Deb sent me a list of prompts to follow for this series of posts, which I seem to have lost. Thus me, here, making it up as I go along.
Which is after all, what creative writers do. So well done, me. ;)
I have a jar of prompts on my desk that I occasionally reach into for inspiration. The prompts are from workshops I’ve attended, or cool words I’ve heard, or a Poetry Friday prompt I loved and will never be sad when it gets pulled out of the jar again.
{Julie: pulls slip of paper from jar that is currently 1500 miles away because I’m on pilgrimage to rekindle my creative fire. }
I can do______
But, if I do _________, then I must_______________.
How prompts like this work — for me…they’ll work how they work for you. It’s okay, you can’t get it wrong! — is that I try very hard to turn off my thinking brain and just fill in the blanks.
A certain amount of playing is important for us creatives. getting “serious” about our art, our writing, painting, composing, whatever it is that YOU do, can be important too. But…(i use that word often when I’m thinking about how to open my creative brain back up again) Often the part of me that is creative hides way back in a far corner of my brain, trying to get out of working. This lures it out, because it feels like playing.
I am good at puzzles.
But, if I do well at Sudoku, then I must hide how well I do it, because Jack likes to think he’s better than me at something.
Don’t you just love how much came out of those three unfinished lines? Prompts work for me, in the best possible way. In completing three lines, I suddenly have two characters and a conflict between them, with a bonus of motivation in the unnamed character to appease Jack. I don’t quite know where that’s going, don’t know who the heck Jack is, but this could morph into a story if I were to keep going, or go into a second jar on my desk that are disconnected snippets of story that don’t work out.
Free to a good home: Second prompt
Print out slaughtered darlings (lines that you love but which had to be cut from your works in progress) and put them into another jar on your desk. When you need a bit of fun, pull a couple out at random to see if they play off each other. (Hint: they always do, somehow.)
I’d try to tie this into the world in general, but I’m avoiding the world out there just now (see trying to reconnect with my creative spark.) Being with creative friends has been life saving for me this year. Turns out I am not alone in trying to wake the banked embers of creativity, or in gazing daily at the news reporting puzzling out what there is yet another bird-brained scheme coming out of nowhere to slap us silly.
What this trip that isn’t even 24 hours old yet has taught me is no matter how the world can puzzle us, we don’t have to give up being creative to solve it. In fact, being creative helps us curious. That, my friends, is what makes us great in the end.
One Good Thing:
I’m high on creative retreating right now, so would like to direct you to a website Americans for the Arts, which has a searchable listing of resources for creatives. I can’t speak for all of those listed on their website, but I do highly recommend the Highlights Foundation’s retreat center for writers and children’s book illustrators.
Now, go forth, puzzle what you will, create.
A retreat just might inspire going forward…….