Writing is a physical process. The satisfying glide of ink over smooth paper, the scratch of a sharp pencil, or the squishy exuberance of a felt pen; I love using a handheld writing tool to make marks. Sitting in front of a computer screen clicking away it’s easy to forget that the brain is held aloft by a body.

Watch a young child shaping their first letters. Their whole being is involved. Everything moves, arms, torsos, legs, heads, tongues, paper as well as pen. The entire body is focused into the effort. Ted Hughes said he could tell which children’s poems had been written by hand and which typed straight into the computer. He claimed that the handwritten were always more vital because they connected with the muscle memory of that first entry into written language. In this exercise we concentrate on the physicality of writing.

Get a large piece of paper and a writing tool – or several – something you enjoy using. You start writing after the writing prompt and keep writing without stopping for ten minutes. If you run out of words repeat the last one until a new one comes or write I don’t know what to write. Keep going even when it hurts. Don’t worry about spelling or punctuation or keeping to the lines. Write big or small, leap about the page. Have fun, maybe you want to write the word LOLLIPOP in huge letters or underline ANGRY with fierce deep marks. Maybe your writing goes tiny and runs off and hides in a corner of the page. Write as if you’re dancing on the page. Keep writing.

Writing Prompt is: - I/he/she/they walked through the door and… write for 5 minutes!