Yes, and I have no idea.
Anything can be a writing prompt. A photo or work of art. A line from a poem. A question. Whatever gets you moving.
I do like this book. More “exercises” than “prompts,” focused on different aspects of writing. 3 AM Epiphany by Brian Kiteley: 9781582973517 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
This one quote did wonders for me:
“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway
It liberated me from thinking that my first attempt at writing anything has to be good.
Also:
“If it ain’t on the page it ain’t on the stage."
Although I take it out of the context of stage or theatrical (or even film/TV) works are dependent upon a script being written first. My interpretation of it is that any good, worthy, final draft is never going to be arrived at unless there are several crappy previous drafts written. As in, I just get the “stuff” down and worry about prettifying it up later.
One simple way to overcome the fear of doing something is to just do it. Familiarity overcomes fear.
Finally, maybe invent a reason to write, such as writing for therapeutic purposes. Got traumas? Done stupid things in life? Made bad decisions? Put 'em in stories. You’re now connecting “writing” with “fixing” your past. Putting traumas, etc. in fiction (whether intended for publication or not) “objectifies” the old experience. Its now like “it happened to someone else” and perhaps you’re better able to cope with all of that.
One more quote that’s sort of related to the therapy thing. It’s on my avatar:
You’d be surprised at how often I discover what’s in my head and precisely what I think about something when I write about it. It’s hard to explain, except that the process of writing helps sort out whatever is contained in my brain; when I’m done, I’m like “Hey, so that’s what I think about that? Wow, I can actually make sense!”
There’s lots of these. Just do a search for “writing prompts.” Or “writing prompt sites.”
Writing a book is like driving at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make a whole trip that way. – E. L. Doctorow.
@SighingAuthor,
Some things you say suggest you might be experiencing uncontrolled growth of your story ideas. Getting lost in “research” is a frequent sign of this. This needs taming. You are probably letting your ideas grow uncontrollably – until they become so big and complex and (in your mind) so nuanced that you can’t approach them. Most of your talk suggests you are thinking of large-frame writing (novels) and that would no doubt contribute to building only over-large intimidating plans. As many have suggested, write small for this moment.
On the last point: I run a regular writing group which is full of fledgling, would-be, and casual writers. In my experience it helps enormously to give people ways to come up with NEW story ideas in order to get them away from story ideas that they have some personal attachment to (they have been thinking about the idea forever, or it is rooted in some meaningful personal experience, etc.) Because having such attachments almost inevitably gums them up.
You may or may not be inspired by writing prompts you find, but even if not, reading a lot of well-constructed story blurbs will teach you their scale and rhythm and this may help you come up with writing-prompt-sized ideas to pursue.
The rest of this note won't help you at all. Just oversharing:
We often write story prompts just so our folks in the group always have a generous collection to pull from – if they need it to approach something new. We have various strategies for coming up with these. Usually this involves a computer generated pre-prompt. For example I wrote a generator that randomly combines the elements of story according to one taxonomy of “genre” (an embellishment of @pigfender’s taxonomy).
COMING OF AGE • SAVE/FREE THE ‘PRINCESS’ • FANTASY • SAME NATURAL ABILITIES • ANOMALOUS SCI-FI ELEMENT • SOCIETY UNCHANGED • NO UPHEAVAL •
Strangely if you trawl through a few of these they start immediately suggesting story conceits.
When his beloved goldfish is sidelined by the newer, more exotic fish in the aquarium, a lovelorn pet turtle must leave the safety of his tiny island and brave the cavernous expanse of the playroom, in order to free his beloved from her confinement and bring her back to his tiny turtle kingdom.
Another pre-prompt generator I made (and use) does nothing more than fill in a grammatical pattern with randomly chosen words of the right grammatical types. For example,
extra pie, strict asking. completely failed. competing really. [whose, throughout].
Which inspired the following story prompt:
The usual playful vying for best dessert between these two takes an unexpected turn when one of their desserts inexplicably ends up on the floor.
Best wishes.
GR
3 AM Epiphany is really good. Highly recommend it.
I have a whole series of articles on collections. You can use search on the site to find more.
How did you feel when you wrote your first story at the age of 14?
Eight-year-old Picasso. I don’t know if he liked it, what his parents said or what his art teacher thought. I know that he didn’t stop there.
