Insomnia

Write about how it feels to be awake at 3 AM and unable to get back to sleep. Write from your senses, in present tense.

I've just started an "Insomnia Journal." It won't be about dreams because I keep a separate dream journal. For my insomnia journal, I bought watercolors, stamps, ink pads, tape, pens, and vellum. I cut, paste, stamp, paint, and doodle in this journal.

Because sometimes, in the middle of the night, I don't want to reflect and write and I don't want to read. I want to make tiny lines across the page, cut up newspapers, find images, and anchor it all on the page.

Stealing

Write about a time when you stole something--and when someone stole from you.

From As Good As It Gets

Jack Nicholson says he's been "suckered in, set up, and pushed around" by his neighbor Simon's art agent who forces Jack to take care of Simon's little dog--verdell. Simon is in the hospital, having been beaten up by a male model. Nicholson, a rich OCD author named Melvin Udall--who compulsively locks and unlocks his door, can't step on sidewalk cracks, and endlessly washes his hands with fresh bars of soap--can't help but fall for the cute smart dog.
Write about a relatioship with a pet and how it changed you.

Falling

Write about falling: on the school playground, out of favor with the cool crowd, in class rank, from grace.

Summer will grow old

Pick a line from this poem,
published in The New Yorker
September 18, 2006, to use
as a prompt. I like:
Summer will grow old . . .
It is growing old. What
does that mean to you?


A Pasture Poem

This upstart thistle
Is young and touchy; it is
All barb and bristle,

Threatening to wield
Its green, jagged armament
Against the whole field.

Butterflies will dare
Nonetheless to lay their eggs
In that angle where

The leaf meets the stem,
So that ants or browsing cows
Cannot trouble them.

Summer will grow old
As will the thistle, letting
A clenched bloom unfold

To which the small hum
Of bee wings and the flash of
Goldfinch wings will come,

Till its purple crown
Blanches, and the breezes strew
The whole field with down.

--Richard Wilbur

A Prompt A Day

I'm going to try to do it: Post a prompt a day.

Don't know if I'll succeed. I'm not good at maintaining routines,
or sysems. I do finally have a place for the keys. Most days I find
them there. My eyeglasses? No way.

Prompt:
Write about a routine or a ritual.