On these occasions, I like to prime the pump (or cleanse the palate, or flush the eggs from my ear) with a little short form writing. An important element here is that I write something from scratch, rather than use an idea I've had rattling around for a while. The longer I've held onto an idea, you see, the more invested I am in making something really good out of it, which inevitably leads to writer's block. Which, in turn, inevitably leads to simultaneous video-game-playing and sitcom-rerun-watching.
So I turned to Facebook, long a source of unexpected but mostly trivial ideas, and solicited my friends to give me one-word writing prompts. This is what they came up with:
- Skulduggery
- Peace
- Love
- Ninjas
- Restaurant
- Chinchilla
- Callipygous
- Hashbrowns
- Pineapples
- Flamboyant
- Cuckolded
- Mashed
- Awesomesauce
- Doldroms
- Kumquat
- Embarrassment
- Sugar
- Realizations
- Trebuchet
- Little tiny 85 year old man hitting on middle-aged women outside a library. (Later summarized by another friend as "my grandfather")
I have actually created a couple of short pieces, which I'll be posting to the blog as I grow tired of them deem them finished. I'm trying not to spend much time on them. No outlines, no overthinking, rewrites strongly discouraged. All of the prompts being wonderful, I decided to fold several into each story. If you're playing along at home, feel free to guess which prompts created which story. I don't think I ended up using every prompt, and some may pop up in more than one story. Life is like that sometimes.
If you're really playing along at home, then choose some prompts and write me something. Bonus points if your story includes me, but only if I look really good in the end.
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