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.
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Bonus Exercise: Choose your title from within the poem "Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children" by John Updike—a couple examples would be "Just Slightly Off", "Pure Blue" "When You Were Zero" or "Boring Aunts and Neighbors" among many other great moments from the tremendous poem.
#102
Six Word Shootout 7
Six Word Shootout 7
For today's writing exercise write a piece that includes the following six words. While it perfectly sets you up for a sestina, feel free to write whatever you'd like (but ya know, give that sestina a shot!). Also feel free to make slight alterations to the required words if you want to avoid that eye-pokey repetition you can find in sestinas sometimes. All the words will either have homonyms or have easy substitution options, so look for those homonyms!
Required Words:
1) Heir
2) Altar
3) Bare
4) Scent
5) Conduct
6) Holey
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Bonus Exercise: Choose your title from within the poem "Saying Goodbye to Very Young Children" by John Updike—a couple examples would be "Just Slightly Off", "Pure Blue" "When You Were Zero" or "Boring Aunts and Neighbors" among many other great moments from the tremendous poem.
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If you'd like some background music to write to, try this Pete Seeger Greatest Hits album.
