Friday, December 20th, 2013  I rarely explore prompts categorized as “personal essay.” I include them in a lot of suggested prompts, but they aren’t often the focus of my blog since I generally talk about fiction.
But personal experiences bolster fiction. It’s these experiences that allow authors to write what they “know.” They lend realism to an otherwise imaginative tale.
When you choose a suggested prompt below, spend some time remembering the details of what occurred or visualizing events or objects before you start to write. Have things clear in your mind so they can be clearly articulated in the writing.
Here’s Your Prompt:
Friday, December 13th, 2013  I’ve been traveling.
Last week it was a convention and this past week it was out of state for a friend’s book launch.
Since I don’t know whether I’m coming or going, I figured we’d do a little “best of” the writing prompts this week.
In honor of Friday the 13th, you could revisit the Attack of the Phobias Writing Prompt.
Here’s one for poets: Structured Poetry, The Tanka
Here’s a writing prompt about collections: What do your characters collect?
Writing Prompt: Lost
For something unthemed, you might try the Random Words Writing Prompt.
Have Fun!
Friday, November 22nd, 2013  I’m sitting in the doctor’s office as I type this.
When I walked in, there were only there were only three people in the office. And now, forty minutes later…I’m still sitting in the waiting room, and there’s not a seat to be had.
Seriously. Standing room only.
The funny part: the expression on each newcomer’s face when they walk through the door. Most people are surprised at first. Then comes annoyance. There are quite a few angry faces, too.
(I’m thinking of Mrs. Potato Head in Toy Story right now, where she packs Mr. Potato Head’s angry eyes, just in case he needs them.)
Me?
I’m laughing. If I’d been one of the entrants facing a backed up schedule and nowhere to sit, I’d probably be sporting my angry eyes and a tight-lipped frowny face, too. Instead, I’ve been joking with the seated folks sitting close to me.
We’re watching it all unfold and waiting for an explosion. That should be fun.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write an angry scene. Pay attention to the expressions on your character’s faces, as well as dialogue or actions. Stay away from cliches (a mouth that’s simply a slash, eyes that flash, etc).
- Write a happy scene. As above, pay attention to expressions, not just dialogue and body language. Avoid sparkling eyes, wide or curved mouths and white teeth.
- For practice, set aside some time to describe the faces of the characters in your manuscript. (If you write memoir or are writing a family history, pick the faces of people you know). Now picture these people angry or happy (or some other emotion). Take time to describe not just eyes and mouth, but brow and chin. Wrinkles. Scars. Moles and warts.
- Write a poem about a person who is angry or happy (or, you decide what emotion), but don’t use facial expressions to convey the emotion.
- Write an essay about a time you were extraordinarily angry or upset. Write about your facial expressions…from the inside. Were your eyes hot and stinging? Was your brow so furrowed the muscles were tight? Remember, too, how your expression felt when the situation was resolved. Write down those feelings, too.
- As above, but use the “inner feelings” of your expressions in your manuscript for your point of view character.
Good Luck!
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Image Copyright © Dawn Hudson | Dreamstime Stock Photos.
Friday, November 15th, 2013  I’m an eavesdropper. I admit it.
Wherever I go, I’m tuning in to the things that are being said around me.
I’m a snob, though. I generally don’t listen in on conversations between, for instance, the barista and the guy in front of me buying coffee. The guy buying coffee is passing time, waiting for his extra foamy tallboy. The barista is paid to be charming.
That conversation? Worthless. Usually.
I might listen in if there’s no one else around, but I’d rather listen to the old folks behind me, talking in hushed whispers. Or the goth couple hanging out in the corner arguing.
I love it when I’ve already sat down and gotten my coffee. (Black thanks, I’ll add a bit of cream for myself.) Because if I’m sitting, I can take notes. Awesome.
Conversation is great fodder for scenes. It can prompt entire stories.
Here’s Your Prompt:
(And your homework!)
Make time to sit in a place where you can overhear what other people are saying. With luck, you’ll start hearing things in the middle of the conversation.
After you’ve written a few lines, stop listening and re-read what you’ve written down. What story does it spark? Write it.
If you don’t like the first conversation, go listen to another. This time, stop transcribing when something catches your fancy.
If you can’t get out, do an internet search for “overheard conversations.” There are tons of them out there. Ignore the context and the celebrity of who said what. Find a conversation you like, and write from there.
Good luck!
Friday, November 8th, 2013  The Husband of Awesome™ and I closed up the garden last weekend. We wrapped up the delicate figs with blankets, hoping to baby them over until the spring. We gave the lawn a last once over, hoping it won’t need to be cut again this year. I hacked about a bazillion volunteer Rose of Sharon bushes out of the front flower bed.
There’s more to do, fertilizing and getting empty pots back into the shed, for instance. We just ran out of time.
I love tending the garden, whether it’s spring–and the ground is ripe for rebirth–or fall, when blooms are dying off and everything is ready for sleep. I love the dirt. (And puttering is a great time to noodle over plots.)
