This exercise is from Kate Grenville's book, "The Writing Book". It is one of the first in the early chapters, and its main aim is to get you up and writing very quickly.
I scanned the first chapter, which I read ages ago, and it lists all the excuses.
[stop - 49 words]
From my corner of the room, I look up and see the picture rail. It is wide and stained, or "french polished" rather than painted - a lovely dark wood. A number of stringed instruments have been arranged in museum like fashion.
[stop - 42 words]
The pens of many colours, the old grey stapler, and a tape measure were sitting alongside a bright purple pencil sharpener. In start contrast were the modern-looking post it notes. You can get more colours than just yellow sticky notes now.
[stop - 41 words]
OK. Now this bit is not being timed.
The exercise is to write about anything for 60 seconds, not worrying about spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. I found topics easy to pick just by looking around the room. But I kept correcting the typos - not all, though, as I ran the spell check at the end and found a few letters missing. I think this keyboard needs a service as a few of the letters need a more heavy hand sometimes.
I also notice that I managed three sentences in each one minute paragraph. Is this the way I think? Why did I have any sentences anyway? Is it that hard to get a stream of conscious going? I have spent many years writing technical documents where I am always cutting paragraphs into lists and sentences in half - even pulling out half the adjectives. How will this style go when trying to write a novel? We'll have to see.
Note to self: [300+] words in 15 minutes - at that rate could get 1000 an hour.
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