Look through your memories and find one that was especially sad. Think about all the details. Make yourself sad. Now write it down in a narrative voice that is not yours. Write it in poetry, personal prose or short story. Add this twist to it: Look at it from a funny perspective. Be smiling when…
I have always been a believer in the idea that there are things that are specifically made to fit a situation or need, but one can always come up with a bypass if that item is just not available. This is how I manage to deal with computers that don’t want to work or when…
Your main character is asleep and though it is early, the sun is lightening the room enough to discern furnishings and objects about the place. Have your main character begin his usual wake up routine. When he gets up to sit on the side of the bed for the last residuals of sleep to pass,…
So we decided to get a motor home, and my husband became married to a motor home online sales site. He searched all the time, sometimes showing me the ones way beyond our price and others within range but not configured the way we wanted. We looked at a few and they were intriguing in…
Everybody has one of those items in their house that they don’t know the purpose of. I once had a slender silver cylinder measuring thingy (received from my husband’s family and sold by him at a garage sale) that was also a music box (say 8 inches tall, base included, and 2 inches in diameter). …
This is more of a change in perspective than an actual topic prompt. What I suggest you do is go sit someplace where you don’t usually go to write. In my class, I have my students sit on the table or beneath it or face a corner. How many teachers ask you to sit on…
we did have the good fortune of having cats in the family prior to those marriages. So what made me think of this? I saw a Siamese cat, a beautiful brown point, sitting on a porch as my husband and I were driving home today from the store. And I just starting thinking about my…
Today I was introducing the idea that interpreting poetry is heavily based in the personal experience and knowledge of the reader. I wanted my students to have a strong grasp on perspective and how it influences how we look at things. So I found several Escher pictures online (http://mcescher.com/) and one by one (via the…
