The Notebooking Daily 2020 Writing Series is a daily writing exercises for both prose writers and poets to keep your creative mind stretched and ready to go—fresh for your other writing endeavors. The writing prompts take the impetus—that initial crystal of creation—out of your hands (for the most part) and changes your writing creation into creative problem solving. Instead of being preoccupied with the question "What do I write" you are instead pondering "How do I make this work?" And in the process you are producing new writing.
These exercises are not meant to be a standard writing session. They are meant to be productive and to keep your brain thinking about using language to solve simple or complex problems. The worst thing you can do is sit there inactive. It's like taking a 5 minute breather in the middle of a spin class—the point is to push, to produce something, however imperfect. If you don't overthink them, you will be able to complete all of the exercises in under 30 minutes.
This may be pushing 45 unless you're really writing fast.
This may be pushing 45 unless you're really writing fast.
#20
Rhymebank Rounds-Rhyming Poem 1
Rhymbank Rounds are a new type of exercise. Kind of like the Wordbank sprints, but there will be more focus on editing and re-writing, and you'll complete a piece, with the main focus of the exercises being on Like Sounds. If you're typing I suggest copy/pasting the lines you're editing to save time, save the originals in their own exercise space.
- Take three minutes and jot down/type all rhymes and slant rhymes (include phrases for multi-syllabic words/feminine rhymes) you can think of just off the top of your head for the word: Pat. If you have trouble getting more than ten or so remember to rhyme with pack, tap, and even pant. You want to have close to thirty (30) words even if they're only kind of rhyming.
- Pick four of those words you wrote down and underline/bold them. Write three sentences for each of those words which include at least two other words from the rhymebank you generated from #1. Try to use even more words without making the sentence awkward or too weird—a little weird can be good though.
- Fragment time! Write down ten (10) sentence fragments which end with words from your rhymebank—they should end in either a comma or a period. You don't need to know the rest of the sentence or the context so something like "with a quick pat" or "pledging the worst frat".
- Fragment time 2! Write at least ten (10) 5-word partial sentences that use at least two (2) words from your list. Don't worry about context or what might be being said, just make sure you can make some logic of the phrasing.
- Short fragment time! Write five (5) three-word partial sentences which use two (2) words from your rhymebank back to back. No dawdling, but try to switch it up and use words you hadn't yet if you can. An example would be "the fat rat" or "in fact rap".
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Poem or story time!
- Rhymed Poem: Write a poem that is 12 lines in three quatrains (4-lined stanzas) with the rhyme scheme ABCB BABC CBAB with B being words from your rhymebank. Try to use fragments from the previous exercises and even the rhymebank itself to fill out your poem with as many 'like' sounds as you can within the lines. Lots of 'at/ack/ap/ant/ast/act' etc. Lots of plosives. If you want more guidance, pick your favorite 3 fragments that ends in the rhymebank sound that can be an ending. Your favorite is your ending. The other two will be the end of the Fourth and fifth lines, so ending the first stanza and starting off the second.
- Free form narrative: Pick your ten favorite fragments and find a way to fit those pieces together. What do I mean by fit them together? I mean that you're required to use ten of the fragments you'd written in a coherent piece by adding connective tissue and exposition/whatever needs to get you narratively from one line to the next. Whether you write this as a story or a poem is up to you.
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If you'd like some background music, folk musician Mike Cooper's 1970 album Do I Know You?.
