July 2005
Daily Writing Prompts

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A Pen In Each Hand

  1. Set aside $10 and spend it on something writing-related for your workspace.
  2. Scene: two former lovers bump into each other in a bookstore.
  3. Do the Sunday Brunch prompts and post your exercises.
    1. Use the following words in a story or essay: confusing, friends, uttered, attention, backlog.
    2. Write about pockets.
    3. Write about an encounter with an animal.
  4. Write about a day that has unseasonable weather.
  5. Write some fan fiction!
  6. List five verbs from today’s headlines. Use them in a story/poem.
  7. Your main character has acute amnesia.
  8. Frame something you’ve written that you love and display it.
  9. Scene: two friends in a waiting room.
  10. Do the Sunday Brunch prompts and post your exercises.
    1. Use the following five words: fluent, speaks, whispers, because, winter.
    2. Write about someone (or something) outside of their/its usual environment.
    3. A while ago on overheardintheoffice.com someone was quoted as saying, “If you could un-fuck this situation, I’d appreciate it.” Write about “un-” doing something.
  11. Set a scene at a convenience store.
  12. Rewrite using “The Musical Magic of Words” as inspiration.
  13. Use “contour” in a scene/poem.
  14. One character doesn’t speak the language of everyone else in the scene.
  15. Find an old, abandoned piece of writing. Post it & say it’s today’s prompt!
  16. Scene: the prelude to a fight or battle w/ an inevitable bad end.
  17. Do the Sunday Brunch prompts and post your exercises.
    1. Use the following 5 words: unfortunately, trip, through, normally, darkness.
    2. Write about traffic lights or a similar signal.
    3. End a sentence with one of the following phrases (your choice):
      … that it might rain.
      … speechless. Just speechless.
      … dumb as the next guy.
  18. Write a two-character scene in dialogue only. No speech tags!
  19. Finish it! It could be a novel, story, article or poem.
  20. Use “baby” and “roasted” in the same story/poem (in an unrelated way).
  21. Your character doesn’t know his/her birthdate.
  22. Time to research free-to-enter contests and paying markets. Earn some cash!
  23. Scene: a girl in a white dress enters…
  24. Do the Sunday Brunch prompts and post your exercises.
    1. Use the following five words: road, velvet, resonating, being, slipped.
    2. Write about trying to answer a difficult question.
    3. The last prompt this week is “The First” — write anything this phrase suggests.
  25. Write a love scene/poem w/o using “love” or any synonym (verb or noun).
  26. Step back from your story & look again with fresh eyes next week.
  27. Use “sobered up” in a story/poem.
  28. A character is doing an impersonation or using a fake accent.
  29. Write/edit in an unusual place today, outside if you can.
  30. Set a scene on December 30.
  31. Do the Sunday Brunch prompts and post your exercises.
    1. Use the following words in a story or essay: especially, vocal, lived, outside, hitting.
    2. Write about finding or receiving a message intended for someone else.
    3. Write about a conversation held in traffic.
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