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.
For today's writing exercise you will write a few micro-poems or micro-fictions. These will be either poems under 20 lines or stories under 200 words.
For inspiration go read some micro or hint fiction in this Buzzfeed article, at Microfiction Monday, Alba, Molecule, 50 Word Stories and Nanoism. Or also this Barnstorm blog post "How Microfiction Could Transform Social Media".
Read the full prompt twice before you start writing, because you're looking to keep it minimal, so have ideas. If your first draft is longer don't fret. Hone it down. And the piece will be what it is. I've started out with a goal of 100 words but hit on something and had to cull the end result from 1350 to 1200 for a contest because I loved the result. So each story will be its own beast, but we're ideally aiming for 20 lines or 100-200 words with these.
Micro Exercise 1: Sinking Boat. Tell the story of a boat sinking in three parts. First write a section where the leak/hole is discovered or when there is the accident that causes the boat's sinking. The second section should be what lead up to going out on the boat in the first place (immediately prior or the initial planning, or both—up to you). The final section should be a metaphor for something that is inevitable (for instance, a melting ice cube on a summer day), with at most one mention of the sinking's aftermath leading into the metaphor.
Micro Exercise 2: Green (lightning). Make a list of at least ten items which are a green color. Write a micro piece which uses at least seven of the items you listed, but does not (at least not conspicuously) draw the reader's attention to the items all being green. That's not to say they can't be described, not at all, but it can't say "and another blue thing is..." if that makes sense. Include lightning striking something.
Micro Exercise 3: Green Painting. Write a micro which uses at least three of the items not used in Micro #2, as well as someone painting a fence or wall as a punishment. While they're painting they think of three things they had gotten away with without being caught/punished, and ends with an escalating list of things which others get away with of greater and greater magnitude.
Micro Exercise 4: The Random Raft. Pick two interesting words from this Random Word Generator. One of those should be in your first sentence and one should be in your last sentence. The narrative of this piece should involve either a raft or a paper boat.
Micro Exercise 5: The Family Recipe. Write a piece in which a sibling or cousin goes missing for a short period of time, but long enough that the narrator is out putting up 'missing' signs when the missing person returns/is returned (or if you want to get darker, that's up to you).
