There are so many things we don’t understand or don’t know about the world, and we’re so accustomed to seeing them and not knowing them that we forget to question them. Children ask those questions—”Why is the sky blue, dad?”—but as they grow older they almost always stop. This morning I reviewed Why Moths Hate Thomas Edison. It’s a compilation of column entries from Outside Magazine, in which people write in with the silly, everyday, weird, ridiculous, stupid, or seemingly obvious questions we all forget to ask, and the magazines editors track down the experts who can answer them.

The ability to ask questions everyone else has forgotten is an extremely valuable trait for a writer. Take a look at the review linked to above and note the types of questions asked and answered in the book. Then take a walk around your house, your workplace, your neighborhood, the woods, a business, or any other place and make a list of basic questions you don’t know the answer to. Make it as long as possible; try to at least fill up a sheet of paper.

Being able to come up with questions is, if anything, more important than answering them when trying to train your mind and eyes. However, if you want to take this a step further, answer these questions. Come up with your own creative, fictional answers, research the real ones—whatever you’d like. The former is more useful as a world-building exercise for fiction writers, while the latter makes a great exercise for nonfiction freelancers looking for inspiration for articles.

This morning I found an unusual portrait composed of other elements. Sometimes you can elicit a whole new level of creativity from yourself by working in a new medium, and composing your work of unusual elements. Write a story that consists only of haikus, images, or magazine advertisements. If you normally journal only in words, work on a mixed-media journal. Create a portrait of one of your fictional characters out of pieces of images of other people, from art or photographs. Tell a tale through recipes, sound bytes, book titles, timelines, mementos… add your own ideas in the comments if you’d like!

Pushing yourself to think and act in a totally different medium or structure than usual can expand the boundaries of your creativity in ways that can surprise and shock you.

Normally when you’re asked to come up with a “creation myth” as a writer’s exercise, you’re being asked to delve into the mysterious, long-ago origins of a thing. Instead, today I want you to come up with an alternative explanation for the everyday origins of a thing. For a beautiful, creative, and highly unusual example, click through the thumbnail image below for a wonderful piece of art called “Goldfish Factory” by Susan McKivergan. Look closely at the drops of water falling from the spout in the enlarged version:

I think everyone at this point at least knows what Sun Tzu’s Art of War is, even if they haven’t read it. It elevates war to an art form and wisdom that can be applied to far more than the obvious battlefield. It lays out rules and guidelines that have been translated into the languages of business, creativity, and more.

Today, pick another field that interests you (and that you hopefully know something about—perhaps your own field of work); we’ll call it X for now. At the top of a sheet of paper, write “The Art of X.” Beneath that, use the rest of the sheet to brainstorm guidelines for this art form. Try to limit each one to a sentence or two, but don’t make an artificial attempt to be pithy or sound wise—keep it natural.

If you’re like many fiction writers, you might have invested a great deal of time, effort and energy into one or two particular characters you enjoy working with. However, many fiction writers report feeling they have little control over some or all of the events that occur in their fiction. So, today, imagine that you’re writing a story about your favorite character when you suddenly find you’ve written his death–and you can’t bring yourself to undo it. What would you do to continue your story and your fiction work?

Perhaps you’ve heard of the ask a ninja phenomenon. Today, brainstorm your own variation on this theme. Pick an outlandish and/or anachronistic icon of your own (pirate? knight? wizard? enchantress?) and brainstorm questions that folks might like to ask of that icon, much the same way that people email questions to the ninja. Then come up with some answers, using them to construct and project an intense and interesting personality. You could take a wacky and wild approach, a faux-serious approach, or anything else you’d like. The focus, however, should be on the creation of this icon as a character. If you need some ideas, take a look through the ask a ninja site.

I disbelieve! Framed Tile
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Technorati Tags: ask a ninja, characterization, free-writing, journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing

Limiting the number of words you have to work with can be a great exercise. It forces you to make every last word count, and to choose your words with the greatest of care. It makes you pare out absolutely everything that’s inessential, so all that’s left is the barest essential of story. In Noctuary, author Thomas Ligotti introduces us to the perfect two-sentence story–and I have to admit, it’s chilling.

