my new favourite writing exercise

Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Sarah Selecky, author of This Cake is for the Party and Radiant Shimmering Light. Sarah runs the Sarah Selecky Writing School and she has a lot of really wise things to say about craft and creativity.Anyway, she mentioned an exercise that struck me as interesting. Basically, you set a timer for five minutes, choose a letter of the alphabet, and write a list of words that start with that letter until the timer goes off. This intrigued me immediately, mainly because I couldn’t see the point of it. A list of words starting with a chosen letter? For five minutes? What would that do? Of course this meant I had to try it.So, this morning, I got up early, made coffee, and sat at my desk. I opened up a notebook and rummaged around for a pen. I set a timer on my phone for five minutes. I chose the letter H, and I wrote my list.And something magical happened.In fact, I enjoyed this exercise so much that, when it was over, I set another timer, chose another letter (L) and did it again. So what’s going on here? What is the point of writing a list of words for five minutes without stringing them into sentences or using them to brainstorm a plot or “figure out” a character? The productive, career-focused, over-achieving writer in me was going, “This is so useless! This is senseless!” But it wasn’t useless or senseless at all. It was magic.And here’s why. Part of what makes this exercise so delicious is that it’s utterly pointless. I actually think I have far too little pointlessness in my life. I needed it. Because my brain filed this exercise away as silly and unimportant, there was absolutely no pressure to write a good list, or a fascinating list, or a beautiful list, or a life-changing list. I was not going to send this list off to anyone to ask if it should be published. It didn’t matter if was good or not. It was just a list. And then there’s the act of writing words, in ink, on a page. It felt good. It felt like a nice stretch, or brewing coffee first thing in the morning, or spreading butter on perfectly golden toast—it had the air of those small, everyday pleasures.A pleasure. That’s what it was.Sometimes I would think of a word I loved so much (halcyon) that I would get shivers. Sometimes I would write a word that was pretty ordinary (say, hook) and notice, for the first time, its energy and sharpness.Other times, a word would feel silly to me—a word like hop. I’d think, for a moment, that it was absurd to have halcyon and hop sitting side by side. But after a second I’d correct myself: this is the beauty of language. Hop has a feeling to it that halcyon doesn’t. There is no hierarchy.So what’s the point of this exercise? It alerts you to the fact that each word has its own texture, its own angles, its own feel and history and sound.It reminds you how much you love words, reminds you of their delight and power, reminds you that you loved them first, before you loved being published and getting marvellous reviews.In short, it reminds you why you write in the first place.I highly recommend it. (Thanks, Sarah.)If you want to find out more about Sarah’s writing school or read her insightful blog, click here.(I don’t know Sarah personally, and I’m not getting paid to say this. I just really like her work.)