In the “I” of the Beholder—Prompts for Unreliable Narrators

When I first started writing, I often switched the “you” within the poem, or the “you” I was addressing was unclear. Now I am more concerned with the “I” in my poems. Not persona poems—that is a whole (or rather fragmented) other conversation—pun intended.

The “I” in my daily life is just as ambiguous: I continue to be an unreliable narrator, always learning that I again was wrong and then learning that my correction was an overreaction to the original error. Even caution can be an overcorrection, and second guessing a mental tic.

I never know when I am in the right or just am left guessing my way through the dark. The light keeps changing on me. So do my guesses.

For the first prompt, experiment with an unreliable narrator. Leave clues for the audience (and yourself) to discover but avoid the sudden epiphany, which is hard to pull off after its centuries of overuse. I will always love that lightning realization in Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” and Jane Austen’s Emma, but I am wary of the puppet master allure.

For the second prompt, write about a time in which all you had believed about an event was merely a lie you had told yourself or a another’s lie that you believed about yourself. How did you realize you were wrong? Did someone tell you? Why did you believe that person?

Or for a slight variation, take an old poem about an event in your life and look at it through your current viewpoint. What changes; what does not? And more intriguingly do you expect that you will change stance on this same event in the future, in the next 10 minutes?

For the last prompt, write a conversation between “the poet” and the “speaker” in one of your poems. How do “you” and how you present yourself as a poet juxtapose in the poem? Is the poem a scene or a landscape?

The Interior World and Navigation—Prompts Inspired by Oliver de la Paz

I’ve joined a writing workshop under Eric Morago, and it’s pushing me to expand my focus from individual poems to collections—their structure, motifs and themes. Unless a poetry collection is clearly arranged for a specific purpose, I usually skip around and ignore the placement of individual poems, which of course doesn’t help me prepare my own manuscript. I am truly enjoying this broader perspective in looking at poetry.

As part of the class, each of us was assigned to choose a collection and discuss its organization and themes as well as create a writing prompt. I chose Oliver de la Paz’s The Boy in the Labyrinth, a book I had longed for after reading his poem “Autism Screening Questionnaire—Speech and Language Delay.” The beauty of the poem’s answers to the harsh clinical questions stunned me the elusive quality of metaphor and imagery slipping the pinning of categories seemed akin to both parenting and writing—or any creation.

The book itself uses the structure of the Greek ode with its strophe, antistrophe and epode further divided into episodes of the introductory “Chorus” word problem or fill-in-the-blank poem and subsequent Labyrinth prose poems. The movement and structure dramatize the Greek myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth. The inclusion of word problems and the three “Autism Screening Questionnaire” poems build upon themselves layer by layer, adding the outside world into an ever deeper interior. Sometimes the prose poems begin on the image from the previous as if we too are following the red string. Fascinating.

The poet discusses the structure here in an interview:

I almost always think of individual poems with respect to the poems adjacent to them—how a particular poem activates or negates the work surrounding it. I think in motif and pattern, and I love making bigger connections both in my own writing and in the work of writers whom I enjoy, either in individual poetry collections or a life’s work.

For the prompt, I want to use one of the Labyrinth prose poems for inspiration :

For the first prompt, create an interior world peopled by outside objects and internal responses. Let the objects move and fly and the senses intermingle within this self-constructed world.

For the second prompt, write a poem using the line “Pain is a layer” as a ghostline. Again, remember to erase that line but still credit the poet.

For a third prompt, write a poem using the following words from the poem: “torch,” “bird,” “surface,” “form,” “layer,” “tip,” “rock,” “stripes,” and “shadows” but use them as verbs instead of nouns.

For the final prompt, use the “Autism Screening Questionnaire — Speech and Language Delay” as inspiration in how to translate the clinical or the mundane into the specific and personal.

Sign and Tree—Another Twitter Ekphrastic

In life, we oscillate among the sign, the tree and the observer and sometimes embody all three at once. Write a poem or short story from the perspective of one of them. Is the observer a trespasser after the sign disappears? If it is illegible? Who belongs here? Who decides?

More pics here.

Now write about a time in which you observed yourself erasing a version of yourself.

A tree with a prediction or a paradox

“Show, Don’t Tell”—Another “Borrowed” Twitter Prompt

Describe an emotion without naming it—similar to a previous prompt in which you describe images but of a color but never name it. I think this is a good strategy generally to use to help you push beyond the first phrase and image to explore new connections.

Unread Poems and Their Poets—Prompts Inspired by Wanda Coleman

I agree with Devin Gael Kelly: these three lines of Wanda Coleman’s “Obituary”—and the entire poem—did break me.

For the first prompt, skip those first three lines and use the next—“This sunset should trouble / the sky” as a ghostline. Remember to drop the line and give credit to the poet (such as “after Wanda Coleman”).

For the second prompt, write a poem using the following word list from the poem: “hard,” “trouble,” “fault,” “fall,” “felled,” “sound,” “empty,” “will,” “mean,” and “bare.”

For a third prompt, write a love poem that you will never show to anyone. Then take that poem and create an erasure poem out of it by deleting all the tenderness and joy from the lines. What is left?

For a final prompt, write a story or poem from the perspective of the minor deity of unnoticed loves. Let this god/goddess send small blessings—a convenient parking space, a slight breeze on a hot day, exact change found in the pocket—upon the lovers.

It’s NaNoWriMo Time!!!

November is here again, and it’s time to write 50,000 words of that brand new novel you’ve been kicking around—all in one month. National Novel Writing Month is celebrated (and cursed) by thousands of writers. Get an online writing buddy and entire community this month—along with tips, encouragement, and social events—through the NaNoWriMo site.

I will be honest—2020 is not the year for me to attempt NaNoWriMo. I have barely begun a manuscript that I thought would be finished this summer. But the year I did complete the challenge and the years that I didn’t manage to hit even close to the 50,000 by 11/30 were still great experiences. If you decide to begin, let me know and I will happily cheer you on!

Best of luck, everybody!!!

Image courtesy of NaNoWriMo.

And if you need some inspiration, here is a photo of Ursula Le Guin’s writing room.

So let your words spill out of you onto the floor, under the refrigerator and cabinets, and into all parts of the house just as these replacement beans for a beanbag chair so did.

Mix-n-Match Halloween Prompts!

In honor of Halloween, let’s do a Steve Ramirez style prompt: make a list of five monsters or horror movie villains, then a list of five children’s toys, and finally a list of disappointments or tragedies.

Roll dice for each of the categories, or cut them up and put all of a categories options into a hat and draw. Ultimately, see what clicks for you.

For example, perhaps the dice chose Godzilla to explain divorce to the Easy-Bake Oven, but Freddy Krueger just seems more familiar with ovens and furnaces. Go with your gut. Write the poem or short story that calls to you.

For a second prompt, reverse predator and prey: mouse and cat, fly and spider, antelope and tiger, rabbit and hunter…

I took the photograph below in an attempt to capture the face I saw in the stone and moss. Do you see it, or the small figure with outstretched arms that seemed like a thick, misshapen cross from a distance? As a child, I would stare sleepless at the “faces” in the knotty pine walls of my bedroom.

Remember a time when you thought you saw a face in a pattern or shadow, and you had been right. Now write what that figure would have warned you if you had only believed your eyes.

For the final prompt, write a poem or story from the perspective of the “final girl” who makes it to the end of the slasher film but write about your life. You may have to omit 2020 because some storylines just aren’t realistic.

Measure Your “Blueness”—A Prompt for Sad Poets

Hey, poets, finally a technological invention specifically for us: an instrument to measure our “blueness” or our current saturation of sorrow.

Write a poem using the number system below for your current emotional chroma.

Bonus prompt: Write a poem or short story about an instrument that can predict and ultimately modify emotional states.

Short Story Time or Ekphrastic Poem—Your Choice for a Stolen Prompt

Once again a week has slipped by without me doing anything other than doom scrolling and procrastinating…so here is a prompt I stole from Twitter

Bonus prompt: Reread William E. Stafford’s poem “Traveling through the Dark.” Assume that the deer looking into the camera is the fawn the narrator pushed over the edge but who lived. Write a poem or short story that explains what comes next.

Another Stolen Twitter Prompt—Gathering Your Field of Ducks (per Autocorrect)

We don’t always get what we want but perhaps we do get what we deserve:

Write a poem in which you did this and, damn, did you ever. Or write a short story that’s story arc can summed up by this.

Good luck reaping what you sowed, but, hey, you got a story or a poem out of it. Good enough.

Flower-headed People, the Best People—Ekphrastic Prompts Inspired by Shaylin Wallace

I fell in love with these amazing photos by Shaylin Wallace. If only I could have my head replaced with flowers so that I could feed on light and my entire face could open up for my lover.

For the first prompt, write a monologue from one of these four portraits.

For the second prompt, write a conversation by the four of them. Or describe the language they share. Does it hum like bees or the ruffling of small wings? What does it mean when one of them opens up? Do the others listen? Do bees and other pollinators carry their words to one another?

For a third prompt, choose the one that represents you and explain why. If none of them resonate with you, check out the artist’s website, which include titles for these portraits. And here is where you can get reprints.

Here is the website in case the links don’t work: https://www.smwvisuals.com/photo-manipulations

Sharp Edge, Teeth and Claws, A Basket of Goodies, A Path and a Bed—Prompt for What Lies Inside

What if inside each of us is a little girl wandering through a forest, an old woman waiting, a woodcutter sharpening an ax, the forest itself growing and dying and growing, a big bad wolf seeking to eat the young and tender and the aged and wise, and an ax swinging.

