Category: Prompts

Prompt One

Make a list of things that surprised or astonished you or made you feel uncomfortable. Something from a long time ago or recently.

Just a list for now.

Prompt Two

Using your list, make a list of emotions you felt either during what you experienced or emotions you felt today or are feeling right now.

For example: Fear, anger, surprise, annoyance, joy, angst, acceptance

Prompt Three

A metaphor compares two unlike things to show a relationship without using “like” or “as.” Metaphors imply that one thing is another.

Examples of metaphors:

Chaos is a friend of mine. —Bob Dylan

You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog, cryin’ all the time. —Elvis Presley

Darling, I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream. —Taylor Swift

My heart, a church where no one prays. Lonely pews and smudged stained glass. The Forever Workshop

Writing Prompt: Choose an emotion from your list.

Write what happened that caused these emotions.

Use sensory detail.

Sight. Sound. Touch. Taste. Smell.

Use metaphors.

Just Write!

Prompt Four Hyperbole

Use hyperbole to describe an emotion. You can expand upon something you have written or use a new topic to write about.

Hyperbole is exaggeration to the extreme.

No one is going to judge you nor your writing. So you can exaggerate as much as you want.

Examples of hyperbole:

Cry me a river              

Enough food to feed an army

He has the memory of an elephant

I could sleep for a week

I died of embarrassment 

I had to walk to the ends of the Earth to find it

It’s a jungle out there

It’s so hot, you could fry an egg on the sidewalk

Writing Prompt:

Choose something from your list. Write what happened as if you are telling a gullible listener.

Or:

Expand upon one of the above hyperbole examples.

Or:  

Write whatever is popping up in your head.

Idea for this prompt inspired from The Forever Workshop.

The story of Pinocchio, as metaphor:

Gepetto, a woodcarver, prays that a puppet he carved could become a real boy. According to Phil Romo, a “real boy” is a metaphor for being an autonomous individual, not bound to ideologies or to existing institutions. “To think for yourself . . . Don’t be bound to the strings you are born into.”

The Blue Fairy grants life to Geppetto’s puppet. This is a metaphor for human birth, the ‘miracle of life.’

Excerpted from “Life is a Beautiful Ride” by Phil Romo.

Future writing: Choose something from one of your lists and Just Write!

“Our brains like order,” explains Kristi Phillips, a Minnesota-based psychologist “having less stimuli around us helps promote relaxation.”

She points out the popularity of home-decluttering Reels and TikToks, as well as TV series such as Get Organized With the Home Edit and Hot Mess House.

“But while we enjoy the afterglow of a cleaned-out junk drawer, we still procrastinate when it comes to tackling more complex areas of clutter in our lives. When we’re trying to declutter our own spaces, we have an emotional attachment to those items,” she says.

“Whether there are memories linked to those objects or simply the guilt of getting rid of something you spent money on, the task of mentally weighing each item can be overwhelming, with a video, you see the fast-forward of how quick it is … so it gives us that hope and positivity of, Oh, I can do that too.”   — “Why Watching Decluttering Videos Feels So Good” by Abby Alten Schwartz

Writing Prompt

Write about your cleaning out habits or your decluttering experience, could be your things or someone else’s things.

OR: Write about what helps your brain to relax.

Write about a quirk you have.

It could be something you do, or participate in, or watch.

There may not be a logical explanation for this, except that it brings you joy or satisfaction.

#justwrite #amwriting #iamawriter

Today’s writing prompt is a photo of an owl.

Photo by Marlene Cullen

Here’s what happened:

I looked out my kitchen window and saw the most majestic owl sitting on the roof of our shed. 

She (he?) literally took my breath away.

I took a picture through the window.

Then I went outside to take a better look and a better photo.

She swiveled her head and looked right at me.

I snapped a photo.

Then she flew away to the top of a pole.

Poetry in flight.

My friend Kathy, who works at a bird sanctuary, said it’s a juvenile great horned owl.

Prompt: Photo of an owl

Just Write!

#iamwriting   #iamawriter   #justwrite

Excerpt from June 16 River Teeth, “Mondegreen,” by Diane Gottlieb:

A mondegreen is a mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase in a way that gives it a new meaning.

Mondegreens are most often created by a person listening to a poem or a song; unable to hear a lyric clearly, substitutes words that sound similar.

American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in 1954, recalling a childhood memory of her mother reading the Scottish ballad “The Bonnie Earl o’Moray,” and mishearing the words “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen.”

Diane’s piece begins like this:

“I found a lost memory today. Discovered it inside a writing prompt: recall something you’ve misheard. The title of the 1971 Sly and the Family Stone song is ‘It’s a Family Affair,’ but I swore it was ‘A Family of Bears.’ How wonderful it felt to belt out a song about bears and more bears, a family of bears.”

A mondegreen inspired from “Blue Jay Way,” by the Beatles:

Misheard Lyrics: There’s a frog upon a lake.

Original Lyrics: There’s a fog upon L.A.

Prompt: Write about a mondegreen.

#justwwrite #iamawriter #iamwriting

Picture yourself standing in front of the house, apartment, flat, whatever type of building you grew up in.

If you lived in more than one place, choose the one that holds the most memories.

Take a moment to look around. Scan from one side to the other.

What do you see?

What do you smell?

What do you hear?

Take some deep breaths as you see this scene.

Mentally take a walk to where you often walked:

School, library, playground, theater, skating rink, store.

Picture yourself on this walk.

What did your neighborhood smell like?

What did you hear as you walked along?

Just Write~!

Writing Prompt:
What’s bugging you?

Just Write!

#amwriting #iamawriter #justwrite