I clip headlines from newspapers, fold them into little squares, and deposit them in my "prompts" bowl. Looking for a prompt? Pick a headline.
Here's one from today's New York Times, "Weekend Arts"
Prompt: Gaze East and Dream
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Verbs, glorious verbs, January 29, 2009
Prompt: Read this opening paragraph (it's one of my favorites) and write a paragraph in which you employ lively verbs. Notice how Pollan's verbs and prose anthropomorphizes the lawn?
No lawn is an island, at least in America. Starting at my front stoop this scruffy green carpet tumbles down a hill and leaps across a one-lane road into my neighbor’s yard. From there it skips over some wooded patches and stone walls before finding its way across a dozen other unfenced properties that lead down into the Housatonic Valley, there to begin its march south toward the metropolitan area. Once below Danbury, the lawn—now purged of weeds and meticulously coiffed—races up and down the suburban lanes, heedless of property lines. It then heads west, crossing the New York border; moving now at a more stately pace, it strolls beneath the maples of Larchmont, unfurls across a dozen golf courses, and wraps itself around the pale blue pools of Scarsdale before pressing on toward the Hudson. New Jersey next is covered, an emerald postage stamp laid down front and back of ten thousand split-levels, before the broadening green river divides in two. One tributary pushes south, striding across the receptive hills of Virginia and Kentucky but refusing to pause until it has colonized the thin, sandy soils of Florida. The other branch dilates and spreads west, easily overtaking the Midwest’s vast grid before running up against the inhospitable western states. But neither obdurate soil nor climate will impeded the lawn’s march to the Pacific: it vaults the Rockies and, abetted by a monumental irrigation network, proceeds to green great stretches of western desert.
The opening paragraph of the essay “Why Mow,” from Second Nature: a gardener’s education, by Michael Pollan (1991)
No lawn is an island, at least in America. Starting at my front stoop this scruffy green carpet tumbles down a hill and leaps across a one-lane road into my neighbor’s yard. From there it skips over some wooded patches and stone walls before finding its way across a dozen other unfenced properties that lead down into the Housatonic Valley, there to begin its march south toward the metropolitan area. Once below Danbury, the lawn—now purged of weeds and meticulously coiffed—races up and down the suburban lanes, heedless of property lines. It then heads west, crossing the New York border; moving now at a more stately pace, it strolls beneath the maples of Larchmont, unfurls across a dozen golf courses, and wraps itself around the pale blue pools of Scarsdale before pressing on toward the Hudson. New Jersey next is covered, an emerald postage stamp laid down front and back of ten thousand split-levels, before the broadening green river divides in two. One tributary pushes south, striding across the receptive hills of Virginia and Kentucky but refusing to pause until it has colonized the thin, sandy soils of Florida. The other branch dilates and spreads west, easily overtaking the Midwest’s vast grid before running up against the inhospitable western states. But neither obdurate soil nor climate will impeded the lawn’s march to the Pacific: it vaults the Rockies and, abetted by a monumental irrigation network, proceeds to green great stretches of western desert.
The opening paragraph of the essay “Why Mow,” from Second Nature: a gardener’s education, by Michael Pollan (1991)
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
How They Flow, January 28, 2009
Prompt:
Mozart said, "When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer — say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep — it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them."
Write about how and when your ideas come to you.
Mozart said, "When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer — say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep — it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them."
Write about how and when your ideas come to you.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Power of Hands, January 23, 2009
Prompt: Write about work your hands do and check out this poem, On the Assembly Line.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Write A What? January 22, 2009
Prompt: Write a letter, a real letter, to somebody and mail it. How do you feel, knowing who your audience is? Start up a letter-writing correspondence as a form of writing practice.
(I'm going to write to my mother, who's in the nursing facility at her retirement community at the moment, suffering from a hairline hip fracture. I call her often but never, anymore, write. A letter a week; that's my plan.)
(I'm going to write to my mother, who's in the nursing facility at her retirement community at the moment, suffering from a hairline hip fracture. I call her often but never, anymore, write. A letter a week; that's my plan.)
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Lost Consolation, January 21, 2009
Prompt:
I have lost the consolation of faith
though not the ambition to worship.
Forrest Gander, poet
I have lost the consolation of faith
though not the ambition to worship.
Forrest Gander, poet
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
A Big Day, January 20, 2009
Prompt: Write about how you're spending Inauguration Day and any thoughts you have about past inaugurations.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
In the Bleak Mid-Winter, January 17, 2009
Prompt: In the bleak mid-winter
In the bleak mid-winter
frosty winds made moan
earth stood hard as iron
water like a stone . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRobryliBLQ
In the bleak mid-winter
frosty winds made moan
earth stood hard as iron
water like a stone . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRobryliBLQ
Friday, January 16, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
An unusual friendship, January 15, 2009
Prompt: Write about an unusual friendship.
Oh, and watch this clip first.
Oh, and watch this clip first.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
First lines of novels and stories, January 14, 2009
Prompt: I had been sick for a long time.
(This is the first sentence of Oracle Night: A Novel by Paul Auster. First lines often make great prompts. Anybody want to send one? And this is a novel about a writer and writing.
(This is the first sentence of Oracle Night: A Novel by Paul Auster. First lines often make great prompts. Anybody want to send one? And this is a novel about a writer and writing.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Too Early, January 11, 2009
Prompt: Write about a time when you had to rise early or arrived early. What does early mean to you?
This prompt is dedicated to Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac, who was born on this day in 1887, in Burlington, Iowa. Leopold dropped dead of a heart attack fighting a neighbor's grass fire. This essay collection was published posthumously by his children and is still considered an important book within the conservation movement.
Too Early
Getting up too early is a vice habitual in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains. Some hunters acquire it from geese, and some coffee pots from hunters. It is strange that of all the multitude of creatures who must rise in the morning at some time, only these few should have discovered the most pleasant and least useful time for doing it.
from A Sand County Almanac, page 59
This prompt is dedicated to Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac, who was born on this day in 1887, in Burlington, Iowa. Leopold dropped dead of a heart attack fighting a neighbor's grass fire. This essay collection was published posthumously by his children and is still considered an important book within the conservation movement.
Too Early
Getting up too early is a vice habitual in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains. Some hunters acquire it from geese, and some coffee pots from hunters. It is strange that of all the multitude of creatures who must rise in the morning at some time, only these few should have discovered the most pleasant and least useful time for doing it.
from A Sand County Almanac, page 59
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