Writing Prompts for Grown-ups: May 22, 2009

1.  Write about a unique but common natural phenomenon.  How?  Google natural phenomenon.  You will come up with a lot of stuff you never heard of before: 

Bioluminescence, alpenglow, lightning starting a forest fire, etc.

Read up.  Remember.    I am thinking back to a ride in a car with my father, late at night, and a firefly is smashed on the windshield leaving a green glow of bioluminescent bug guts on the glass.  Incorporate.  Take your research and your memories and create a poem or story.

2.  Write poem about a woman washing her own hair or someone else's hair.   Avoid focusing on the stereotypes-i.e., Don’t go to the easy stuff like a mocking of an Herbal Essence commercial, or a satirical take off from that South Pacific song, I'm going to wash that man right out of my hair.  Focus on the subtext.  Why is this happening?  Can you reveal the WHY by showing instead of telling?  Focus on the sensual tactical aspects of this act.  Is it an act of love, or obligation?  Go crazy.   If you have more than one idea then do the same topic in a totally different way over and over until you has exhausted the ideas.  For now.  Next month, try the same exercise again.  Time may give you new ideas and insight.

3.  Start with a simply a word. It can be a common word, a foreign word, or some word that has a private meaning to you, or between you and your lover, or parent, or child. In your poem, follow the word back to its past or into your own life.

4.  Write a confrontation poem. Take an argument in your past that really happened, and had a big impact on your emotions, or the direction of your life.  Now record that argument as if you were a third person witnessing the argument and not a participant in the argument.  Do this again, but this time write it from the point of view of the other person.  Imagine what was going on in the mind of the other person as the argument progressed.