In the wee hours of the night, when inspiration strikes unexpectedly, don't let it slip away. If you write, you know what it's like. Insight and creativity—the desire to push the boundaries of your writing—strike when you least expect it. And you're often in no position to act: in the shower, driving the kids to school...in the middle of the night. The 3 A.M. Epiphany offers more than 200 intriguing writing exercises designed to help you think, write, and revise like never before—without having to wait for creative inspiration. Brian Kiteley, noted author and director of the University of Denver's creative writing program, has crafted and refined these exercises through 15 years of teaching experience. You'll learn how to: • Transform staid and stale writing patterns into exciting experiments in fiction • Shed the anxieties that keep you from reaching your full potential as a writer • Craft unique ideas by combining personal experience with unrestricted imagination • Examine and overcome all of your fiction writing concerns, from getting started to writer's block Open the book, select an exercise, and give it a try. It's just what you need to craft refreshing new fiction, discover bold new insights, and explore what it means to be a writer. It's never too early to start—not even 3 A.M. T. J. Gerlach in Puerto del Sol : For all of its abundant quirkiness, The 3 A.M. Epiphany tends to center more on traditional craft elements; things like character, point of view, and structure are at its core. It is a wonderful collection of exercises with innovative angles that breathe new life into these staples of fiction. The 4 A.M. Breakthrough , though, as a whole, pushes into deeper terrain. It is more philosophical, psychological, even more political than its predecessor. Many of the exercises in The 4 A.M. Breakthrough are intensely OuLiPo-ian in the wonderful perversity of their restrictions. Take Exercise # 5, "The Letter A," with its startling first line "Write a story about an ox or a cow," followed by its no-less-startling suggestion that the entire piece be centered around words beginning with the letter A. The logic behind this combination is that the Phoenicians began their alphabet with a symbol derived from the head of an ox—the main figure in their agricultural and economic system. But of course it is the more decidedly arbitrary element of this exercise in a contemporary context that opens up its creative possibilities. And this exercise is by no means alone in its playful idiosyncrasy. Exercise # 53, "Country Noises," asks you to write a story that makes use of visual representations of sound--such as ######### for the sound of a leaf blower... I'll allow exercise # 73, "Buzzing Blooming Confusion," and its first line "Try to capture the true confusion of reality in a very short space" to speak for itself.Yet alongside these seemingly cerebral exercises are ones that aim for the heart. Many of the exercises are based on books and artists Kiteley has a deep affection for—"Watch My Neighbor Totoro twice" Kiteley pleads in an eponymous exercise, "even if you've already seen it several times." And the description of exercise # 194, "Lobster Bisque," is a moving little piece of creative non-fiction all in itself. But then this separation between head and heart is always a false one. Georges Perec, who is probably the most famous writing-as-puzzle-making writer, saw his exercises in restriction as deeply personal, even Freudian explorations of his inner self. And while his fellow OuLiPo member, Italo Calvino, may be known for some of the most achingly beautiful works of the second half of the twentieth century, Calvino approached his craft from his first discipline, mathematics, and used restrictions that were no less arduous than those of Perec. Kiteley's exercises play the line between these two poles beautifully--in them the head is never far away from the heart, or the heart from the head. Daniel Wallace: Kiteley distills years of writing instruction into a collection of annotated prompts, offering via theory—at the beginning of each chapter—and practice—the exercises—a complete vision of the working artist. Kiteley argues that we learn best by doing. Through prompts ranging from straight forward ("Use a particular and fairly vivid piece of clothing to tell a story") to wonderfully taxing ("Use the letters of the first names of four or five ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends as your only alphabet for a very short story"), a novice can build up a toolkit and an accomplished writer can add to one. Kiteley is persuasive on the method: "All the other arts—as well as athletics, obviously—take the notion of practice and exercise very seriously. Too many writers make a fetish of the natural, untroubled writer who just breathes out a great story." Kiteley explains that "these exercises try to respond to how writers censor themselves, how we react to familiar patterns of behavior, and how we f