This morning I stumbled on a site called 55 Words:

All the stories have 55 words. I tried different lengths but settled on 55 because (for me) this was short enough to be tricky but long enough to tell a story.

Today, write a 55 word story on any topic (if you have trouble coming up with one, look through the rest of this blog for an idea). If you like how it comes out, submit it to the site as a guest story.

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Technorati Tags: fiction, journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing

At Despair, Inc. they have one of my favorite indulgences–the DEmotivational poster. These frobbies are like the traditional saccharine motivational posters (you know the ones: teamwork, etc. with pithy sayings added underneath and some stark photo in the middle), but with a twist: they employ a dark sense of humor and underlying pessimism in contrast to the overly-bubbly originals. One of my favorites is dysfunction, because it always makes me think of an old housemate!

There’s a web tool for creating motivational posters, and Despair Inc itself now has a parody motivator generator. You can probably already guess what I’m going to suggest for today: grab a favorite photo and make your own motivational, demotivational, or inspirational poster! For bonus points, make a good handful and then pick your favorite.

This may not seem like a writing exercise, but sometimes it can be a lot more difficult to come up with a very short, succinct phrase that really hits home than an entire lovely paragraph.

Here are my own attempts.

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Technorati Tags: Demotivators, Despair, Inc., journaling, prompts, motivational posters, write, writers, writing

One exercise often taught in creative writing classes is that of re-telling an old fairy tale from a different perspective. This is so popular, in fact, that it has produced quite a few novels and books of short stories, including a wonderful series of anthologies with such titles as Silver Birch, Blood Moon and Black Swan, White Raven.

Although this is definitely a wonderful exercise and you should certainly give it a try if you haven’t before, today I’m going to suggest something slightly different. Today, tell your own fairy tale on your own terms. If you need someplace to start, I highly recommend using any piece of artwork from this page for inspiration! If you currently have any fiction set in a fantasy world of your own devising, or if you’re a game master who has created their own campaign world, try setting it in that world.

Adventurers’ Last Words:
“I try not to wake it up”
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Technorati Tags: fairy tales, journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing

In previous “spam game” exercises, I’ve suggested that you take one of those weird randomly-generated spam subject lines and imagine what product the email would be trying to sell if the subject accurately represented the contents of the email rather than being randomly generated. Then you use the product in a story, write a pitch for it, or something similar.

Today I’m going to give you a slightly longer list of possibilities:

• Take several of these subject lines and list the words individually down the side of a sheet of paper. Number them. If you have dice or some other sort of randomizer, use that to choose several at random. Otherwise just close your eyes and mark several with a pencil. Use this new set of words in one of the following exercises (or some other exercise that uses a random prompt) in place of actual spam headlines.

• Choose a subject line at random and imagine that you’ve received an email from someone important to you (best friend, beloved aunt, older sister, etc.) with that subject line. Write the email, or a first-person stream-of-consciousness from your point of view as you read it, or a story in which you receive that email.
• Choose a subject line at random, write it at the top of a sheet of paper, and free-write from it as a prompt. Just let go and draw random associations.
• Choose a subject line at random and use it as the title of a short story.
• Choose a spam email at random–one that includes non-randomized text–and study its structure. Write a short-short story duplicating the structure as closely as possible. For bonus points, use the subject of the spam email to give you ideas for the story.

If you think of other possibilities, feel free to leave them in comments below.

In case you don’t get as much spam as I do, here are some of the more interesting spam headers I’ve received recently:

• Complication skyscraper

• Evolution bodice
• Impeachment secede
• Indefinitely sherbet
• Inspiration checkpoint
• Phlegm glossy
• Pinup prodigal
• Technical wholesome
• Trust, nutrient ratio
• Trust, paper jogger

Technorati Tags: free-writing, journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing