I made it one of my New Year's resolutions to "Write More". But Writer's Block doesn't seem to care what goals or plans I have -- it comes and goes as it pleases. Well, I'm taking a stand against writer's block and against the haunting feeling of being uninspired.
I asked my two of my siblings to help me come up with 30 one-word writing prompts. The challenge? Use one prompt each day to write something. Something creative and, as I like to call it, aesthetic. Maybe a journal entry, a poem, a scene from your novel, a short story, a reflection/observation. Anything! Why not try something different each day? Make the prompt mean whatever it means for you.
Are you ready to take the challenge? Are you ready to take a stand against lack of inspiration and writer's block?
Take this challenge with me. If there's an entry that you are particularly proud of, please do feel free to send it to me! I would love to read it and to feature the writing of others on this page. It going to be so cool to see all the ways that different people use the same prompt.
There is no deadline for this challenge. You can take it at any time, any day. Try your best to do it every day once you do start (that's the fun of the challenge!) but if you do miss a day, just jump back in the next day and pick up where you left off! Can't wait to see what you guys write. If you want to read my entries, you can find them here.
THE PROMPTS
1. Color
2. Shadows 3. Fire 4. Unusual 5. Open 6. Leaving/Goodbye 7. Change 8. Paralyzed 9. Lesson 10. Wind |
11. Adrenaline
12. Wander 13. Love 14. Trust 15. Liar 16. Please 17. City 18. Runaway 19. Tears 20. Memories |
21. Reality
22. Break 23. Friendship 24. Thanks 25. Possible 26. Dream 27. Inside 28. Me 29. Imagine 30. Inhale/Exhale |
YOUR WRITINGS
Soleil's entry for day one
Color - What colour do you speak in? I speak in consuming red, the heat burning my throat as it fights to be released. I speak in soft yellow, the taste of cotton candy and clouds and calm. I speak in suffocating blue, the words stumbling over themselves and constantly getting swallowed back into my throat. I speak in pink, the rose-tinted glasses blinding me and causing my words to spring from my lips with a smile, a quiet chuckle escaping me. I speak in electric green, feverish laughter and bright eyes, my sentences tumbling down a hill and tangling in themselves in their haste to be heard. And once in a while, but not very often, I will speak in black. I will spit and throw and scorch. I will speak words without thinking, my only desire to hurt. I forget everything but the moment in front of me, I forget the feeling I will know later, when my words have caught up to me and I see the tears swimming in the eyes of the person in front of me. Then I will speak in grey, almost white. I will wish for silence, I will ask for forgiveness. I will see the pain, and I will ache. ~soleil Cath's entry for day two
Shadows - It started when the shadows showed up the daylight. It's not uncommon for the sun to cast them on the pavements of the city, but these were different. They were independent. You couldn't tell unless you were looking for it. It was subtle. It was a piece of hair out of place or a slight difference in the way someone held their silhouette. I was the only one who noticed them. As weeks passed, I saw more and more of them until everyone had them. Everyone but me. You'd think they'd be obvious after a while, when a man in a business suit's shadow was a woman with a pony tail. But no one payed any attention. I began to think I was hallucinating - maybe going crazy. But like any sensible person, I googled my symptoms. What I found was scarier than any medical diagnosis could ever be. In the deeper parts of the internet, the people where brimming over with conspiracy theories. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who could see the shifting shadows. Of course, the most common theory was aliens. At first, I didn't believe it, but as I kept reading, and kept speculating my own experience, I realized it was true. Sitting there in the dim light of my apartment, the TV muted behind me, I realized I wasn't crazy, but the situation was. I turned around in my desk chair and looked at the TV just in time to see a broadcast starting up from the White House. I found my remote and turned the volume up. "Extraterrestrial life has entered our lives without us even knowing. Sickness has broken out over the world from their affect on humanity. Until further notice, we ask you to stay indoors and away from others." I stopped listening then. Picking up my phone, I hurried to dial my mother before the phones stopped working. But I was too late. |
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Tera's entry for day one
Color - His hair has been purple, that much she remembered. Lilac, because she’d told him it was her favorite, and blue at the roots, because that was his favorite. Together, they made a swirling galaxy of color that made her think of unspoken thoughts and the cello she’d played when she was younger and had the patience for it. She smiled at the memory of how messed up his hair would get when it was windy, and how she’d help him separate the snares and secretly enjoy getting to play with the lilac tangles. The colors were what stood out the most, now that she viewed it through her ever-clouded lens of hindsight. She could remember vividly, even now, how his eyes were a shade of green that she never could define- not quite emerald, not quiet forest- and how they would crinkle adorably when he smiled at her, and how they would turn glassy and quiet when something upset him. She remembered how the words he’d absentmindedly scribble on his arms like tattoos were always written in glossy pink ink. She remembered that the shirt he’s worn on their first date was a soft red-velvet color, that he refused to buy any pair of sunglasses that weren’t orange because of some pact he’d made as a seven year old, that he’d thought she looked good in black, that his lips had felt like vanilla-orange when he told her goodnight. She could remember all the vividly colored details that she rehearsed night after night, because those were what made him who he was, and no matter how many things her fading memory may try to wrench away from her, she would never let them take that. Even if it had happened years ago and he had probably forgotten her, she swore to remember the colors, and she did. But his name? Whether he had loved her as much as she had loved him? If he’d tried to stop her when she left? She couldn’t remember that. |