An Overheard Comment
Jot down a snippet of a conversation that grabs your attention while going about your daily activities. You may hear it as you pass a group of people chatting in the street, while waiting in the bank or in the queue at a ticket office, or on a crowded bus or train… or anywhere…
Just a few words can be enough, though longer will work just as well. Whatever the length of what you hear, it will surely be something that intrigues you or takes you to a memory or sets your imagination on fire.
You are not necessarily going to write about what you heard. Instead, your task is to write something that is stimulated by what you have heard or the experience of overhearing it. What you write may not be directly related to the words you caught, but it will be something that comes directly from within you.
Begin writing whatever comes to you and see where it leads. It may take any form… poetry, prose, 1st 2nd or 3rd person, past or present tense…
Whatever it is, keep writing until you feel satisfied you have captured a gem that otherwise may not have begged to be written.
In writing courses, I ask students for a maximum of three hundred words to allow time for processing at the following class session. However, there is no word limit here.
This exercise is related to Writing Tip #3 and Writing Tip #11.