I clip headlines from newspapers, fold them into little squares, and deposit them in my “prompts” bowl. Looking for a prompt? Pick a headline. Here’s one from today’s New York Times, “Weekend Arts” Prompt: Gaze East and Dream
Prompt: Read this opening paragraph (it’s one of my favorites) and write a paragraph in which you employ lively verbs. Notice how Pollan’s verbs and prose anthropomorphizes the lawn? No lawn is an island, at least in America. Starting at my front stoop this scruffy green carpet tumbles down a hill and leaps across a […]
Prompt: Mozart said, “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer — say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep — it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they […]
Prompt: Write a letter, a real letter, to somebody and mail it. How do you feel, knowing who your audience is? Start up a letter-writing correspondence as a form of writing practice. (I’m going to write to my mother, who’s in the nursing facility at her retirement community at the moment, suffering from a hairline […]