CREATIVE PROMPTS
Writing Practice can take just 5 minutes a day… with the write incentive – quirky prompts and tricks- you’ll be honing your voice, discovering characters, venturing into new vistas of prose, poetry, personal essays, journal writing, or just the enjoyment of writing.
If you’re not disciplining yourself to write.. it helps to be part of a community. Also, these prompts are designed to get you past resistance.
I'm in wonder of ...OR... take a break. Sometimes it does wonders. 🙂
CREATIVE PROMPT FOR ART
Sketch something you’ve stopped seeing that’s in your vicinity. A trinket, totem, work of art, vase, furniture. Get to know it again. Sketch it quickly, mostly by looking at it, not so much looking at your drawing. Finish by imagining what it would say to you if it could talk.
writing prompt
Repeat completions: Go fast and complete the sentence below several times. Go so fast you may not make sense, or you may repeat yourself … see what happens. If you stumble onto something with a lot of juju, asking you for more time… write a quick bad poem about it. Suspend judgment. Break open the locked chambers of possibility. If it turns out good, that’s okay too.
writing prompt
Choose a project on which you’d like to work more but are feeling a bit overwhelmed. List all you’ve done on it so far including attributes, experience, and desires you have that make this a good project for you.
Notice how it feels to take stock of what supports your next step rather than always looking at what isn’t done.
Identify one tiny 5-minute step you can take. Write I get to … ( and fill in the blank with your small step).
Write about the strange pull you have toward the project.
For Extra Credit:
Decide what your “signature doodle” is and make three variations of it.
Creative prompt For art
The Jungle is Henri Rousseau’s last completed work in 1910. See the full size image at the link, stare at it for a least a minute. (breathe) Notice all the shapes and details. If that was enough, then go do something sublime.
1. One with your eyes closed.
2. One not looking at all at the painting.
For both, only abbreviate what you saw, not worrying about capturing the whole thing. Just allow whatever you remember to emerge – permission for it to look like nothing. See if you can also allow it to be one of the huge number of drawing artists do that is just practice. Let go of the need for a finished product. Notice any discomfort, allow it to be there. Creativity is not always comfortable. Get a massage.
Creative prompt for writing
Incorporate some or all of the following words and phrases.
Unpack as necessary: illustrate them rather than tell them, provide a more detailed description, use any form of the word, and let the adventure take you where it will as an exercise in not having to go anywhere. Tell it in the second person point of view (you, her, him). Consider making a long version that goes nowhere and then cutting it down to three or four lines.
begin
incidence
collide
affair
wobble
lobster
swing
certainly
under the sidewalk
soar uncontrollably
hang-glider
rattle
wrangle
lasso
kangaroo
conversation
tequilla
free
profanity
capture
writing prompt
Free associate to the following words – what do they make you think of? What memory, random connection do they bring up for you. Go beyond the obvious, consider specific details, and notice when your body’s energy connects with an association you really like. When you have your new list, weave it into poetry, prose, or nonsense adding any number of words:
- sound
- smell
- walk
- pineapple
- shoe
- sky
- love
- belong
- surrender
CREATIVE PROMPT FOR ART
Your subject: A Pineapple
Close your eyes and draw one from memory.
Open your eyes and draw one using just one line.
Render the one you see up above upside down, turn right side up.
Color any or all pineapples in with watercolor, color pencils, markers, crayons!
Put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up.
CREATIVE PROMPT FOR ART
Draw this transistor radio from Raymond Logan with your non-dominant hand modifying it according to your own quirks, preferred colors and numbers, and spontaneous fancies. Then paint or color it in with markers, pencils, watercolors, finger paints, raspberry jello…whatever.
Receiving a daydream
Cue Broom, cue space between the thoughts, cue a breeze …. ask what-if questions.
Creative prompt for writing
Write a list of at least ten “What if…” questions. The faster you go and the more you write, the more likely you will access unexpected questions that aren’t swimming in the recirculated reservoir of tired responses.
Sometimes simply the list of questions may end up as a poetic litany.
Other times you might combine a few of your answers for an unusual but creative question which may want to stand alone without an answer or become the inspiration for a painting.
- What if the sky was yellow?
- What if birds flew kites?
- What if clouds whistled?
- What if a hawk flew a kite in a yellow sky where clouds whistled Doris Day songs?
And yet other times, one of the questions may trigger a poem, prose, or something to entertain your dinner companion. What if..questions are lightning rods for creative daydreams.
MINDFULNESS AND CREATIVITY
- Creative expression and mindfulness are cousins, maybe even siblings that get along really well.
- Both cultivate an inner world that welcomes all aspects of who we are without expecting perfection.
- Both take us on an adventure fueled by an elixir of curiosity, courage, and rebelliousness.
- Both awaken us to a different way of thinking that moves us beyond fear to a more liberating way of life.
Writing Prompt
one word
two words
a whole sentence
two words
one word
OR
Three lines:
The first line is 5 syllables
Second is 7
Third is 5
Writing Prompt
Write your name vertical down a page and come up with a subject for each of the letters. Pick two or three of the subjects and write haikus about them. Two ways you might try one:
CREATIVE PROMPT FOR ART
Draw this transistor radio from Raymond Logan with your non-dominant hand modifying it according to your own quirks, preferred colors and numbers, and spontaneous fancies. Then paint or color it in with markers, pencils, watercolors, finger paints, raspberry jello…whatever.
Receiving a daydream
Cue Broom, cue space between the thoughts, cue a breeze …. ask what-if questions.
Creative prompt for writing
Write a list of at least ten “What if…” questions. The faster you go and the more you write, the more likely you will access unexpected questions that aren’t swimming in the recirculated reservoir of tired responses.
Sometimes simply the list of questions may end up as a poetic litany.
Other times you might combine a few of your answers for an unusual but creative question which may want to stand alone without an answer or become the inspiration for a painting.
- What if the sky was yellow?
- What if birds flew kites?
- What if clouds whistled?
- What if a hawk flew a kite in a yellow sky where clouds whistled Doris Day songs?
And yet other times, one of the questions may trigger a poem, prose, or something to entertain your dinner companion. What if..questions are lightning rods for creative daydreams.