Kickstart your Imagination: how Writing Prompts Work

Let’s start with why I’m talking about writing prompts at all. A strangely organic process has been taking place over the past few months. It began when we headed into lockdown: I started thinking about how I could help writers by running a free online writing retreat session. (By the way, I’m about to run my fourth one tomorrow – you can sign up here).

Loads of 40 people signed up for it, which blew me away. Then I had to come up with the structure for the session. I could, of course, have welcomed attendees, set a timer and let them get on with their current work in progress.

But I felt more was needed, so I set about designing two separate writing sprint sessions, each with eight prompts, one of which was a picture. That became the template for each retreat, book-ended with discussion and chat.

Five weeks ago, I started thinking again. I know, it’s a bad habit I’ve fallen into …

I was thinking of the people who couldn’t attend the online retreats – or didn’t want to because they didn’t like the tech aspect of joining an online meeting. What about them? I decided I’d design a little PDF of prompts for them.

I came up with prompts. And more prompts. I spent my late evenings on Canva, designing the pages. I added workbook pages and advice on creating a retreat when you’re at home. 53 pages on, I realised I had more than a quick PDF resource: I had a self-study mini-course. It went live on Tuesday and until midnight on Sunday 21st you can get it for $17, which is less than half price. (Find out more here.)

But, back to the whole notion of prompts. I have fun creating them because I imagine the kinds of stories they’ll inspire. We writers are eternally afraid of the blank mind, the blank page. The urge to write that has no focus on what to write.

So when the Muse isn’t making home deliveries, we need those triggers, those little goads to the imagination. And what’s fascinating is how writers can make such different stories out of the same prompts – that’s certainly been evident in the online retreats so far.

Prompts work in different ways, so let’s explore some of them and why they work.

• There’s the ‘opening sentence’ kind of prompt. It acts like a springboard into what follows. It’s like you stop telling a joke just before the punchline and you let someone else come up with that punchline and deliver it. A trigger like this works because we like to fill in the blanks, the gaps between given facts. Conversely, you could set an end-line and ask the writer to imagine the story that led up to that point.

• Then there’s dialogue – sometimes just a single speech, that works because it is so immediate, so intimate. You’re pulled into an exchange, a dynamic between characters. The speech makes you think of voice and tone and attitude – of the character who’s likely to speak in that way.

• Some prompts work because they’re evocative. A descriptive phrase, a metaphor, can create a mood, a scene. The writer drops in, looks around, imagines the kind of story that could be set there, the kind of situation that would give rise to that particular image.

• Then there’s the picture prompt. I always include them because some people’s imaginations are more easily triggered by seeing an image – it could be a face or an object or a place. A Mediterranean harbour. An old house or a distant planet. A flower held in a hand. A war memorial. (Are any of these triggering a story in you?)

• You can have theme prompts, where you present the trigger as a simple subject statement: ‘the pity of war’, for instance. Interestingly, these may not be the best route to imaginative story-creation. They can be the doorway to polemic instead, where message dominates what is written. It’s important to maintain empathy, to go into and inhabit story, rather than just preach.

• Finally, there are the single word prompts. Deceptively simple, even slightly flat at first sight, these are the prompts that yield richness because they are more oblique, more of a hint, more open to interpretation.

Prompts are a resource to turn to when you’re feeling restive and when, as I said earlier, you want to write but you don’t know what you want to write. You hand over responsibility to a single word or image or teasing phrase. Your imagination, like a dog that’s flopped in the corner on a hot day, stirs, rises, starts to look eager at the prospect of a walk.

Keep a box or book of writing prompts by you, if you can. Treat the box like a lucky dip. Flip the pages of the book. Pick a prompt without too much thought. Toy with it, turn it this way and that in the light. Let it start to fire the neurons in your creative brain. I promise you it will.

Interested in using prompts to restart or kickstart your creativity? My new self-study mini-course, Create your Home Writing Retreat is here. Plus I’m now creating two bonuses.

• First, for as long as I run my free retreats the prompts we’ve used in each session will be added to the course.

• Secondly, I’m designing a new PDF, Create your Writer’s Prompt Box, so you can build your own inspiring resource, one which will stand you in good stead on those dry days.

Join my free online writing retreat session Saturday 20th June - go here.

Create your Home Writing Retreat - go here.

The pressure to do, the need to be: finding daily meaning in a time of crisis

I’m writing this at the height of the Coronavirus epidemic, at a time when we don’t even know yet how many people have succumbed to this terrible virus because the numbers we’re being told only include hospital deaths. This is a time when politicians flail and flounder, desperately trying to cover their backs. This is a time of looking back, of questioning why we were so ill-prepared when we had two months of knowing this disease was heading our way. This is a time of looking back to a past where by comparison all was safe and taken for granted. This is a time where we in the UK think of our Brexit stress and laugh grimly, because really, it didn’t compare. We thought that was bad? Well, now we fear not just for our economy but for our very lives and the lives of those we love.

