Have you ever tried writing exercises? Some are pretty simple but not so effective. Now and then I find one that makes you 'need' to write. There is no way for you to resist writing. Those are the best kind. Who writes those?

Writing exercises from HerCorner.com:

Try this: Pretend you are a gossip columnist. Write about a recent personal encounter. Don't use any names of people, places or things. How does that change your writing? Make you more aware of who, what, why, when and where?

Try this: Think of a place you feel passionate about, somewhere you have been often, whether its your favourite bookstore, garden or town. Now, write a journal about the trip. Include all the details like how it sounds, smells, your favourite spot or thing, where you found free parking, where's the best view? Tell someone else all about your place, as if they were going there themselves.

Try this: Create a character with a secret to confess. Write their journal entries over the days, weeks, months they keep the secret. Show how it effects themselves, the people around them and why they continue to keep the secret.

Try this: Practice paraphrasing. Take a large block of quoted text and pare it down to the bare essentials. This is a great skill to have for interviews or your own writing (if you tend to be wordy).

Try this: Find a newspaper article you feel passionate about and write a letter to the editor. Write as if you are going to send it in to be published, think carefully of each of your points, make sure the style is professional and then actually send it in.

Try this: Write a letter to one of your ancestors, someone you have never met but have heard something about. Or make up an ancestor. Tell them all about yourself, who you are, what makes you the person you are.

Try this: Write a letter to someone from another planet. Tell them about life on Earth. Describe everything to someone who may not know what air is, who has never heard of the fast food concept, etc.

Try this: Write out your favourite joke (or fairy tale or poem). Then rewrite that narrative as a tragedy, as a limerick, as a haiku, as a serious academic treatise, as a breaking news story, or as the script for a music video.

Try this: Eavesdrop on a conversation, capture a snippet of it in your mind. Write a story or scene using dialogue only. Since every scene in every story should contain conflict, you'll want to keep this key concept in mind.

Try this: Watch something happen in public and remember what it was. Try and remember everything and write about it in detail.

Try this: Do a full character analysis. Create a real person: how they walk, the colours they like, who they most admire, where their family came from, their Mother's maiden name, do they have a zit today and so on.

Try this: Your character is suddenly blinded and danger still abounds. Focus on those senses you might normally neglect when writing.

Try this: Design three tools, inventions, or customs for your science fiction or fantasy world.

Try this: In five hundred words or less, choose a superstition or old wives' tale and describe how a character of your design came to learn it and/or who the character first remembers teaching it to him/her.

Try this: Choose a favourite fable, fairy tale or literary story. Pick a character (not the main characters) and tell the story through his or her eyes in five hundred words or less.

Try this: Write a poem describing the colour red to someone who has been blind from birth. Keep in mind, this person has never seen the typical things like fire, the sun, etc which you could use as a comparison. If poetry isn't your thing, write in prose but try to be lyrical.

Try this: Pick out your favourite tape or CD and put it on. Sing a long, dance, pretend you are one of the backup singers or the singer herself. Put energy into it and go wild. Dress up like a rock star, grab a make-shift microphone and sing out loud. When you feel charged up write something.

Try this: Write about a dream, real or imagined. Be vivid. Dreams tend to jump around since they don't have to make sense or be guided by rules of time and space.

Try this: Get away from your usual writing place. Go outside, get a coffee at the local diner, sit in your car and write. You may find it hard to adapt to the change but it could bring you all new perspectives.

Try this: Verbs make the world go round. With that in mind write a story where the characters are running out of time or involved in an extreme sport. Keep the action sharp and crisp with verbs.

Try this: Try a short word challenge. Write a short story using only words that have six letters or less. Really great practice at keeping it simple for anyone who tends to use ten dollar words when a 10 cent word would work just as well.