On my writing desk sits a glass jar filled with folded slips of paper, each strip bearing a phrase taken from a poem that’s meant to serve as writing inspiration. The jar was a gift from a friend who lives in another state. She selected these fragments of poetry, wrote them down in black ink, tucked them into the jar, nestled the jar into a padded envelop, and mailed the whole thing to me.
When the jar of prompts arrived, I pulled out a slip of paper. Never mind stars, it read. It made me think at once of my novel, a project years in the making. A project that, coincidentally, got its own start through a writing prompt.
It was the summer of 2012, and I was in Vermont, attending the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. I signed up for a craft class led by author Romana Ausubel, who passed out copies of Aimee Bender’s story “The Rememberer,” in which the protagonist’s boyfriend is going through a reverse evolution. Ausubel prompted us to write the beginnings of something similarly impossible, something with a twist to magic in it that was anchored by a clear emotional core.
I remember, in those first moments we were meant to start writing, not expecting to produce anything of worth. The truth is I’m not always a huge fan of prompt-based writing while in a classroom environment. I often feel rushed or pressured, and I tend to wish I were writing alone rather than being surrounded by others. But on that day, I managed to give it a shot.
I started to write, slow and then faster, then faster still. Soon I was experiencing one of those rare moments when a writing prompt managed to bring the flash of a larger universe to life before my eyes. I wrote about a sister and her brother who lived in a world in which foretelling the future was not only possible but a regular part of life. I wrote about an inherent tension in their relationship and an impending change.
I couldn’t know it at the time, but I was writing what would become the opening paragraphs of my novel-in-progress. It’s all right there, marked down in messy handwriting in a purple composition notebook, the result of a mere exercise I had zero expectations for: the first words of my novel. I open that notebook now and am amazed by what I managed to create in the span of only a few minutes: my main characters, the heart of the premise, the gradually forming boundaries of a new fictional world.
Over the next seven years, I would write, revise, and rewrite my novel repeatedly, developing and shaping and changing it again and again. But what I first wrote down in that classroom remains. Even now, after countless revisions and reimaginings, those first few paragraphs still closely mirror what I wrote in my notebook at Bread Loaf.
As successful as that exercise was, my relationship with writing prompts continues to be complicated. At times, I love using prompts. Like that fateful day at Bread Loaf, I occasionally experience what feels like pure magic when taking a chance on a writing prompt. The right phrase or concept can open a universe of possibilities, can meet the writing brain at the exact right moment. Writing from images can be particularly fruitful for me, and I’ve recently planned a generative workshop surrounding image-based prompts.
Not every prompt or exercise summons magic, however. I’ve sat in workshops—including workshops I’ve led—and tried to engage with a prompt only to come up empty. Sometimes I even actively resist them, so intent am I on writing the projects and ideas that are already flooding my brain. But that doesn’t change that sometimes, under the right circumstances, prompts can be portals to the creative process.
Now, on days when I feel too stuck or tired or cynical to write something new, I have this glass jar waiting on my writing desk. The slips of paper inside are crimped, folded over themselves many times over. When I select one and open it, it unravels as if bound by coiled springs, like it’s just waiting to bounce its energy onto my writing desk.
Never mind stars, my prompt says. I put the slip next to me on my writing desk and look at it. And I think. And I feel the stirrings of creativity, of fresh life burst forth from nowhere, this mysterious process begun anew.