How have you been feeling during this time? I would guess that with every passing hour you feel something different. Anger, pain, anxiety, sorrow, terror and a weird kind of rebellious positivity can all pass through you in moments. What is particularly hard is the lack of control. We are forbidden to leave our homes unless under certain rules. We cannot do our jobs or run our businesses. We cannot earn and we wait for government bail-outs while fearing there will be a greater price to pay down the line, in that economic wilderness to come.

Horrendous, isn’t it? Yep. As I type this, I feel my heart race and my stomach clench with panic. The words are spilling out. Fear lies behind the chipper wartime-spirit we’re trying to show the world.

There’s another more subtle pressure at work here and I don’t know if you’ve felt it. The pressure to make good use of this, the strangest, most isolated of times. Because we are not all that isolated, in a way. We are still in touch via the ubiquitous Zoom rooms, social media, online news. It is coming at us from all angles, relentlessly, ceaselessly. And we hear messages about self-education, learning new skills, sorting out that pigsty of a house at last, cataloguing your library, getting bags of clothes ready for when the charity shops reopen, learning how to grow your own vegetables ….

People who are completely unused to designing the shape of their day without their work schedule programmed into it, flail around for a new structure. So many of us grew up with a work ethic that gave us identity and meaning because of what we do and how hard we work. I know that kind of conditioning affects me. I work, therefore I am.

And I do believe, strongly, in self-education and in stretching our own boundaries. One of the greatest benefits of the internet is the way it offers knowledge to all. I am part of that, as a student and a teacher (I will be shortly be redesigning some of my in-person workshops and putting them online).

But there comes a point, a still and quiet point like this, when you examine our notions of action and education. You realise we often define education in terms of its usefulness and that usefulness in terms of money and career. Progression. Progression to what?

Instead, look at it another way. If you want to take a programme or learn a skill, think about how much pleasure you will get from it. Think about how it opens up your mind and soul. How it enriches you, in other ways than the monetary ones.

Also, take time to stop. You’ve never had a better excuse. Just. Stop.

Open yourself to awareness of the gorgeousness of a spring that’s unfolding around us in what seems to me greater beauty than ever. Really look at it and listen to it and breathe it in. Clumps of cherry blossom and clouds of hawthorn. The bright green corrugated leaves of the hornbeam. Grape hyacinths and celandines. The rattle of magpies building their nests. The song of blackbird and robin. Skies clear of con-trails. The early bumblebees blundering past.

Read the books you’ve been meaning to, certainly, but don’t choose them because you ought to. Everyone is supposed to tackle Proust or War and Peace or something toweringly, titanically literary. You’re thinking now is the time to tackle heavy tomes, for your own good. No. Don’t do it. Pick the book you can sink into like a feather bed. Pick the book that throws a shawl around your shoulders. Pick the book that makes your heart dance with excitement. Pick the book that takes you back to the glee of childhood. Pick the book that takes you out of yourself, out of your worries, for a time …

Get back in touch with the privilege it is to have life, breath, and blood flowing in your veins. Take the next five or ten minutes after you read this and do … nothing. No lists, no pressure, no curiosity. Just be still.

Just be. 

• On my Facebook page over the past three weeks I’ve posted a daily poetry reading. I’ve selected the poems for their power to inspire or console. Head over here to listen to the latest!

• I’d love to hear which books are distracting, entertaining or consoling you right now! Comment below this post with your recommendations

• I have now run two free online writing retreats and these have gone so well I intend to run more. Sign up to my mailing list via the form below and you’ll be the first to hear when I arrange my next one!

  
  UPDATE: I’ve created a self-study mini-course, Create your Home Writing Retreat: find out more here.

Photo (c) Lorna Fergusson

Find solace in creating your home writing retreat - 7 tips and an invitation

In ‘normal’ life – which with every passing day right now takes on the shape of a mirage – how often have you dreamt of going on a writing retreat? Now, we’re in a time of crisis and there’s no choice: we can’t get away to write. We may have extra time at home, but that is time we didn’t choose to allocate to writing. It’s time where we may be distracted by family concerns and commitments, such as home-schooling our children. It’s also time in which to fret about the future – and fretting isn’t good for the creative muse.

All the same, people are pursuing new interests and spheres of knowledge. We’re rediscovering the pleasures of crafting. We’re learning languages or doing online fitness workouts. It’s quite amazing.

