Writing games are tricks, exercises, things to try to get your writing brain in the mood. I find them useful when a story's giving me trouble - I can't think of a way out of the corner, or I can't think of a corner to get into, or I'm just not feeling in the right mood to write that story - as well as generating new ideas, and just keeping my writing-mind in shape. And on the plus side, they're usually fun to try, and you can end up with the germs of some great little stories.

Out of habit

Writers, and indeed any artist or creator who relies at least in part on inspiration to function, have a tendency to rely on magic habits. Tuesday morning, 7am in the third left chair of the coffee shop on the corner, with an A5 notebook and a chewed-up fountain pen. Monday, after the ironing, before the dishes with an unlit candle and Enya on iTunes. Whatever yours is - a formula that you feel you can write with.

It probably does work for you. I have some of my own - I get up at 5 several days a week to by in the city by 7am. My shift doesn't start until 8:30, but by leaving early I miss peak hour traffic, get a free train ticket and ninety minutes of relative peace in the university before it opens. I write then - it's one of the few times I've managed to carve out successfully for regular writing.

The challenge here is simple - work out what your habits are - place, time, implements, and try changing them all. If you write in the mornings on computer in your office, take a notebook to the park in the afternoon. If you're a notebook-in-the-coffee-shop person, try writing in your lunchbreak at work on the computer (check your work's policies before you try that one, though.)

Mix up your habits. For one thing, it'll show you that you don't need those totems to write. Want, maybe, but not need. You could still write if you didn't have them. But the change will also free up your creativity a little - you may find new ideas, new expressions and new connections forming, which will improve your writing in general.

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