A Cure for Writers' Block
Finally, the weekend.
In honor of National Poetry Month, we'll be posting some weekly prompts to help you get started on those busy days when writing might not be the first thing on your to-do list. Here's the challenge: make it a priority on a designated day, say--Saturday. Sunday, even. And when the blank page seems a little too disheartening, and when pulling ideas out of air isn't working right, take one of these ideas to open the inventory.
1. Write in metered verse about boundaries: whichever sort of form you might choose (blank verse, couplets, Anglo-Saxon style), spite the rhythmic structure by imagining yourself breaking through the barrier. Write about what 'freeing' means.
2. Write out the lyrics of a favorite song, taking note of the formal devices. Now rewrite it into images built from the words.
3. Use a relative for inspiration: with an anecdote from before you were born. Old photographs might help.*
Ready, go!
*(I slightly cheated: prompt #2-3 were taken from the sixth edition of Writing Poems by Michelle Boisseau and Robert Wallace. I highly recommend it.)
In honor of National Poetry Month, we'll be posting some weekly prompts to help you get started on those busy days when writing might not be the first thing on your to-do list. Here's the challenge: make it a priority on a designated day, say--Saturday. Sunday, even. And when the blank page seems a little too disheartening, and when pulling ideas out of air isn't working right, take one of these ideas to open the inventory.
1. Write in metered verse about boundaries: whichever sort of form you might choose (blank verse, couplets, Anglo-Saxon style), spite the rhythmic structure by imagining yourself breaking through the barrier. Write about what 'freeing' means.
2. Write out the lyrics of a favorite song, taking note of the formal devices. Now rewrite it into images built from the words.
3. Use a relative for inspiration: with an anecdote from before you were born. Old photographs might help.*
Ready, go!
*(I slightly cheated: prompt #2-3 were taken from the sixth edition of Writing Poems by Michelle Boisseau and Robert Wallace. I highly recommend it.)