Topic: 23 Prompts

10-second review: These 23 prompts are designed to encourage poems. They’ll get you writing in any format. Most writers write regularly, just to keep writing. Or as warm-ups. Or as practice. These prompts will help.

Title: “23 Writing Prompts to Get You on a Roll.” Marilyn Taylor. The Writer (October 2009), 17-18.

The author of this article begins by saying, “Blank page? Blank screen? Blank mind? If you should suddenly find, horror of horrors, that lately you’re confronting one, two or even all of the above, please be advised that you are not alone.”

Here are some selections from the 23 prompts:

Celebrate a part of your body………. Write about an article of clothing, an event, a feeling or emotion……….. Write a letter to a well-known someone………..Write in the third person about what you’ve been afraid to write for years……….. Keep a journal. Write a line a day for 90 days……….. Research the year of your birth……….. Jot down your excuse for not writing. Use it as your first line……….. Write a 10-line poem. Each of the 10 lines is a lie……….. Write without any adjectives……….. Write your absolute worst. Revise it to make it even worse……….. Write something that consists of only questions………. Go to Lake Superior State University’s list of banished words on the Internet Then write a piece using as many of these banished wards as you can……….. Write fifty consecutive words of one syllable……….. Write about the first time you did something……….. Write something with 35 words. No more, no less……….. Write about God or religion, the substitute words having to do with a political figure you oppose wherever you refer to God or religion……….. Pick something you like to read. Take out all of the verbs and use them in your own composition………... Write about what you are obsessed with……….. Write about a work of art. Next day, add details you missed on the first day……….. Write something highly critical of yourself. Be objective……….. Think of what you can now write at your age that you could not have written at a younger age. What have you learned? What have you forgotten?

Comment: For added details about each of these prompts, see the article. The Writer is a magazine by writers for writers. RayS.