The 2021 Writing Series is a series of daily writing exercises for both prose writers and poets to keep their 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.
This is not a standard writing session. This is pure production—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 it, you will be able to complete all of the exercises in under 30 minutes.
#42
Ekphrastic Fantastic 5
For today, we're pairing images for you to respond to. The two images will be contrasting and it will be up to you how they can interact, how your writing can make the two pieces of art meet. Or, just pick one of the images and run with it if you'd rather. I'm not here to tell you exactly what to do, just to help you get the ball rolling. But if it was me, I would look for commonalities or how one image could be an imagination or memory or media within the other image, or if they exist in the same 'world', how you can get from one point in space and time to the other. But you do you boo-boo.
Image 1: "Glass Painting with the Sun (Small Pleasures" by Wassily Kandinsky, 1910.
Image 2: “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” by Daniel Cheung. This photo won the 2018 People's Choice award from National Geographic in the "People" category.
Has this girl actually 'leapt through time' as the photograph's title indicates? Is it magic, the aurora borealis, a light show, something completely unrelated—perhaps a dream or a trans-dimensional trip? Something more normal/mundane? How does Kandinsky's hilltop cityscape (if that's what it is, which is of course up to you to interpret) fit with the girl running through the bright lights? You decide. Don't overthink it, take a couple minutes perhaps, but dive in and make this happen!
You got this!
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If you'd like background writing music, let's keep it contemporary classical today with Takemitsu - A Flock Descends Into The Pentagonal Garden (1988). I feel like it's just the sort of vibe this duo of images demands.
