyga’s First Law of Authorial Inertia: To wit, a writer at rest tends to stay at rest. Meaning that once you’ve taken a little holiday hiatus from the glories of the almighty keyboard, it’s very, very difficult to kickstart your creativity again. Heck, there were years when I decided I’d take a little writing break between Thanksgiving and New Year’s…only to discover that I couldn’t force myself back into my writing chair until well after MLK Day!
Yikes!
And so, the Writer’s Advent Calendar! Each day, I’ll give you a little…exercise. We’re not talking a full-on gym session here. Just a couple of quick push-ups, maybe a jumping jack or two. A brisk walk around the block. Something to keep the authorial blood moving, the writerly heart pumping, the creative neurons sparking.
If you complete the day’s assignment, ping me below in the comments — when we’re all done on Christmas Eve, I’ll pick five people at random from those who’ve completed all 24 exercises and those folks will get signed books!
Let’s start off easy with your first exercise:
Five-Minute Freewrite!
C’mon, you can do this one! Silence your inner critic and just do it.
Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write anything that comes to mind without stopping—no editing, no backspacing, no worrying about sense or grammar. If you get stuck, literally write “I don’t know what to write” until something else comes. No one’s looking over your shoulder, no one’s ever gonna see this, so just let it happen.
Go!