A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-And-Fifty-One

 I recently picked up a book of writing exercises and have been using them to help me in writing my flash fiction pieces.  In some ways I find this very helpful and liberating, and it does take a certain pressure off from me.  It can be difficult to always have an idea to start a story and I don't find a lot of the same tools that I use when I am stuck trying to write poetry as helpful with fiction.  Having an exercise helps me to focus on just writing and not worry about more than putting one word in front of another, which can be very liberating.  At the same time, I don't know that I am writing much more than exercises, if I am honest.  I think it may be that I am using it as a way of training myself, though, and in the end I will find better approaches that help me to actually get deeper into the work.

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