Recently I've fallen into a little bit of a writing funk. I'm a self proclaimed procrastinator and because of this whenever I write with a purpose and a due date I tend to just wait until the very last moment before cracking my knuckles and making some word magic. This usually is fine because during the school year it's easy to procrastinate a writing assignment and then prop up the creativity and motivation to knock out some creative writing that isn't for a class. Summer time is usually the golden apple time for writing because there aren't any due dates. I can write about what I want when I want and not have to worry if my story line is progressing sloppily or if the story itself is completely cliche and crappy. However this summer I have some very important writing that I need to get done. I'm building up my portfolio to send off with my applications to grad school (I'm growing up mom!) and for some reason my stupid procrastinating brain has decided to block my creative outflow. I know, not cool. So I've been recycling and creating some new writing exercises that I decided to share with y'all. Feel free to give them a shot or give me a few exercises of your own!

A Game of Songs: Open up Spotify (or iTunes if you've refused the greatness of Spotify) and shuffle the shit out of your songs. Press play. Listen to the beat and message behind whatever song starts playing. Place your pencil on the paper or your fingers on your keyboard and just GO. Don't stop to think about where you're taking the story just pound it out. I suggest playing around with the different playlists that Spotify has on the discovery page. I also strongly recommend hitting up the movie soundtrack classical playlist. Classical music works the best for me but I've found hidden gems among the heavy metal tunes too.

A Game of Signs: Go outside and either go for a walk or a short car ride. Take note of random words that you see on sings around town. Make a list of the words and settle down into your favorite writing spot. Each word that you've collected is the first word of your story.

A Game of Word Vomit: Take your pencil and just go. Write without thinking. Just make sure you're putting words on the paper. Set yourself a timer so you know when to stop. 10 minutes is a pretty decent time. Once your time is up take a highlighter and highlight passages that you wrote that really speak to your inner creative writing genius and then set another timer and write using the passages you selected.

A Game of Slight Plagiarism: Grab the first book you see, flip to a random page, point your finger to a random sentence, that sentence is the first sentence of your new story.

A Game of Pictures: Google random words like: scerery, dark, mystery, forest, happy, ect. and find a picture that speaks to you. Write a story taking place in or around the picture. I'm sure if you google "writing prompt pictures" some stuff will pop up too.

A Game of Writing Prompts: If you happen to have a writing textbook look through it for some writing prompts or if you aren't lucky enough to have such a book at your disposal google "creative writing prompt generator" and have fun clicking through the prompts. Find one that speaks to you and go at it.

A Game of Revision: Take one of your old stories (or a book you recently read) and completely rewrite the story. For instance rewrite Twilight with a good plot and non-abusive characters. Jokes. But you could re-imagine Twilight as if the characters were all men or if Bella was the vampire and Edward the human. Whatever you please.