Anger is the firestorm that signals the start of your new life from The Artist's Way - not quite a prompt but always on my mind 🌞

I still think about this prompt from my first writing class in college - blue - that's it :)

To not choose suffering….front of mind as I navigate a bunch of weird hard grief.

My favorite writing prompt, from my high school psychology teacher, which was: take 5 minutes, fill a page with your thoughts. It could be a grocery list, the same words over and over again, stream of consciousness. It was part of a bigger project of getting us to be comfortable writing about ourselves, with and alongside each other. She fostered that trust by not reading our writing, instead glancing over it to make sure you had written at least a page. I loved the comfort her classroom brought me, and perhaps I felt called to the Artists Way later in life for this reason.

Ahhhhhh meeeeeeee!!!

Today, my grief feels like…

A writing prompt I recently did involved finding paradox in things we experience regularly. A writing instructor presented us with a bunch of images as well as a topic (peace, belonging, fulfillment, etc.) We were supposed to choose an image to correspond with the word we were focusing on and write a few lines beginning with "Belonging is..." or "Belonging is like..." and complete that reflection, likening the topic to that image. Then we were invited to choose something that is typically the opposite of our first word (struggle, estrangement, directionlessness, etc.) and do the same...we could choose a different image, or even the same one, if we really wanted to go deep on the idea of paradox. It brought up some really interesting insights!

My favorite prompt is from the Writing Down the Bones deck--"describe broccoli to someone who has never seen it" :)

I recently read a prompt that I liked: write about who gets lost or left behind. I write a lot about memory, belonging and identity and loss tends to be a recurring theme.

One that always gets me beyond the superficial in examining my needs is "How am I being with myself right now?"

This is who I want to be in the apocalypse…

What's the most boring thing about youself?

A prompt i return to is: What within me wants to be known?

Write about a jacket that smells like a campfire and what that campfire was - who built it, who tended it, where it was and how it went out.

Imagine an object from the future that you would interact with everyday. What does it do? What kind of future are you imagining as the context for this object? What does this object reveal about the available resources, human skillsets, and the interconnectedness (or not) of your imagined future world?

Now imagine future-you has a question about how to use this object, or about its return policy, or how to repair it. (Or really anything!) Write the standard FAQ for this object from the future.

Me please !!!

Write a resume for your favorite everyday object. What’s its work history? Its education? Its qualifications?

I can’t remember where I read about this book. But someone published a book which was entirely entries that began with, “Today, I…” When I feel stuck, especially with my daily pages, this is one of my go-tos.

What is alive here right now?

My favorite prompt is now the 5 things prompt I have learned from Summer Brennan’s essay camp!

My favourite prompt is If you could tell your younger self ont thong, what would it be?

My favorite writing prompt is: write about something you have lost.

I'm always coming back to what's alive for you in this moment?

What would you ask of your future self?

Cool!

A writing prompt: how am I spending my time? Or, how do I want to do today?

let me discover my dreams

Who in your ecosystem is calling your attention? What are they communicated to you?

I love starting with "what do you need to let go of right now"?

Mine is “I rarely received …”

my favorite is simple: what do you want more of? what do you want less of?

Write a letter to your younger self. Write a letter to your future self.

What do you feel in your body right now?

My favorite prompt: I am…

“Tell me everything you know about school lunches.” (this is an Anne Lamont prompt from Bird By Bird)

my friend and i came up with one: what would the voice of (air, water, earth, fire, rock, dirt, sky, flower, color) say?

best done with a timeline and on a typewriter :)

and here’s a cute title for the prompt i just came up with:

choose a voiceless choice and give it a voice!

or something.

There was a tree…

I think I missed the giveaway but a favorite prompt is reviewing all the things in a day where I had an outsize/unhelpful reaction to something

(Missed the giveaway but) Dear god/ma/higher self/little girl self/etc., what would you have me know right now in this moment

I like to write about something that seems too small to write about. An object on my desk or something in view, and just concentrate on describing that thing, its use or significance, and then just slowly pull the focus back further and further and follow threads to other things as they appear.

Missed the giveaway, but here's a good prompt from Writing the Sacred Journey, by Elizabeth J. Andrew: Describe a small, ordinary activity that you've already done today (brushing your teeth, buckling your seatbelt, etc.). Imagine that this event appears in your spiritual memoir. Reflect: What does this activity reveal about you? What mystery does it contain? No subject lacks the potential to reveal the spiritual.

To write about an early memory of a scent.