Weekly Writing Exercise: Use the News

Whether you greedily devour each day’s news or you shun it altogether (like I do), this writing exercise will turn the scraps of the day into fodder for your creative mind. Without actually reading any stories, scan the headlines and choose one that piques your curiosity. For instance, the headline “Paul Allen Spent Years Building the World’s Biggest Airplane. He’ll Never See It Fly” jumps out at me from my local paper, brimming with possibilities. Or, how about “Community Loses More than Coffee as Starbucks Closes” in this morning’s USA Today, or “The Person Giving You Travel Advice May Be an Inmate”? (My goodness, that last one’s full of irony, isn’t it?) Now, spend fifteen or twenty minutes crafting a story, poem or scene from your headline.