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| Red flowers to right. |
Open a fiction book to somewhere in the middle. Pick a page. The first image you find is the starting image in your writing. Take it from there.
If nothing inspires you, start with the red flowers to the right.
Tuesday prompts
Tuesday Prompt: #41 2012
Go find a hat, either one you have not worn for a very long time or one that belongs to someone else. This is a magic hat. Put it on and sit until you feel the magic vibrate around and through you. Give it color, sensation, dimension; imagine that magic flowing into you, inspiring you. Sit until you can feel the flow. Then hold on to your bootstraps (figuratively, of course) and write.
Tuesday prompt: #40 2012
Today you will write about discomfort. What does it feel like? Get real descriptive. Most importantly, get uncomfortable. Sit on your seat awkwardly, twist your body around and hold it in place until you are uncomfortable. Don’t eat if your hungry. Hold your arm straight up from your shoulder until it cramps, and then write about how it feels. Don’t imagine; use your own experience to get into the details. If you already have a cold, flu, arthritis, backache, then you are ahead of the game (for once it brings you benefits). Go for the sensation, the imagery of pain, stuffy headedness, tight muscles, stiffness, a sinus headache.
Tuesday prompt: #39 2012
Write about a dream, but not just any dream. Pick one of those that kept sliding into odd, even unrelated scenes that as the dreamer you just accepted. Explore the strangeness of this dream following all its remembered impressions, actions and reactions.
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| Write the twisty dream. |
If you don’t recall all the details, let your mind slide around what you do remember and pull at it until you have seized everything you can from the dream.
If you are one of those who don’t remember your dreams, imagine an image and carry into some foggy focus, let it slip into another image and then another as you track each flight of fancy.
The one thing I ask that you do different with your dream is create a string of connections that holds each event to the next, smooth out the quirky, extra-stair-steps startle effect of the twisting dream. Let take on a sort of logic of its own that may not have been there when you actually dreamed it.
Tuesday prompt: #38 2012
Find two very different images that you wouldn’t normally imagine together, such as done with the movie Cowboys and Alien.
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| Prompt |
Once you have the two ideas, imagine them together. For example, alligators and song birds don’t at first seem to belong in the same closed space, but they certainly bring to mind a quick image, perhaps one with the alligators eating songbirds, their feathers strewn about in the mayhem of the gory scene. On the other hand, it could be paradise if these two could reside in close company. Maybe you would prefer unicorns and moles. At first I thought of moles as little furry animals underground, but what if they were actual moles on the skin that would erupt and destroy the pristine white coat of the unicorn, a symptom of a serious disease.
Use whatever images you bring together to inspire you to create a scene or event.
Tuesday prompt: #37 2012
Today you are going to need a little help with this prompt.
- Locate a
bag, one preferably that is not clear, so a paper bag or a solid colored
plastic shopping bag. - Now locate a person, someone who has a
mischievous nature or quirky way of looking at things would be helpful. - Hand this person
the bag and tell them to place something unusual in it. The item can
be as simple as a tiny rolled up piece of paper, a screw that fell out
of something and is laying in the corner, a picture, figurine,
whatever. Make it easy on them and leave the room or even the house for
a bit so they have time to really look around at what is available. - Once the bag has the object in it, get it back from the person and take it to where you write.
- Write about it: describe it and tell the story of its use or how it was created; or make up how a person felt when they first saw it, or bought it, or gave it away to another person.
That’s your prompt. Get busy.