This page will offer exercises that might be useful. Sometimes you need to lower your standards to get started, as William Stafford suggested. Sometimes you need a guidepost in the right direction. Let me know if they are useful to you.
Your Home-Ground
I want to start this page with what I call Home Ground Exercises. Your sense of place is a great reservoir of material you may not be aware you own. These exercises are to help you excavate that sense of place. Your sense of place may arise from a childhood home; it might be a place you feel a profound connection with after only one visit. In our time, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish one place from another. The essayist Scott Russell Sanders writes about the "malling of America." But if we take the time to explore, either on the road or trail or sidewalk, or in memory, we can find out what makes one place distinct from another. Those details give you stories only you can tell. Soon I'll post a talk that discusses these ideas thoroughly.
Some of these exercises have been adapted from Sam Keen's book, Your Mythic Journey.
1. What rules, ideals, and taboos are advocated at your home-ground? Brainstorm several fictional lines of tension that might arise from such rules, ideals, and taboos. Write a scene in which there is conflict over one of these.
2. Write four paragraphs, each describing a season at the same location. Take the time to learn the names of the flora, fauna, weather elements, and geographical features.
3. If I lived in your home-ground for three years, what would I come to expect? What would I look forward to? What would I dread?
4. Name five locally-owned, non-chain businesses at your home-ground. Write a thorough sensory description of each one.
5. Have there been villains at your home-ground? Have there been fools? How about wise women/men? Heroes? Write thumbnail characterizations of some of these villains, fools, wise women/men, and heroes.