Writing Prompts: My love-hate relationship

I first published the post below last April to give you a glimpse into my complicated relationship with writing prompts and to tell the story of how I ended up creating Alchemy Daily, a fun 30-day session of writing prompts, inspiration, and community for writers and wish-to-be-writers. The next session of Alchemy Daily starts November 1, just in time for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the original month of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo).

Apparently November is the month to hunker down and write-write-write...or at least to dabble with words a bit at a time. Maybe it's something to do with the changing of the seasons: colder, late-fall days up here in the Northern Hemisphere that make us take refuge indoors with mugs of hot beverages, candles, and the desire to create something lovely; or the joyous return of the sun that renews people's creative energy in the Southern Hemisphere.

Whatever it is about November, I need it. I need to recommit to my own writing. I've been... what? lazy? afraid? busy? confused? Maybe all of that. I have more to say about this, but for now, here's why I'll be playing along with Alchemy Daily and prompting myself back into a creative rhythm next month. (I hope you'll join me.)

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"I don't give prompts. The world is your prompt!"

So said the writer leading my workshop.

And I thought, "Yes, yes! Real writers don't need to be told what to write. I am an artiste! The world is my prompt!"

And then I realized that I've routinely found myself wondering what to write about, worrying that I'm not a real writer after all. Phooey.

Whatever shall I do if the world is not enough?

** ** **

I have a friend who loves prompts. For months she kept nudging me toward them, gently but firmly, trying to convince me that a good prompt is better than the whole wide world, because a good prompt gives you a focus and a way in.

** ** **

You know what I hate? The blank page. The blank, ever-so-white, mocking-me-with-its-clean-emptiness, no-words page.

When I was a teenager I wrote a poem called "A Bright White Room is Hell." I didn't intend it as a metaphor for the blank page, but I think I'd like to intend that now.

But give me a page with my own messy thoughts and I can breathe a little more easily. I have something to hang on to, something to swing around my head. Most days, words -- any words -- are better than a blank page.

** ** **

That same teacher who insisted that the world is our prompt conceded and gave us just one little bit of direction. She told us we could choose a color and write about whatever came to mind when we thought of that color.

I chose brown.

This is not what I wrote, but this is what I wrote about: how on the first day of first grade, the tip of my big, fat brown Crayola snapped off and left with me a pointless tree stump of a crayon. The teacher was a nice lady, but she wouldn't give me a new one. I cried during the whole walk home with my mother, who later recorded this event in the spiral-bound notebook she kept as a journal when my brother and I were little. Years later, that teacher, still a youngish woman, died of cancer. I began to think (while writing about "brown") how little things and big things can go wrong unexpectedly, and how there's not always a do-over or replacement waiting in the wings, even if your teacher is kind, even if God is loving.

All of that from brown. Brown was my way in.

** ** **

So here's the thing. The world is enough. But the world is overwhelming. And sometimes we're tired. Sometimes our creative mojonators slow down and we need help to crank things back up. I think of prompts this way: I know how to cook without a recipe. But sometimes I run out of ideas or get bored, and then I like to read cookbooks and websites for yummy ideas which I can follow verbatim or tweak to my liking.

There is no shame in wanting, needing, using creative prompts. I still resist them, but that's because I'm stubborn and silly. Even so, I am now a prompt convert. I believe in them. If nothing else, they can get us unstuck, get us writing, get some messy words on that blank page so we can swing them around later. If nothing else, prompts can be practice. And when I say practice, I mean as a musician practices scales and as a Buddhist practices meditation.

** ** **

Some days the world is enough. Other days, I need a little help finding the right piece of the world to write about.

I've discovered that I like a certain kind of prompt. I like ones that are open-ended enough to let me jump from the color brown to first grade to death (so to speak). I don't love the ones that are overly prescriptive and tell me to write a sci-fi story about toasters that come to life (for example). That's a bit too much of a way in, and I don't really want to go there anyway.

So I've created a batch of writing prompts that I'd actually want to do, and packaged them up for you, in case you'd like to do them too.

The next session of Alchemy Daily starts November 1. You'll get 30 days of writing prompts, inspiration, and magic delivered to your email inbox. You also get a spot in the private Alchemy Daily forum and an ebooklet of all the prompts to keep. All for just $45. (Registration is over here.)

It'll be fun. And no robot toasters, I promise. (Unless that's your thing, and then you can write about them.)

Next session: November 2011