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: Origami. Tell the story of a relationship while describing how to fold a simple piece of origami from this list. Don't give every step, but at least 4 steps to provide your piece structure.
Micro Exercise 2: Thunder Storm. Write a short piece which is set during a thunderstorm in which the narrator thinks about things which seemed like they would be worse than they turned out ("it wasn't so bad after all"). Bonus points if the piece is for a metaphor for a relationship.
Micro Exercise 3: A Struck Car. Write a micro in which the narrator hits a parked car doing minor (ish) damage with no one seeing, and they contemplate their next move (and make it perhaps).
Micro Exercise 4: Password Protected. Write a micro in which you must 'enter' a password before speaking with any friends (surreal/slipstream), and use this 'protection' as a metaphor.
Micro Exercise 5: The Jam Session 1. Write a piece in which a family (or at least 2 family members) makes and jars fruit preserves, while they have a conversation that talks around what they really want to be talking about (avoiding talking about a divorce or drug issue or suicide or being single etc).
If you'd like some background music to write to, try this "Into the Past" futuristic lofi mix.
