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.
#21
One Word Exercise 1#21
For today's writing exercise you will write a piece of poetry or prose which focuses on one word. If the word itself doesn't spark a piece, do the generative exercises below.
1: Shut off from the light; as in "Dark" or "Murky"
2: Hard to understand; as in "Obscure"
3: Causing gloom
- Think of things that are shadowy, dark, sketchy, unsafe etc. Places, situations, things in the look of someone that just say "Not safe, run." Write down as many as you can for five minutes. If you're stuck google some of those terms. Get at least ten things but you should be able to get much more than that in five minutes.
- Now think of things that are confusing, unclear, nebulous, non-distinct etc. Places or things that melt together, things that are screened, veiled, shielded, concealed, occluded etc. Again, write down as many things as you can for five minutes and google image search those words looking for interesting things, places or words you can describe or use. You're building a bank to harvest from. Don't overthink things, write them and move on to the next go for volume and diversity of 'things'.
- Pair up interesting combinations of things from exercise #1 and #2, at least one from each. Get at least three combinations. Write a paragraph for each combination, using the extra sentences as connective tissue to allow the paragraph make sense. Make sure there's at least one very unexpected event in each of the paragraphs (magic realism, surrealism, extremely unlikely event)
- Pick your favorite paragraph to expand. Use at least 2 unused items from either list #1 or #2. If the word Tenebrous doesn't appear in the piece, consider including it in the title.
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If you'd like some background music to write to, try the ÆkaSora - Naruto "Rainy day" lofi hip hop remix.