Gardens are so full of metaphor…and wonderful inspirations for writing.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write about the sending down of roots (or balling up of them -if the plant is trapped in a pot). Write about making roots of your own, or pulling up your roots and moving on. Write about severing your roots.
- Write about a character that’s been transplanted. If you journal, write about a move you made.
- Write about a garden in the spring, or the summer, or the winter, or the fall. Carefully choose imagery to depict the season. Does a tree look the same in summer as spring?
- Weeds. Write about pulling weeds in a garden, or culling the weeds from your life. Write about a character living in the weeds. Write about weed. 😉
- Is former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins correct, “The soil is full of marvels…”?
- What grows in the garden of earthly delights?
Good Luck!
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Image Copyright © Mariykaa | Dreamstime.com. Used by permission.
Friday, November 1st, 2013  Reuben Sandwich. Photo by Ernesto Andrade.
November 3 is National Sandwich Day!
Yay for sandwiches! I love a good ‘wet’ sandwich: soft, fresh bread, good cuts of meat–and for cold sandwiches–heavy on the pickles and hots. My favorite hot sandwich is a Reuben: corned beef and Swiss cheese on rye with lots of thousand island dressing and sauerkraut. Yum!
Novelist Lawrence Sanders in his book “The First Deadly Sin” describes his detective eating a ‘wet sandwich’ over the sink, accompanied by a bottle of beer. It’s the first time I’d heard the term.
Sanders goes into such loving detail describing the making and eating of this sandwich–taking nearly an entire page to do so, if I remember correctly–that my mouth watered the entire time I was reading.
That’s good writing. (Or maybe it’s my Pavlov response to sandwich descriptions!)
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a scene in which one of your characters eats. He doesn’t have to eat a sandwich. If you’re writing fantasy, it could be stew, or bread and cheese. If you’re writing contemporary, maybe it’s wings or tapas. The point is: spend time crafting a few sentences which will make your reader’s mouth water. Don’t spend a page doing it: that was Sanders’ schtick. Write it your way.
- Write a scene where “the big reveal” is made during a meal. Don’t let the dialogue carry the scene. Bring in the setting: the tablecloth and silver salt and pepper shakers, or, the scarred wooden table and broken crockery.
- Write a “long” haiku of four of five stanzas describing the perfect sandwich and building it. When you’re done, see if you can whittle it down into one stanza, but still keep the ‘flavor’ of the long poem.
- If you journal, write family history, or enjoy memoir, write about a memorable meal. Don’t forget to include descriptions of the food.
Good Luck!
Friday, October 25th, 2013 
Halloween is coming! It’s my favorite holiday of the entire year.
My candy’s bought, my house is decorated, and I’m chomping at the bit looking for activities to extend it a little. Tonight, the Husband of Awesome™ and I will be handing out candy at the local elementary school and watching their costume parade. I can’t wait.
I’m working on a prop for tonight: Zero, Jack Skellington’s faithful ghost hound. I sculpted his head from newspaper, tinfoil, masking tape and styrofoam. Today, I’m spray-painting him white.
I should have covered him in paper mache before painting, but I ran out of time. I’ve been procrastinating.
Ahem.
I’ve also been procrastinating on my writing. I haven’t even turned on my laptop for THREE days!
My word count is not looking too hot this week, unless you count all the non-fiction… (And who counts that?) The ‘Zero’ project–and other Halloween stuff–has kept me pretty busy.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- The main character of your WIP has a secret vice that makes him procrastinate. What is it? How might this procrastination up the tension in your story? Write it.
- Essayists: Thomas de Quincey said, “If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.” Is procrastination worse than murder?
- Procrastination eats away at our time, slowly eroding this valuable commodity. Poets: write about time. (Artists! This one works for you, too: show us time.)
- For journalers and essayists: What have you been putting off? Why?
Good luck!
Friday, October 18th, 2013  We experience tens of thousands of seconds–small moments–each day. Even our worst, or our most boring, day surely contains a meaningful moment or span of moments.
Omitting the most special and the most horrible of days, I am hard-pressed to define a single most meaningful moment in my day.
(Is that my ingrained sense of adventure surfacing? I can always find something interesting, even at the most mundane of times…)
I like when the alarm goes off at 5 a.m. in the morning and I peek out the window into the back yard. I do this without fail: rain or shine, winter and summer.
There’s always something going on out there–even in the darkest of winter mornings–or maybe especially then: many times I’ve flipped on the light and caught some nocturnal beast in action.
Good morning kisses with my Husband of Awesome™ are also meaningful…
…as is hitting my daily word quota in the early morning. (Yay! Hooky day!) 🙂
Can you define a most meaningful moment of your day?
Some time ago, Real Simple Magazine featured an article where they asked writers to pontificate on their most meaningful time of the day.
The article features a meaningful moment as written by each author, and spans the entire day. Interesting reading.
Here’s Your Prompt
- Choose the most meaningful moment of your day today, and write about it. You could write an essay, a diary entry or a poem.
