week of jul 22nd: explore how things break, branch, become fractals-- where does the importance in repetition or breaking away from it lie?
week of jul 15th: write something based off of another piece of writing, art, music, etc! maybe an ode to or a commentary on it– whatever feels right.
week of jul 8th: write about stones as keepers of stories and witnesses to history. what silent wisdom do things like stones have, with their enduring presence?
week of jul 1st: think about the absence of something and how the shape it once filled & now leaves affects things. is it good? sad? bittersweet? write about it.
week of jun 24th: write about digital ghosts. explore the remnants of a person– a digital footprint, if you will– that lingers even after active online presence fades. what does it mean for us to have two selves– the real life, which is ever-changing, and the online, which will always be every version of you at once, keeping the old and new.
week of jun 17th: this one’s more open-ended; I just want you to think and write about jellyfish, because i love them and i’m feeling like hearing about what they mean to you! here’s a playlist that makes me happy and might inspire you.
week of jun 10th: remember a moment that’s both nostalgic and visceral. it can be old or new, but something that feels both vague and like you can still feel it in your skin, muscle, and bones. write about it however feels right.
week of jun 3rd: think about undercurrents as you write– movements and energies that flow beneath surfaces. what surfaces do they lay beneath? is it an undertone in skin or a song, a literal current, a political movement?
week of may 27th: look for patterns in chaotic & ‘random’ events, experiences, behaviors, etc. these could be in nature, in our own emotions & actions (or inactions), in the structure of a city, in a computer, in a body. do these patterns uncover an underlying order or meaning? are they coincidental?
week of may 20th: write about brief encounters, fleeting moments, first impressions. what do these leave behind for us?
week of may 13th: write about evolution and devolution. how do we unravel & re-ravel? think about what histories our bodies & communities & species & worlds are made of.
week of may 6th: consider ‘trace elements’-- barely noticeable things and what they change. think butterfly effect! are their effects expected & small or disproportionate? is a ‘trace element’ an extra bit of DNA? is it some milk in a loaf of bread?
week of apr 29th: write about or use asymmetry in your writing. what is the intrigue in imbalance? maybe work with different-sized stanzas or long, long sentences followed by short ones, or think about how no two bodies are the same, nor two halves of the same body, or how the feeling of a painting shifts with where the objects sit.
week of apr 22nd: explore the softness & blurring of edges—dawn/dusk, the place between sleep and wakefulness, transitions from youthfulness to adulthood and adulthood to old age. what do those borders & changes feel like, look like, smell like?
week of apr 15th: write a piece that uses all or most of this pool of words– glisten, slow, starlight, fruit, molten, calm.
week of apr 8th: try to make your writing as silent as possible. i know it's a weird prompt-- don't take it too seriously. have fun. what does it mean for writing to be quiet?
week of apr 1st: explore the concept of time in your writing. play with the idea of how we perceive passing time [linear/cyclical/all at once/not at all] and make it weird and surreal, or maybe go more classic & write some fun time travel/time loop fiction. how does time shape us?
week of mar 25th: try writing in the second person. address your audience and sit with them as you tell your story. see how this direct connection affects how you write.
week of mar 18th: write a piece in which you blend two physical senses. maybe focus in on the taste or shape of words, or the feel of an old memory. imagine & sink into those sensations and see what comes up.
week of mar 11th: explore a life cycle in some kind of writing. for example, you could use metamorphosis, diapause/hibernation, paedogenesis [very weird], puberty, the salmon life cycle, the amphibian life cycle, or something else entirely! you don't have to be direct-- just start here and get inspired.
week of mar 4th: take time to explore different structures of whatever you like to write. for poetry, consider writing a pantoum, ghazal, or abecedarian (some of my favorites). for an essay or fiction, consider writing vignettes, something in epistolary form, a diptych/triptych piece, a frame story, or a circular narrative.
week of feb 26th: write about echoes, sound, and reverberation. what is an echo– just sound or something more? how can it reverberate through past, present, and future? can emotion be an echo in that way? what else can be?
week of feb 19th: fuck salvador dali for being evil. that said, write a piece inspired by two famous dali paintings-- persistence of memory and the elephants. consider exploring movement, slowness/speed, heat/cold, and warped sensations.
week of feb 12th: write about a worldly place that is a threshold for you. this can mean anything-- maybe it's some place between end and beginning, forward and backward, past and present, here and there, friends and lovers, or something else entirely!
week of feb 5th: write about what ways writing plays a role in your life-- why do you like it? is it hard? what's your relationship with it? be as abstract or direct as you'd like.