New directions

Have you tried something new with your writing lately--or with your reading? A new genre, a new audience, a new style, a new point of view? Jennifer K. Oliver blogged about a writing exercise that seems like fun, and for me it's new. I've done the "draw random words from a box" exercise before, but I used them in a coherent story, instead of stringing them together randomly.

If I go random:

help struggle could
creamness question
another hurry field thisful
precious figure
glass them
sense mark back
when speed gentle
knew that fright jam

I have a mental picture of one character writing the above poem very earnestly, and another character struggling to understand it. Also, there are fragments in there that spark ideas.

I'm not just doing random word exercises, though; I have a couple of assignments where I will be arranging words very much in the traditional order. Are you trying anything new?