Writing Prompts

Tweet

I have to confess that I have a lengthy history of…disdain for writing prompts. Disdain is the ideal word for what I feel. And to be frank, I don’t really know where the feeling comes from. It likely stems from my years of only sitting in front of a blank page when I had something to write and not enough time spent sitting in front of said blank page needing to produce and coming up empty.

I don’t hold any disdain for anyone who uses writing prompts, by the way. That needs clarification.

For a while now I’ve been wanting to try out some writing prompt exercises to see which ones, if any, worked for me. And I did want to see what all the fuss is about, it’s true. However, I’ve been putting it off and off and –well, here I am.

I recently finished Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing and one of his main fonts of inspiration were the endless pages of nouns he wrote down. In his exact words:

“…along through those years [of imitative writing] I began to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These lists were the provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull. The lists ran something like this: THE LAKE. THE NIGHT. THE CRICKETS. THE RAVINE. THE ATTIC. …” (Zen in the Art of Writing: Essays on Creativity. Joshua Odell Editions, 1994. 17).

I find it intriguing that his lists led him to more honest writing because they allowed him to get to a certain purity in terms of concept. I intend to try the list exercise (I believe I have a list of story titles somewhere actually), but I want to try more.

What writing prompts have you tried? Which ones would you recommend? What are your feelings on writing prompts in general?

Tweet

The post Writing Prompts appeared first on Anxiety Ink.