The 3 A.M. Epiphany

What writing books do you use as general practice or preparation for NaNoWriMo?

While perusing the writing section of my hometown brick-and-mortar library, I found a book called The 3 A.M. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley. It contains a series of creative writing prompts and exercises that get you to think about point of view, characters, descriptions, psychology, etc. Each prompt is about 300-700 words, so you can knock a few out in one sitting or really get into a detailed one if the mood and topic suits you. I highly recommend it.

For example, today I worked on a 600 word exercise that dealt with synesthesia the poetic description of a sense impression in terms of another sense, as in “a loud perfume” or “an icy voice.” Here are two of my favorite sentences I wrote today (emphasis on synesthesia):

The door to Room 307 hung wide open, letting each chemo-industrial note bounce and scream out of the portal.

Since the smell of this room was green and sterile and the sound was now the intensity of a college marching band falling off a cliff and landing on the largest tin can collection in the continental United States, Joe walked normally now past the jars of bitter formaldehyde and spicy ethanol, past the posters of animal dissections done in the vivid color palette of an ecstasy junkie’s autumnal hike along a Bostonian stream, and past the dry erase board large enough to hold two medium-sized Clydesdales.

Here's a link to my full exercise should the alluring perfume of curiosity pull you.

Exercise 17 Synesthesia