Freewrite Prompt 1

Generating material to write about can be one of the most difficult aspects of writing. When you’re stuck or have a block, try one of two things:

1. List fifteen unusual nouns or verbs

2. Find a random word generator online or a dictionary. Pick your favorite fifteen words

From your list, select a promising word or two. Flesh it out (i.e. write about it). Begin with that image, but feel free to move away from it, too. Try not to write thirty lines about the same word. Use it as a springboard. Does the word remind you of a texture, taste, memory, animal, place? For instance, here’s one of mine from this exercise:

But to begin a story with the end
wouldn’t be right. Sure, it would smell
of tangerines, and you could imagine
your own fingertips circling those peels,
your tiny tips dipping to dents. But no
manner of strength of knuckles during
ripping could satiate that frenzied bloodlust
as you pop that first peel between teeth,
your tongue bobbing it to mouth-roof.
Your family physician warns of pesticides
and congeniality, but nothing quite says
Blow me like licking fruit tendons off
the underbelly of your wrist, trails of that
sickening yellow-orange rivering your cheek.

Okay, so clearly my favorite word was tangerine. I didn’t move away from it too much, but here I became more interested in the sounds of the piece (“tiny tips denting to dents”). I could have easily bounced away:

Sure, it would smell of tangerines,

and you could imagine your own

fingertips circling those peels easier

than runes or collarbones, each layer

felling the chalk of sediment and fortunes,

of . . .

No, I don’t know what that means, but I was interested in things my fingers can encircle. I like creepy imagery, so bones popped into my head (runes, collarbones). I don’t care much about meaning yet. We want words on the page. Editing comes later.