Part 1: Write about a gift someone gave you that you didn’t like, didn’t know what to do with or had no use for.
Part 2: What does this gift say about the person who gave it to you?
Whenever there is a prompt like this, you can also write about the opposite.
Part 1A: Write about a gift you loved, a gift that was a surprise in a good way, a gift that worked really well.
Part 1B: What does this gift say about the person who gave it to you? 
“The biggest difference between a writer and a would-be writer is their attitude toward rewriting. . . . Unwillingness to revise usually signals an amateur.” — Sol Stein
Shame. . .
For this prompt, you can write about “shame” as a topic in general.
Or: Write on something you are feeling shameful about. You can fictionalize your personal situation to write about a difficult subject.
Or: You can write about shame as character development . . . a character feature to be overcome.
Photo by Jane Person
If you could live one day without consequences, what would you (or your fictional character) do?
Today’s prompt: Evening.
Hmmmm. . . I wonder what you will come up with for this freewrite? I look forward to your writing about “evening.”
— Christina Baker Kline, interviewed by Alicia Anstead in the October 2014 issue of The Writer Magazine.
Or, as Dory sings in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming. . . swimming. . . swimming. . . ”
At some point in your writing life, you may think your writing is no-good, awful, horrible and no one would want to read it.
Join the Ark. Most writers, I think, are in that boat at least once.
Take the advice of Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train, “Breathe, focus, keep your head down and keep going.”
Click here if you want prompts to jumpstart your writing. Click on “Comments” on any of the Write Spot Blog posts to read inspirational writing.
And just keep swimming, swimming. . . writing, writing.
What do you want?
Set your timer and write for 15 or 20 minutes. See what comes up for you.
If this prompt is too “open” or vague for you, how about this:
What do you want to do today? If you could do anything you want. . . what would you like to do today?
You can answer for yourself, or as your fictional character would answer. This might be a fun way to get to know your fictional character(s) a little deeper.
Above all, have fun with this prompt!
Do you think emails and Facebook posts can be considered as “writing?”
I do!
“Caryl Pagel’s poems float and drift and alight in just the right places.” From “How I Write” in The October 2014 issue of The Writer magazine.
Caryl says, “I start with a doo-dee-da-de-dee-dum-dee in mind and rhyme it with a bloop-bee-doop-bee, or something like that. A clearing of the throat. A hum.”
Marlene’s Musings: Sounds like a good way to write just about anything. I love watching words fall into place and enjoy the sounds and rhythm of words . . . this goes for prose as well as poetry.
How do you feel about words and sounds and rhythm? Tell us, we want to know.
So far, on The Write Spot Blog, the prompts have been nice and easy. How about challenging yourself with a pantoum?
Pantoum is the Western word for the Malayan pantun, a poetic form that first appeared in the fifteenth century, in Malayan literature. It existed orally before then.
The Western version of the pantoum is a poem of indefinite length made up of stanzas whose four lines are repeated in a pattern: lines 2 and 4 of each stanza are repeated as lines 1 and 3 of the next stanza.
___________________________________________________________ line 1
___________________________________________________________ line 2
___________________________________________________________ line 3
___________________________________________________________ line 4
___________________________________________________________ line 5 – same as line 2
___________________________________________________________ line 6
___________________________________________________________ line 7 – same as line 4
___________________________________________________________ line 8
___________________________________________________________ line 9 – same as line 6
___________________________________________________________ line 10 – same as line 3
___________________________________________________________ line 11 – same as line 8
___________________________________________________________ line 12 – same as line 1
The final stanza has a twist: The second and fourth lines are the same as the third and first lines of the first stanza. The first line of the poem is the same as the last. This way, every line is used twice.
Click on comments below to see samples of pantoums.