Lively experiments: Writing exercises and life writing

Writing exercises are foundational to creative writing teaching and sustain a strong connection to life writing. Exercises often prompt students to work with memories, experiences, observations, perceptions and life stories. Examining the application of writing exercises in creative writing teaching can assess their significance for life writing, bringing insight to life writing practice and scholarship. In exercises, students work in embodied, intuitive ways with life narratives and as such writing exercises make an important intervention in understanding how life narratives are shaped on and off the page. They reflect key aspects of life writing including selfhood, the construction of self-narratives, autobiographical truth, and experimental form. The careful design and use of writing exercises enables student understanding of life writing as a practice and genre. Writer-teachers bring practice-based insights to the use of writing exercises, positioning them as significant sites for knowledge of, and experimentation with, life writing.