Living the Fictional Dream

Every month, my writing group has a prompts contest. People who are interested buy in for the year, and every month the person who writes the most prompts gets a $10 gift card. We started doing it a few years ago to inspire ourselves to write.

Typically, I’m pretty particular about prompts. I don’t get inspired by them easily. But, when I stretch myself to write them anyway, sometimes I get some really good stuff out of them.

I’m waiting right now to hear back on one that I wrote in our February prompts contest (which I won!), but I’m fairly certain it will get rejected. It’s sort of weird and gross — it’s about vomit! And superheroes, if you can imagine that! I liked it, though — I was experimenting with an unreliable narrator (a mentally unstable, OCD-ish woman), which was a challenge to write.

I will be my writing group’s prompt contest facilitator for April, and I’m looking forward to it. Back in the day, I used to think that I had to find writing prompts other places — websites, writing books, etc. But, over the years, I’ve realized that I can write just as good writing prompts as those other guys — and I tend to like the ones that I create (and the ones that my writing group mates create) even better than the overly formal ones you can find in writing books.

I got on a role creating writing prompts this morning. I had to cut myself off at lucky 13. Hopefully, the group will find at least a few of those inspiring next month!

Once I’ve sent them out to the group, perhaps I will post them here, in case they are of benefit to anyone else out there.

Prompts are an interesting passtime. On the one hand, one might wonder what the point is when there are so many ideas floating around in the writer’s brain already. But, on the other hand, it can really do a writer good to stretch their craft in a new or unexpected direction.