USING PROMPTS WHEN YOUR MUSE IS QUIET

It is said that one of the keys to writing is to get thy butt into the chair and just do it. Great! Butt is in chair. Now what?

Now, I sit and stare at a blank page on my computer screen and think. Think? Do I really think? If I were truly thinking, I would be typing at jet speed, or maybe warp speed. But I’m sitting here rereading what I wrote and trying to get inspired.

I can be driving home from work and ideas hit me from the right and left. But once I get home and sit down at the computer to actually write, NOTHING.

OR

I can plan to get up with the alarm at least an hour early and write then, or so say many writers. Really? It takes at least an hour and two good cups of coffee for my brain to activate. It’s like the Power Rangers can’t find each other.

So, what’s a writer who is trying to write each day supposed to do. Especially if they have an idea for a novel and NaNoWriMo hasn’t started and it’s October?

I like to work with prompts. I make my creative writing students write to a prompt each day as soon as the bell rings. Mondays = story idea; Tuesdays = 5 words; Wednesdays = picture; Thursdays = personal; and Fridays = story starters. I generally write for 10 minutes to the same prompt they are given.

Sites for writer prompts:

Although Creative Writing Solutions says it is a website for teachers and parents, it is a site that offers some thought provoking writing prompts.

http://www.creative-writing-solutions.com/creative-writing-prompts.html

Creativity Portal offers several different kinds of writing prompts, from story starters to a daily picture.

http://www.creativity-portal.com/howto/writing/writing.prompts.html

Writing Prompts: Creative Writing Ideas is an article on Hub Pages that identifies prompts in categories such as “Life Experiences”.

http://ripplemaker.hubpages.com/hub/writingprompts

World’s Best – Daily Writing Prompt contains a library of writing prompts.

http://www.daily-writing-prompt.com/index.html

Other places to look for inspiration include song lyrics, the newspaper, the news, books that make you wonder what a character would do “If?”, even history.

So, don’t procrastinate, produce. Don’t worry about the topic or the blank page. That’s what is so great about writing. If you don’t like how you wrote it, it is easy to revise what you have done OR “scrap it” (but never actually throw it away – it might be useful somewhere along your writing journey) and start something new OR let the idea simmer on the back burner behind a closed door in your mind until it seems to make sense.