I recommend this Writing Hour thing.

I'm reading The Art & Craft of the Short Story by Rick Demarinis, and he says that writing doesn't have to have meaning when you write it, and any meaning it acquires has more heart if you didn't mean it while you were writing it (at least, I think that's what it meant) and that too many beginning writers have studied too much brilliant literature and try to be brilliant on the first try. He also recommended writing some junk. So I decided to try it, and opened Word and wrote whatever came into my head and, forty minutes later, ended up with two pages about what seems like nothing but a girl named Annaliese (but maybe Anna) and a beach with frost on it and cold toes. But I'm sure it does have meaning somewhere, and I'll come back tomorrow and find it.

I liked that. It was a lot of fun. I'm going to do it every day, and I figure that one of these times I'll come up with something brilliant without meaning to, which will save a lot of thinking. Because the more I think about ideas the more they start not wanting to be written down.

(By the way, I finished the Fionavar Tapestry, and I do eventually intend to review it, and I started both The Book Thief and The Princess Bride, but the latter is far more entertaining so I'm finishing it first. I recommend it.)