Category: ideas

A Thanksgiving season writing prompt

Create a cornucopia of ideas

Writer Brittany Ackerman recently shared what she calls a “rapid-fire” writing prompt just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. I found this exercise helpful — not only as a way to practice writing but also as a way to practice gratitude. Because gratitude is what Thanksgiving is all about, right?

In her post — “Rapid-Fire Gratitude | Writing Prompt” — she writes:

Write a rapid-fire list of 24 (because we are closing out 2024!) things you are grateful for.  Choose 1 (or more) from your gratitude list and free-write a scene, a poem, dialogue– whatever comes to mind.

There you go. If you’re anything like me, you’ll think at the outset of this freewriting exercise that coming up with 24 things to be grateful for is a piece of cake (or pumpkin pie). But, reader, it’s harder than you think.

But don’t give up. Keep at it until you get a cornucopia full of gratitude. And then, get cooking — er, I mean, write!

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Works in progress

My venture into novel writing: ‘like driving a car at night’

When I rebooted this blog last January, along with my intent to get back into fiction writing, I had in the back of my mind the idea that I would work on a novel in November.

For many years now, I’ve had a couple of ideas for novels rolling around in my brain like loose marbles, and a few months ago I decided November would be the best time to start putting one of them down in writing. I’d written several short stories by then, had had a few published, and had gotten in the groove of thinking like a writer, so why not? Plus, November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and what better time to start than then, along with scores of other wannabe novelists who share my dreams and my pain?

Continue reading “Works in progress”