prose

• something mundane
• someone hands you a mysterious object
• writing the end of a story from a perspective we aren't given
• an unfinished book
• over the top prom-posal

prompts

below, you will see some prompts that i have collected to get the thinking flowing and the creative juices, juicing. some are maybe original? some are passed on from poetry classes? regardless, i hope these prompts can inspire you to create! if you do use one of these prompts, and are open to sharing your writing, i would love to see what you create.

• 3 stanzas of 3 lines, with each line being 3 syllables (see: tri-cube poem above)
• take a word you find interesting and use it like a touchstone (see: semantic satiation above, hinging on the word spelunking)
• start with a phrase (like, when i *insert verb*...) and play with associations that follow (see: when i swim... above)
• take a word that you like the sound of and try to discover a word or phrase in it. be willing to go for some nonsense (see: word sounds above)
• find a word you like and find a poem with that word. write your own adaptation of it alongside the poem itself (see: requiem, modeled after peter munro's own requiem)

values

• abstraction, taking the world to another world
• humor, sometimes it seems so coveted to write
• existentialism, being human, complexity
• flowery, sometimes dramatic language to describe something simple, showing and not telling
• mundanity, the little things of life
• directness, sometimes it is also easier to be told directly
• flow, rhythm, rhyme
• new perspectives, finding ways to describe the unknown or unaddressed
• honesty and value, authenticity
• bridging connections, somes out of one's life but appeals to a broader audience
• intentional structuring
• surprises in content or style, in fluency, certain words

starters

• start with thinking about the machinery of words. what makes words so fun?
• compound words with hidden fun
• how it feels to say the words, mouth feel
• drawing out vowel sounds
• some fun words to inspire: burlap, voodoo, alloy, rain, voices, spelunk, keepsake, echo, spikey, moth, adazzle, dawdle, flickers, bald, foxglove, raspy, thrashing, magic, foxglove, delphinium, nasturtium, hunching, munching, punching, loon, velvet, uncertain

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