Writing Exercises 12: A Day in the Life

First published 2/16/2002; last edited 12/16/2004

Write a journal entry covering a single day as though you were living someone else's life.

Variations

• #12a. You're a politician--small-time, big-time, local, national, international--it doesn't matter which.
• #12b. You're a celebrity: a musician, an actor, a sports star, a best-selling author.
• #12c. You're a "nobody:" a farmer, a cashier, a gas attendant, a waitress, a baker.
• #12d. You're someone exotic: someone from an usual foreign land, someone in an exciting line of work, and so on. Don't be afraid to stray into the fantastical here; what would it be like if you were a high-class spy like James Bond?
• #12e. Pick someone specific that you find interesting and write a journal entry for him. Preferably pick someone you haven't actually met, or least someone you don't know well.
• #12f. If you're a fiction writer, pick a single story, novel, or other piece of your writing, and write journal entries for every major character in that piece.
• #12g. The character writing the journal entry has some horrible secret that he keeps hidden. He doesn't want to write it down for someone to find, but he needs to write about it for his own comfort. What does he write? How does the secret bleed into his writing without coming out explicitly?
• #12h. Instead of a journal entry, use a different form--poetry, fiction, an article.