Face the Page - Writing Prompts

Writing Prompts
See our BLOG for a new writing prompt every week!

From "The Essential Writer's Notebook" by Natalie Goldberg (this is actually a journal with prompts in it—a great resource!)

Do a timed writing for 10 minutes. Begin it with "I remember" and keep going. Every time you get stuck and feel you have nothing to say, write "I remember" again and keep going.

Now try "I'm thinking of" for 10 minutes. Then, "I'm not thinking of" for 10 minutes. Write, beginning with "I know," then "I don't know," for 10 minutes. The list is endless: "I am, I'm not;" "I want, I don't want;" "I feel, I don't feel."

Drink a full glass of water continously and slowly without taking the glass away from your lips. Watch your breathing as you drink. Watch how your mouth fills with water before it swallows. Feel your swallow. Look down through the glass. Keep drinking. Finish the whole glass. Now put down the glass, take your pen and list five to ten clear subjects to write about. Number one can be "how I swallow." Number two can be "plastic glasses." Get it? Go.

Let's talk about the sweetheart, that person we're going to develop and give form to inside, whose only job is positive thought. Write for 10 minutes, giving the sweetheart a voice. It's a mother, a grandfather, a teacher, whoever was a positive force in your life. Give that sweetheart power, muscle, courage, but don't make him or her belligirent, wasting time scrapping with the editor. The sweetheart has skillful means and wisdom, and knows that to fight the editor is to get her hands stuck in tar.

Imagine a scene as a photograph and describe what you see.

From "A Writer's Book of Days" by Judy Reeves:

Write about asking for mercy.

You're in a movie theatre....

Write about a scent.

And when autumn finally arrived...

Write about an overheard remark.

You picked up a hitchhiker.

My mother once told me...

The time between dusk and dawn.

Write about a car trip.

Write about a gate.

Write about a secret revealed.

Write about yearning.

The sun is rising...