Customer Reviews

Take Ten for Writers: 1000 writing exercises to build momentum in just 10 minutes a day

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I am a frustrated writer, or more accurately, a frustrated workaholic who'd love to write more. This book hit all the right notes in my mind. It abandons the classic approach of journaling to take you on new, fun and creative adventures in short focused writing. The exercises presented are well structured to get you writing right away. I was doing my first Take Ten exercise during a short business flight the day after I bought the book and felt an immediate rush of creative endorphins. My wife and I have done exercises and shared the results as well. I have many writing books in my collection, some scholarly, some well defined examinations of the craft, some very practical guidelines. The thing that sets this book apart is that it's fun, makes writing fun, and gets me doing what all the world's dailies keeps me from getting to. Putting pen to paper, creating and learning as I do it. The exercises are short enough to fit into any busy schedule, but they have also spawned seeds of works I'd like to take further. I wish I could thank the author personally, because she's opened up a door that I thought was locked tight.

They say, (and I don't personally know who THEY are), that getting started is often the hardest part of writing (or perhaps anything for that matter). But for writers, it seems even more difficult for one reason or other.

What should I write about?
What do I know about?
What am I feeling?
What should I be doing?
What genre should I choose?
Should it be funny?
Should it make a point?
What about dialogue?
Is this just me rambling?
Should the animals talk?
What direction should this story go?
Do I even want to write a story?

Needless to say, there are countless other things we question ourselves about when we sit to write something. (heck, even a grocery list has managed to take on a life of it's own in my world).

Bonnie's book "Take Ten" provides 1,000... (YES 1 Thousand) possible prompts to get you writing.

Here's how it works...

Bonnie supplies the overview of your 10 minute assignment
You pick a number from 1 to 10
You turn the page
You locate the item next to the number you chose
You write from there for 10 minutes
You CELEBRATE that you have written.

It works.
It's an awesome feeling
It will get you writing more today than yesterday.

Note: my only problem is I keep choosing the same 3 numbers. So maybe a 10 sided die would come in handy.

Chessex Dice: Ten Sided Dice - D10 - Random Group of Ten Sided Die (You Pick How Many You Want)

Although, I find this book to be almost like the first one... "The write-brain workbook," unless it is meant to be a further addition to it? It is a great book to help beginning and advance writers' expanding their ideas on paper. I have found this book to be useful in creating short stories to writing a personal narrative with in the 1000 fresh, inventive, and creative prompts available.