Writing Prompts, What are the good for?
Do not now follow with the familiar lines of the Frankie Goes To Hollywood song
The above will only makes sense if you are of a certain age. For those who don’t know do check out Frankie Goes To Hollywood and have a listen to War, where this line is mashed from.
Unlike the “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing” this is not true about writing prompts. Writing prompts are amazing whether to help you get into the writing mood, turn into a kickstart for an amazing project, or just to enjoy and see where your mind wanders.
I am part of a journaling group who meet monthly. We get a few quotes, poems, thoughts, things that come up via chats, which we then journal on or around for the next month. Some work. Some don’t.
With my own writing group I will always post the prompts I used during the group’s sessions on my Barefoot Writing Group website, firstly so those who came can get a reminder but also I attach them to my mailing list to let others enjoy what we enjoyed.
I am on many mailing list that either send through regular prompts or occasional ones. Some I do and some I mean to do and some I never do. If I find I am deleting an certain person’s or company’s email without doing the prompt too often then I unsubscribe. I didn’t know until recently that every email sent uses a bit of electricity and that if we all stopped sending those “thanks” or various emoji responses we could close down a power station or two. Amazing! So all those unwanted emails, of which I hope this one isn’t one, are all working towards climate change. Wow!
Back to writing prompts and the original question - what are they good for? Being a writer and writing workshop facilitator I think they are amazing. They give your creativity something to work with. If done as free-writing a writing prompt bypasses that logical part of your brain that is trying to work out the end often before the beginning has got off the ground. I love the look on my writing group’s faces when they read back what they have written that their creativity has been allowed to find its own flow.
Of course going into that alpha wave space of not expecting your brain to find an answer but just relaxing and being is not easy at times. Our brains do it anyway when waking or when staring out the window or those other moments when we just relax a bit. But too often when it comes to writing we can be guilty of “clenching our brains” as we would clench our muscles before starting a race. We get all tense and feel that we need to perform. If done in a kind relaxed way then the writing prompt should take one to a different part of the brain and allow creativity to flow. Because that is what creativity should do - just flow. It is the editing, etc that is done in a more formulated way.
Photo from https://brainwavehub.com/2017/04/alpha-waves/
The challenge then is to take that creative flow and move into finishing that novel, short story, essay, piece of flash, without then tensing up again and stopping the creative flow!!!