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The day I wrote 5 prompts at a diner in Tulsa and only one worked
Two Saturdays ago I sat in a diner on 11th Street in Tulsa with a notebook and wrote five writing prompts before my pancakes got cold. I was trying to get back into short stories after a long dry spell, so I gave myself 30 minutes and no do-overs. Four of them were junk, stuff like 'write about a door' that went nowhere. But the fifth one, about a guy who keeps finding his own handwriting in library books, turned into 9 pages by Tuesday. I think it worked because I wrote it about a place I actually know, the library on Denver Ave I went to as a kid. Now I'm wondering if anyone else has prompts that only click when they're tied to a real spot from your own life? Would love to hear what got you unstuck.
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janar1619d ago
The part about the library on Denver Ave you went to as a kid is what got me. I used to roll my eyes at the whole write what you know thing, figured it was just advice people give when they have nothing better to say. But then I tried a prompt about my grandma's old house in Broken Arrow and cranked out more in one night than I had in the previous six months combined. Turns out the specific stuff, the creaky step, the smell of the garage, is what makes the story move instead of just sit there. A generic prompt gives you a generic story, and it took me way too long to figure that out.
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