Write a poem or short story about what grows inside of you or another, remaining hidden and trapped, and what else cuts its way out into the world.

A Post About Not Posting and a Random Generator of Threats—Stolen Twitter Prompt

As you probably noticed, it has been weeks since I posted anything. Partly this is due stressing myself out because I promised to promote friends’ work—I often perform best when I care the least. Mostly though, I am not writing or even reading. I simply did not have any creativity or motivation. These days feel as if I am eating Saltines in the Sahara—dry, very dry.

Last night’s virtual reading helped—thank you, Eric Morago for Shout—I once again experienced the shiver from hearing a powerful poem. I even managed to write a (bad) poem this morning. This coming week, I will being posting regularly again. But baby steps. So here is a stolen Twitter prompt:

Write a poem or short story using the generator.

You will of course want to expand the poem and give credit to the generator if you wish to publish what you’ve written.

Below is a bonus ekphrastic prompt:

More Twitter Thefts—An Editing Suggestion and Prompt

Unlike me, many of you probably completed the 30 poems in a 30 days challenge. That is awesome! Now for even more fun: editing those poems! Below is a Twitter discussion that I found really intriguing. The original conversation began as quirky ways people approach reaching poems and novels, but then poet Julia Beach explained why she first reads The last three words of the fourth line from the bottom in other people’s poems and in her own as the poem’s key.

Take one of the poems you’ve written recently, or perhaps one that has never really come together, and try seeing if this “map” helps you cut and expand the rest of the poem to fit that vision.

Here is the prompt: use this same reading process of using the last three words of the fourth line from the bottom of a poem and use them as your opening line and build a poem from there. See where you end up. You can then choose to erase those three words so that they function as a ghostline or you can keep them, using italics or quotation marks. Either way, be sure to give the poet credit.

Bonus prompt: what does this tree remind you of? A key, a warning, the devil’s spork? Write a poem or story about coming across this tree in an abruptly silent forest. What does it mean?

Pick Your Quarantine House—Prompt

For this prompt, choose one of the following as your haven during this pandemic. Make even the house’s drawback a benefit—the bedbugs sing lullabies to you at night, the ghosts help you find your phone and your slippers, the ass is an excellent cook, and you enjoy freedom from news and animal requests.

Bonus prompt: Make one of the quarantine houses your setting for a short story. Create characters (between 3-5) and have them interact under stress.

Bad Optics—Prompts for the Deluded and Denuded

We have all been there looking at a photo and mistaking a cat for a crow or a bunny for a raven (such tricksters) or arguing about the color of a striped dress. We’ve looked at a rusty cardoor and seen an ocean but mistook an ocean for a door. We often cannot find the exits in this complex life or follow the storyline. We have been there when the denouement occurs: the love interest has been the villain all along, or we were playing detective but found ourselves both the body and the butler holding the murder weapon in our bloody hands. We do it to ourselves…with help from others.

The animal is a raven (appropriately named Mischief), not a rabbit, petted by his trainer, but the pic but was captioned with “Rabbits love getting stroked on their nose.” Check out the BBC article for other optical illusions and context.

For the first prompt, remember a time when an enemy seemed like a friend, a predator pretending to be prey animal. When did you first suspect the talons, see a hint of fang behind the smiling lips? How did you escape? Or did you? How much innocence, time, flesh did you lose?

For the next prompt, write a poem about losing a long-held assumption. For a poem, try to create a modified or traditional sonnet with the reveal as the form’s turn. For fiction, emulate O’Henry or Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever” so that the reveal occurs at the very end. Or for a challenge, begin with the reveal and work from there. Discover where it leads you.

For the final prompt, write a poem or short story in which you are both perpetrator and victim? When did you realize that it was you all along? Did you get away with the crime? Did you ever forgive yourself? Will you?

Holiday Horrors—Prompts

We have all been there—sitting awkwardly with relatives or a dinner party when a monstrosity is brought out: the inevitable meat-suspended-in-gelatin dish of our nightmares and/or the Jello-Cool Whip-Mayo “fruit salad” from your now-least-favorite aunt. For the next prompt, write a sonnet describing this dish. Let the sonnet’s turn be either your decision to try it or your survival after the mandatory taste test.

For inspiration, see the following picture:

And because I just had to know more and assume you might too:

For the next prompt, reimagine the universe as a Jello ring. Write a narrative poem or a short story as an explorer—whether astronaut, cosmonaut (Russian), yuhangyuan (Chinese), or of some other nationality. What equipment allows for breath? How do you navigate through tuna? Are the cucumber chunks a relief? Describe the flora and fauna.

