Writing exercises

What makes a good writing exercise? I’ve been trying to answer that question for about five years now. I keep coming back to the idea of maintaining the writer’s natural stance, where the writer is focused on the unfolding story not the technique. This is pretty much the opposite of what Ursula K Le Guin and many other writer’s suggest. I think those exercises escape the gravity of the overspecified story prompt, but run straight into the wall of technique. An explicit focus on sound, grammar, syntax, or some other technique. This is the equivalent of learning to dribble a soccer ball through cones rather than a 200-pound defender. Cones pull the player’s eyes down, not up on the defender’s body.

I’m getting closer. Writing an exercise is itself a skill. One thing I’ve realized is that I need to manage cognitive load, so my exercises keep getting shorter. I now keep them at 20 to 35 words, but that means I need to fit exactly the right task in a tight space, and that takes a lot of work to pull off successfully.