There are no rules to use this book. Just relax, commit to an exercise, and set that clock to five minutes. Grammar is not the most important part of an exercise. The point is that you get used to just writing whatever comes to mind and seeing where the story takes you.

Do take chances and experiment with exercises, reverse them, manipulate them.

Do not hold yourself back by thinking an idea you have for a project is stupid before you even begin. What you think is stupid in the beginning, could turn out to be awesome by the end. This is not an English class. No one is going to penalize you for anything.

There is a mixture of exercises ranging from opening to closing sentences, word association, and completion projects. If you're have trouble starting a project, if you feel like you just don't know where to begin your idea, there are a lot of projects to help with openings. However, just because something says it's an opening exercise doesn't mean it can't be a closing one. The tricky thing about closing exercises is getting to that last sentence before your time runs out. However, they can be very interesting. Wherever you are in your exercise when time runs out, write in the sentence that's supposed to be at the end, no matter if it makes sense or not. Some pretty funny things can happen.

If you come to a point where you're at a comfortable end in the project and still have time left on the clock, start the project over using a different subject. Challenge yourself. Mostly, just have fun. Who knows? A five-minute exercise could turn into a NaNoWriMo project or your next bestseller. You have five-minutes to make something great and have a great time. Take advantage of it.

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