Use the following 10 words, in any order, in single piece of fiction or non-fiction.  You can use the words in any context that fits your writing, but they must be exactly as presented in the list:

1. Abolish
2. Cadence
3. Erratic
4. Fiddle
5. Kindred
6. Mini
7. Quaint
8. Stubborn
9. Trembling
10. Vanity

Set your clock, watch, kitchen timer - whatever - for 20 minutes, type the title at the top of the page and then start writing wherever your creativity takes you with it.

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Write about the things/features you like best about your home.

Use any of the following as the start of a piece of fiction or non-fiction:

1. The skater glided across the ice with ………
2. It took a tremendous amount of effort but finally ………
3. Olivia hadn’t meant for it to happen quite like it did. What she’d hoped for was ………

Today’s exercise is to decide where you stand on the issue of TV being bad for children’s health, then write a letter as if to your local newspaper telling them what you think, and why you believe this is so.

A scene where there are two people standing in a kitchen.  One of them holds a knife, one of them a dish.  Now write the scene as if it were part of a novel.  Give the people names, describe where they’re standing, write their dialogue, what’s happening? It can be a short short story, or it can be an “excerpt” as if it belongs in a larger novel, it’s up to you!

Use all of the following words in a piece of fiction or non-fiction:

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Use any of your five senses - just one of them - and then describe the following with only that sense.

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How organized are you?  Write an essay that examines what systems you have in place to deal with both the day-to-day running of your family/home/life and any emergency plans you have in place for the days when “life happens” and your usual routine is shot out of the water.

The story of my life.  Or rather your life! 

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