What are your writing goals for the year?

What would your life be like if you were always hungry? Create a character who never goes outside. If you were to equate yourself with a flower, what flower best describes you? Why? Write a letter to someone you went to elementary school with. Write a poem using only words you see on road signs. Think of a smell that evokes a memory. Listen to instrumental music and write what the music tells you. Describe the place you would like to live. Describe a place you felt safe as a child.

What is hanging at the back of your closet? Find a dark place and describe it. Tell a joke. Write about gambling. Write about halves and wholes. If you could tell someone something you have always wanted to say, what would you say and to whom would you say it? Find someone to listen to (not to talk to), then write about it. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? Whats the hardest thing about writing? Have you ever really enjoyed doing something bad? What was it?

Go somewhere and watch people eat. Write about eating. Describe what its like to be really, really cold. Say goodbye to someone you never got to say goodbye to. What do you want?

Write about movement. Tell a childrens story. What is it like to be old? Write about fire. What was your first real disappointment? How far away is it?

Who is the most interesting person you have ever met? Write about a time when you were really honest. Tell a lie. Write dialogue between you and someone you love. What is the worst physical pain you have ever experienced? Make a list of character names. Dont write today draw a picture instead. Write about the sky.

If you were only allowed to speak once in your life, what would you say? If you had an unlimited supply of money, what would you do with your life? Go shoe shopping and try on all different kinds of shoes. Write about the way different shoes looked on you. Have you ever been someplace where you really didnt think you belonged? Write about the same outside scene at different times of the day.

Buy a box of Valentine heart candy and write what is on your heart. Love someone on paper. Write about your spiritual side. Look under all your furniture at your house. Gather everything you find and write about those things. What was it like when you sold or gave away something you loved? What was your favorite toy as a child? What is it like to be embarrassed by someone? Write the unspeakable. Write about your obsessions and compulsions. Write about a day in your life but place yourself in a

different historical time period. What is your first memory as a child? Locate a collection or series of poems. Write down the first line of each and make a new poem. What about childhood smells. Write about a small town. Write about leaving. You are eighty-eight years old. What has happened in your lifetime? Take the day off from writing. What would you put on your tombstone? Write about the most unusual member of your family. Write about a time you were lonely.

Write a song and sing it. Write about the smell of someone you love. When was the first time you knew you were growing up? Imagine someone told you that you had no talent as a writer. Write about it. Describe your encounter with the perfect stranger. Write a fairy tale. Write twenty fortunes to be placed in fortune cookies. Tell a secret. Write something that scares you. Write about something artificial. Write twenty first lines of stories or dialogue. Take one of the lines from journal prompt 74 and

complete the thought you started. Write five ideas for scenes involving conflict between men and women. Write about one color. Write a poem or story called How to Be a Writer. Write about your writing tools. If a movie were made of your life, who would play the lead and why? Write about imprisonment. Write an imitation of another writers style. Write some gossip. Write about bubbles. Gather three one dollar bills and describe each one separately.

Describe mannerisms in others that you find irritating. Plant a seed and describe the process. Write about the smell of an unfamiliar place. Write about what it feels like to be lovely. Try to remember a dream you had recently and record it as vividly as you can. If aliens exist, what do they look like? Be playful with your writing today. Describe the most beautiful part of a human body. Write a poem about a kitchen utensil. If you could ask one person in history for advice, who would it be and what would you ask?

Finish this thought: It was a dark and stormy night What kind of clothes define you? Create the complete wardrobe for a character from one of your stories or dramas. Write the opening visual directions for a film. Write about fragments. Feel four different fabrics and describe their textures. Describe the most impulsive thing youve ever done. Someone is looking in your window. What does he or she look like behind the glass? Describe him or her. Write a poem about the produce section of your grocery store. What is the closest you have ever come to dying?

Write a poem to the IRS and mail it in with your taxes. What places make you uncomfortable? Write about what is in your garbage (or someone elses if you can) Write about something you have lost. Describe three different kinds of trees. You are on an exploratory mission to another planet. Describe the planet to the mother ship. You are a big-rig truck driver. Using stream-ofconsciousness point of view, tell about a night of driving. What are your greatest strengths as a writer? Write about light. Create dialogue that might occur on a school bus.

Do you believe there is life on other planets? Write about your hometowns downtown. What are your prejudices? Go to a flea market, swap meet, or garage sale and make a list of the things you see that you would put in a characters house or yard. Now write a character description of the character you have created from choosing his or her belongings. Look at a state of U.S. map. Write down the ten most interesting town or city names that you see. Describe one of the towns. Describe the changing of the seasons. What is the point of no return? Describe it. Describe what you admire most in the human spirit.

Describe what about human beings you find flawed or disappointing. What happens to you after you die? Describe it. Go to a neighborhood that is unfamiliar to you. Without judging anyone or anything, describe the neighborhood and the people who live there. Visit a nursing home and write about it. Visit a nursing home and get one of the residents to tell you his or her story. Describe how the climate or weather in a particular area determines the characteristics of the people who live there. Go through a family members closet or junk room or drawer and write about the surprises you find there.

Describe the sound of your own voice. Use water as a symbol in five different ways. Create different views of the sky be using different colors to describe it. Describe the sounds that terrify or trouble you. Explain how much of a persons personality is determined by genetics and how much is determined by environment. Assuming that the majority of a persons personality is a result of his heredity, create a characters heredity and describe how it would determine that characters personality. Assuming that the majority of a persons personality is a result of his environment, create a characters environment and describe how it would determine the characters personality.

Try to talk someone out of something. Write dialogue for someone who is drunk. Describe a gospel revival. Describe a funeral from the point of view of the dead person. Describe a birth from the point of view of the baby. Write about something that is round. You are a radio sportscaster. Relay the action at some type of sporting event. Describe something and distort the physical details. Look at a newspaper and write down five headlines without reading the articles that follow them. For the next five days, use those headlines as journal prompts, writing about anything those headlines suggest.

Describe a naked human body in detail. What if your furniture became completely fed up with serving your needs and confronted you. Write down what each piece would have to say. Describe a memory associated with the smell of vanilla. Write a list of words, all associated with one another and moving sequentially from A to Z. Write about addiction. Write down the first thing you think about when you hear the word flat. Fill a page. Write a passage that imitates the style of any writer with an extreme style. Look around the room you are in and describe what you see. Then turn that into a poem.

Look at something that has texture. Then look and see if you can find some interesting formations (a face, an animal). Write about what you see. Write a poem which imitates the style of Dr. Seuss. What were you doing ten years ago today? Describe a day in the life of a department store Santa. Write about a reunion. Describe your favorite pajamas. Describe the inside of your car, thinking of it as it is at this moment. What are the sounds of the night? Describe them. Pick a book at random and open to any page. Select a sentence to use as an opening or closing line, and then write.

What senses predominate when you encounter external stimuli? You are absent one foot. Describe how you move. Find duality in five things. Write down a line from a song and write about wherever it takes you. Find something good in your worst experience and write about it. If you were invisible, where would you go? What would you do? Describe the worst way to die. If you could go to one specific point in time in the past, where would you go? Why? Write about your morning routine. How would being deaf or blind affect how you wrote?

You are locked in a vault with dead bodies. Record your impressions. Imagine yourself as a dragon. What do you do? How do you feel? What was the best lie you ever told?