And here is one more for your amusement, terror, an emotion not yet named by anyone other than the Germans….

Good luck!

Go Rube Goldberg Yourself—Machine Yourself a Revenge, a New Life, or just a Damn Poem

A Rube Goldberg machine (named after the cartoonist) is the creation of a complex (usually messy and often destructive) chain-of-events to perform the simplest task.

Just look up Rube Goldberg on YouTube and enjoy the obsessively ordered chaos. And of course here is Ok Go’s Rube Goldberg video (thanks, Steve, for the new obsession).

The first prompt is inspired by David Guzman’s “Instructions for Building My Rube Goldberg Machine” in McSweeney’s. Write a poem in which you create a Rube Goldberg machine of revenge, knocking down naysayers like dominoes and launching belittlers into the blue beyond.

For the rest of the essay, click this link.

For the next prompt, again write a Rube Goldberg machine for creating a new life. Perhaps write a poem or story in which you rewire your neural pathways into a glowing smiley face, construct a system of mental pulleys to unload leftover regrets and needless doubts, or build a feedback loop of positive reinforcements in your morning routine. Or maybe you want to describe creating an alter to a dark god out of Legos that takes up a city block and steal your enemies’ shoes (thanks, Twitter, for the best curse I’ve ever heard).

And finally create a poem as if it were a Rube Goldberg machine. Perhaps it is. What is your ending? How do you set up the first line and the subsequent stanzas to get us there?

Ok Go Ghostline Yourself a Poem—Prompts

Blame the Ugly Mug, particularly Steve Ramirez, for my newest obsession: Ok Go. Yes, yes, I am behind the times, out of step, calendar deficient, day unplanner, and time deficient.

For the next prompt, I want you to use the the following line from Ok Go’s song “Upside Down & Inside Out” as a ghostline: “Yeah when you met the new you, did someone die inside?”

Think about all of those former selves or even the phases you went through during your teen years and various periods of your life. Did you have to kill a former to become the current version of yourself? If so, did you feel pity for that self as you murdered it? Was it a violent destruction? A mercy killing?

Or do all of those former selves follow you like a shadow, longer with each passing year as if you are moving through the late afternoon of your own consciousness? Does the weight of all that self history sink you lower to the ground? Is it hard to keep your head up when it is so full of echoes?

Or use one of the other lines from the song as a ghostline:

• “Gravity’s just a habit that you’re pretty sure you can break”

• “So when you met the new you / Were you scared, were you cold, were you kind?”

• “Don’t know where your eyes are but they’re not doing what you said”

For the next prompt, write a conversation among your former and present selves and maybe add a future self too. Will it be an argument, an interrogation or accusation, an explanation, an apology, or advice? What do you wish your former self could tell you? What do you wish you remembered? What advice would you give a past self? Would the knowledge erase your current self as if un-birthing your present consciousness ? Would you share that advice anyway? Or would that death be your intended purpose?

Here is Ok Go’s video for “Upside Down & Inside Out.” Write a poem about being in zero gravity. Try to narrate the video as a sonnet or pantoum. Or write from the perspective of one of the piñatas. Write. Discover what happens.

Reverse a Life, a Death, a Tragedy—Prompts Inspired by Sean Shearer

I know I spend too much of my life retracing steps and looking into the rearview mirror. If I wore cologne, it would be named regret and smell of a struck match, rubbing alcohol and old, water-stained bills.

But the poem “Rewinding an Overdose On a Projector” is achingly beautiful in its attempt to reverse disaster. Thanks to Victoria Chang for sharing it.

For the first prompt, reverse a catastrophe or a mistake. Perhaps describe the bride and groom each sliding the wedding bands off fingers, the bride walking backwards up the aisle, and ushers emptying the church one by one.

For the second prompt, writing a poem using the following verbs from Shearer’s poem: “floats,” “twitch,” “wakes,” “seals,” “pushes,” “fluffs,” “shrinks,” “grows,” “grows,” “rains,” “spill,” and “remains.”

For the next prompt, notice how the lines reverse not only the time sequence, but also the agency: “The wet cotton lifts” and “The water pours into a plastic bottle.” Experiment with changing the receiver and the doer of an action in a poem. What effects does the change create?

For the fourth prompt, use the line “The heart wakes like a handcar pumping faster and faster on its greased tracks” as a ghostline. Remember to use that line to jump off from and then erase it from your poem. Still give credit to the poet though.

What changes if the viewer is looking down rather than up? Write a poem or short story in which directions are reversed, and the reader is kept in suspense until the end or is never certain.

For the last prompt, notice the delicacy of the mold. Describe the un-blooming of this mold and resurrect the fallen tree upon which the mold sprouts. Which is more sacred: the life of the consumed or the consumer? Try to cast the metaphysical in scientific terms. See what the dichotomy creates.