Writing Prompt - April Fools' Day

It's April Fools' Day!  What a great day for a story!  Here's your prompt for the day - enjoy.

Writing Prompt - St. Patrick's Day

You may wonder why I've chosen holidays to post writing prompts.

I've been told by some people that a holiday is a bad day to do a prompt.  Their reasoning is that no one is going to be writing on a holiday simply because it is a holiday.

I disagree.

I think most writers feel that they are at their best when they sit down to write everyday.  It doesn't matter if it's tough writing that day, the point is they did the work.  They kept themselves on track and moving forward.  On some holidays, especially those that families like to spend a lot of time together or require a lot of kitchen time, it can be nice to let your mind run wild for a little while.  A writing prompt can do that.  Just a nice little exercise to keep your creativity and writing in top form.

So for St. Patrick's Day I thought something lush and green would be appropriate.  Who's looking out?  What's out there?  Where are they?  There's no right answer - just start writing and find out for yourself!

Writing Prompt - Happy New Year

So here's your New Year's prompt. I love doing prompts on holidays!

Happy New Year to you all!

Martin und Milena (und alle meine Freunde die in Deutschland und in der Schweitz wohnen) - Guten Rutsch!

Writing Prompt - Merry Christmas

About a week ago I glanced out the window while I was cooking and was immediately awestruck by what I saw.

Okay, so maybe I'm easily amused, but it was beautiful.  I took a portion of the photograph (yes, I did have to take a picture) and decided to use it for a writing prompt.  The portion I used kind of reminds me of the play "Art" by Yasmina Reza.

Those of you who have seen/read the play will understand.  If you haven't seen it, you really should.

In a brief, "Art" is about a man who buys a painting for what most would consider a fortune.  When his two best friends see the painting it brings out some rather strong opinions on art, life, and friendship.

This picture has a lot more detail to it than the painting in "Art", so count your self lucky and enjoy the prompt.

Writing Prompt - Happy Thanksgiving

I've been meaning to start doing an occasional writing prompt, but I've never started doing it. Now's as good a time as any, so I'll put one out every week or two.

I love to do prompts. I've loved them since I got my first paper in elementary school with a picture in one corner and the first part of the first sentence on the top line. (In other words, a prompt.) I loved writing those stories as a child and I still have most of them, if not all. They're at least good for a laugh now. I wonder how I'll view what I write now in fifteen or twenty years. I imagine the changes won't be as dramatic - hopefully I won't find it something to laugh at - but I hope my writing will continue to evolve and in a good way.

For me prompts are a mental exercise. It never matters what else I'm working on, I can always spend a few minutes toying with a prompt just to see what happens. Sometimes it's a nice break from the project I'm currently working on and I will feel refreshed after I've given my brain something new to run wild with for a few minutes.

I keep all the things I write from prompts in a folder and later they may become the start of a longer story or novel. I never quite know until it's written.

In honor of the holiday tomorrow, here's the first one:

I thought the bird was dead until . . .

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Out of Nowhere

It's funny sometimes how a story starts in your mind. Sometimes random words just come together and start to mean something to you. Today I was eating lunch and a first sentence came to me. Of course, after the first sentence comes there's no way to simply stop there. I wrote the sentence down with a few notes and I'll have to come back to it another time.

A good place to get started when you feel like you have no idea what to write is magneticpoetry.com. You can buy magnetic poetry there, but I prefer to play with it online - and that’s free. It’s listed in my Delicious links.

The other night I went to the website and moved words around for quite a while. I almost had a poem three different times then I'd rest the poetry kit when I decided I didn't like what I was putting together. Finally I wrote a poem about water and, having a very dull moment, I called it ‘Water’ too.

I just use their site to get myself going. I don't like to limit myself to the words in the kit. And I don't want to sit there all day sifting through every single word they offer either. Many times I'd be short a 's' for a plural word or an 'and' or an 'ing' so I play with the words as long as I feel I need to and then I'm off to start writing whatever's formed in my mind.

I open my word processing program and put it all down, the magnetic as well as the non-magnetic portions. I like to split the screen so I can still see the words I put together online while I’m adding whatever I need to finish the poem, or whatever it’s become – but it’s usually a poem.

I use it as a little exercise to get myself moving. When I’m done I'm usually ready to make the transition to whatever project I'm working on. I've really liked some to the stuff I've come up with this way, but once I tried it with some other writers and nobody else liked the idea of having a bunch of word strips to play with until an idea formed. Oh well, not every method's going to be good for everyone.

There are some really great tools available online, but the magnetic poetry's among my favorites. Eventually I'll add some others to my Delicious links.

Writing Time Capsules

Last April when a friend and I were on our writing retreat we each used a prompt to write a story, then sealed our stories in envelopes. We put them away as time capsules and were not to open them until our 2009 writing retreat.

After we'd done it we both thought it was a bad idea. Even though we were both in the middle of other projects at the time, we wanted access to our stories. Too bad for us we'd already made a deal. It was really hard for me because I was the one that had to keep them both and could have opened them at any time. There were a few times that it was hard to restrain myself, but I made it.

In the long run it turned out alright. We opened them recently and read our stories. I think we both saw room for improvement, but still liked the ideas enough to want to keep them for a future project. I think it's a good idea to put things away for a while, but now I'd rather wait until it's finished - at least the first draft. When the story's just getting started I'd rather have the option to work on it if I want to.

This year we learned from last year's mistake. We didn't make time capsules with stories inside. Instead we are gathering 10 pictures to use as writing prompts and putting those away as our time capsules. Hopefully we'll forget what the pictures are and be surprised next year when we open them for some of our writing exercises. Great idea Sheri, Thanks.

I don't have mine yet, but I'll get the time capsule put together this week. We used to put together a larger collection of pictures and actually try to be artistic by taking the pictures ourselves. But sometimes the results were scary - especially when we used an ‘abstract’ category for some of the shots. Now it's anything goes. We cut them out of magazines, print them off the internet, or sometimes even take them ourselves. The only rule is that they have to be good pictures, which we define as pictures from which we think we could find the root of a story.

We'll see how the new plan works out next year, but I've got high hopes for this method.