And you? You want to write. So today’s post is all about seeing your home (which at times may be feeling like a prison or a cramped overcrowded madhouse) as a haven. A retreat, in fact.

Here’s 7 tips for setting up your writing retreat at home.

1.  Choose a time. Your commitments are not going away. The dog needs a walk. The elder child needs to be coaxed into doing some schoolwork. The toddler needs to be watched in case they blunder into a sharp corner or decide that shoving a clothes-peg up their nose is the greatest idea in the world. You need to review the shape of your day – a shape that may have changed radically since lockdown. You used to write when the kids were at school. Now you may have to opt to rise before they do, or stay up late after they’ve gone to bed. You may need to bargain: you will give the family time and attention on condition that they give you your ‘me’ time to write. The other thing that’s important in all this is to try to negotiate a time that suits them and suits you, which is about knowing your own ‘best’ times of day in terms of alertness and creative flow.

2.  Choose a place. When we dream of retreats we dream of cottages by the sea or high-ceilinged rooms with a view or serene libraries, hushed as a monastery. Well, not now. You are going to have to claim some territory in that over-crowded land you call home. It may not be ideal, but it is worth selecting a location within the house where you put a flag up saying ‘This is my writing territory’. You may have a loft, a shed, or a spare room. You may not: then you’re going to have to choose your bedroom, or a corner of the living-room or the end of the kitchen table. Once again, it’s clear you’ll need to negotiate because all these places have other claimants too. But I think it is time to be tough, especially if you allow other people in the household to mark out their special places as well. In your chosen location, put down some possessions associated with your writing: your notebook and pens, the book you’re taking notes from, the laptop. These are visual cues to you and to the family that you mean business.

3. Make the special place just that – special. It’s important to see your writing retreat as a pleasure. So make everything about it as joyous or as peaceful as possible. Work in natural or good lighting. Sit on a comfortable supportive seat. Play music in the background, if that helps you. Use scented oils in a diffuser. I use a Tisserand pulse-spot roll-on which has rosemary, mint and bergamot in it. Write in a beautiful notebook where even to touch the paper is a pleasure. Use your favourite pen. Wear a silk kimono if you want to, or your fleecy onesie.

4. Ring-fence your creativity. You need to put up an imaginary barrier to distractions or worries or guilt. This can take the form of an actual sign you put up: Keep Out, or Silence Please (I have a Bodleian Library Silence sign I hang on the doorknob). You can also have a notice or card propped up in front of you with a favourite quote or a few words saying ‘You can do it’ or ‘Stay with it’ or ‘You deserve time to write’ or ‘Your words matter’ or any other encouraging message you want to give yourself. Switch off the distractions of emails and social media notifications. Don’t listen to the news (I am rationing tuning into news bulletins these days). Ask your family members to write down any questions or requests and place them gently just outside your place of creativity: you’ll attend to them later. Wear headphones, not just to shut out extraneous noise but as a visual signal to the others that you are, literally, in your own head-space right now. Have a pad of post-its by you and if any distraction, reminder for your to-do list or anxious thought arises, jot it down there and push it aside, for later. Don’t break the now of your retreat.

5.  Have modest goals. If you’re feeling stressed, don’t add to that stress by being too ambitious. Set a reasonable time-limit and break the big creative task down into smaller, achievable goals. Write a poem. Write a scene or a flash fiction. Feel good about that. Don’t equate sheer volume with value. If you have found the perfect image for how you or your character feels, that writing session has been totally worth it.

6.  Give yourself breaks to rise and walk about the room, or do some stretches. (As I write this, I am actually chuckling at myself, because I am notorious for locking myself into a fixed, hunched position for hours on end. I need to take my own advice!)

7.  Find support and community if aloneness isn’t working for you. Move beyond the family who are on your side but who may not necessarily understand how you’re feeling. Join fellow creatives in co-working sessions. Just knowing that other people are quietly working with you can be a real encouragement and solace. It can also create a sense of accountability, if you have buddies to discuss the session with, before and after, sharing intentions and what was achieved. It’s a paradox that you need to create a kind of ‘bubble’ round yourself for flow to happen, but that bubble isn’t burst in the presence of other creatives.

UPDATE: I’ve now developed a self-study mini-course, Create your Home Writing Retreat. Find out more here.

Invitation: I’ve just run my second free online writing retreat (Sat 4th April), after the first went so well a couple of weeks ago. Attendees have reached out to me afterwards saying how valuable they’ve found these sessions so it’s likely I will host more! If you want to know when I arrange the next one, please sign up for the Fictionfire newsletter via the form below - you can unsubscribe at any time.