- Tomorrow, record your small moment for each of the hours of the day you’re awake. Write a few sentences about each small moment. Take special care to record the setting, the occasion, and how you felt at that moment. Be brief and concise.
- Make a date of it! Spend the day with your partner and prep him or her about “the most meaningful moment.” At the end of your date, each of you should write down the most meaningful moment on a post card or index card. When you’re done, exchange cards.
Good luck!
PHoto Copyright © Winterberg | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Friday, October 11th, 2013  I’m reading Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables currently as part of my Project 100–and I’m quite enjoying it. Anne is an imaginative, talkative , young girl of ten who is forever getting into scrapes brought on by her flights of fancy. As the book begins, she’s adopted by a quite sensible spinster woman whom Anne refers to as Aunt Marilla.
Aunt Marilla is a dried up, middle-aged woman who lacks imagination and sucks the life out of people with her discreet and circumspect habits. Sensibility is her motto, and fun takes a back seat to decorum every time. She’s unfashionable, and dresses Anne like a mini version of herself.
But little by little, Anne wins her over. As the book progresses we see Aunt Marilla untwisting her panties and enjoying life a lot more–even though she’d thought adopting Anne had been a mistake from the beginning: she’d asked the orphanage for a boy.
I was just starting to like Aunt Marilla. But near the middle of the book, Anne–now thirteen years old–starts a “literary club” with some other young women. They are required to write one story “out their own heads” each week, and then meet to read them aloud to each other and critique them.
(My kind of party!)
When Anne tells Aunt Marilla, the aunt replies: “Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.”
Oh, boo, Aunt Marilla! I don’t like you again.
Nonetheless, Marilla (sort of) brings up a good point: we can’t always write fiction. So, in honor of that, today our prompts are non-fiction related!
Here’s Your Prompt:
In honor of family–natural, adopted and chosen–lets write family stories in a variety of styles:
- Choose a memorable event that you were involved in that your family was not: being away at camp, attending a concert, something on your bucket list, etc. and write a letter home telling all about it. Be certain to include all the parts of a letter: salutation, body, closing and signature.
- Write a newspaper story about a BIG family event: a milestone anniversary or birthday, a wedding, a graduation, etc. Here’s information on how to write a news story.
- Write a journal entry of your earliest memory. Ask family members for their input on what they remember of the same event and incorporate that into the narrative.
- Flip through some old family photographs and choose one or two of the same day that evoke strong memories for you. These strong memories could be good or bad, it doesn’t matter. Just find something you’re passionate about one way or the other. Use the photos as the basis of a scrapbook entry. Lay them out on the page and decorate with magazine clippings, fancy paper, bits of ribbon, etc. Finally, journal about the events of the day. Include your not only the facts of what happened, but your feelings on the topic.
Good Luck!
Friday, October 4th, 2013  I just got a new treadmill, ostensibly to shed a few pounds gained during my two foot surgeries in the last year. I prefer running outdoors, but with winter coming, the treadmill is the best bet to get back on track during the darker winter months here.
A few of my writer friends have turned their treadmills into writing desks, citing all the health benefits of obliterating a sedentary lifestyle. Not wanting to be left out, I’m giving it a try.
The Husband of Awesome™ and I made a trip to one of those lumber superstores and purchased a plank, some eye bolts and bungee cords. In less than an hour, I had a fairly decent makeshift desk on the arms of a treadmill. A ‘breakfast in bed’ lap desk (never used, alas!) and a cardboard riser on top the plank have lifted the keyboard, monitor and mouse to the appropriate level.
It’s fairly comfortable, and I spent an hour on the treadmill Wednesday, after my workout, to read email and work on my WIP (walking uphill at 1.7 miles an hour).
I got a lot of work done!
And it prompted me to do some research on the correlation between exercise and creativity. There’s plenty of research to be found, such as this paper on exercise and creativity by doctors David M. Blanchette, Stephen P. Ramocki, John N. O’del and Michael S. Casey.
They found that, “aerobic exercise may positively impact creative potential, and that these effects may extend for some period of time,” and “results suggest that orthodox aerobic workouts have potential benefits in aiding creativity processes, [and that exercise] potentially provides tangible improvements to creative productivity.”
So, exercise may not only help the creative process in individuals, but it may improve it!
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Go do some aerobic exercise! Take a run, walk briskly, jump rope, etc. for a half an hour. (Standard disclaimer here: please check with your doctor to make certain you’re fit before starting any exercise program!)
- Pull out a creative project that’s been giving you some trouble: a poem where you can’t find the right words, a story you’re blocked on, an art project you just can’t envision, etc. …and give it another try. Or…
- Start a project you’ve been meaning to get to, but has seemed daunting in the past. (Perhaps the exercise will help you think more clearly about how to proceed…) Or…
- Spend some time on your WIP. Do you have a better idea of how to proceed? A more clear idea of where to incorporate plot points or messages or meter? Perhaps you’ve thought of a new idea to add to the work.
Good Luck!
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Image, “Runner’s Feet,” Copyright: Warren Goldswain. Used by permission.
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