Coffee break creative writing exercise: Music

You don't need to spend hours on your writing to feel creative. Fuel your imagination wherever you are with our 15-minute coffee break exercise.

Set the timer for five minutes and create a list of songs or pieces of music that have been important to you at different times of your life.

Choose one of them. Set the timer for five minutes and free-write (write as quickly as you can without crossing out or worrying about correct grammar.) Add as much detail as you can about that song – for example, the clothes you wore, who you were with, what you ate, places you visited.

For your remaining five minutes, underline any words and phrases you particularly like. See if you can craft this raw material into a poem or flash fiction story.