BRANDON KELLER.NET

There are times, for example, at this very moment, when I feel the urge to write but have nothing to say. I want to feel the keys under my fingers and see my words appear on the blank page in crisp black letters. I enjoy the coolness of my Macbook Pro underneath my palms and on my wrists as I type. But I have nothing of value to say.

I watched a video on YouTube earlier this week of writing exercises you can do to get the juices flowing. One of them is a timed three-minute exercise where you just write whatever comes to mind. That is what I’m doing now. I’m just writing whatever I think just to grease the wheels and see what happens.

The exercise makes sense if you have ever seen the movie “Finding Forrester” starring Sean Connery and Rob Brown. As someone who wants to be a writer, that movie is inspirational. In it, there is a scene in which Sean’s character, William Forrester, teaches Rob Brown’s character, Jamal Wallace, how to write. They both sit down at traditional typewriters, and William starts typing away and tells Jamal, “Go on, start writing.”

“I’m thinking.”

“No thinking – that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is… to write, not to think!”

I immediately thought of that scene when I watched the video. Because of that it gave the video credibility to me and is why I’m doing the exercise now. It’s interesting because it feels like I’m just having a conversation with a blank page.

I just paused then to think.

NO THINKING!

That comes later, remember?

For now you are supposed to be writing whatever comes to mind, even if it makes no sense. And quit thinking about the timer because nobody is going to know if you hit three mintues or if you wrote for ten. Odds are nobody is reading this anyway so you’re fine and it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you are writing and exercising your writing muscles.

It’s also nice because you are scratching that itch to write. I wonder if other famous writers like James Patterson, Stephen King, or Jack Carr ever just have the itch to write? Do they ever open their preferred writing software to a fresh blank page and just start writing whatever comes to mind? Do they also find the crisp letters against that stark white background as beautiful as I do? Is this something that all writers experience?

Does this mean that I’m actually a writer now or is it just some sort of madness I have descended into? The madness thing might be closer to the truth conidering that the entire reason I started to

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