Hi Everyone! It’s Amy, cofounder of WiseInkBlog.com. This is the first official Wise, Ink. Writing Prompt! The goal of the prompts will be to push your creative juices to the max, or at least get them pumping a little bit. If we don’t get you writing, we hope that we can get you THINKING about your writing. These writing prompts won’t always be like traditional writing prompts, but sometimes they will. Sometimes they might work better for one genre of content over another; don’t worry, we hope to help spark each and every writer over the course of our prompting. We’ll have prompts that will help bloggers, romance writers, business writers, sci-fi writers, and everyone in between.
Sound good?
OK.
Wise, Ink. Writing Prompt #1: Meditate Your Way to a Coffee Shop
This writing prompt is more about setting the stage than actually writing. One of the most difficult things about the journey of writing is getting over our neurotic tendencies of having the “perfect” environment or scenario for our writing. Some people have to have the TV or music on to keep their brains going. Some can’t work in their own homes. Some have to have a hot cup of coffee OR ELSE. The problem with these “tendencies” is that they’re not always realistic about our daily lives. Our daily lives have spaghetti on the stove, a ringing iPhone, and all-around “imperfect” settings for writing. In order to keep writing, you’re just gonna have to get over it.
SO, this is a little relaxation exercise that will, hopefully, help you to peacefully imagine your way into your perfect writing scenario so that you—you brilliant writer, you—can remain diligently on task anywhere! You can tailor this exercise to fit into your own “perfect” writing scenario; for the time being, let’s use mine.
The exercise:
Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Rest quietly within your own silent head for a moment, even if the world around you is not silent. Keep breathing and listen to your breath entering and exiting your body. Don’t worry if your mind gets distracted—keep listening to the breathing anyway. Do this as long as you’d like.
Hold your right hand out in front of you. Pretend there is a steaming cup of tea (coffee, Diet Coke, water, white chocolate frappe macchiato, whatever) in your hand. Take a sip and let the flavors dance around in your mouth before swallowing. Feel the liquid glide down your throat, to your stomach, and into your bloodstream, feeding the creativity in your mind with its nourishing or jittering effects.
Where are you? Is it a coffee shop? Listen to the bustling people around you, their everyday life sounds becoming the white noise back drop to your creative endeavor. Feel the seat beneath you, the sturdy back to the booth you’re sitting in, the solid wood table resting at that perfect place in front of you—not too tall not too short, just right so that your arms can work over it comfortably. You reach your hands up to the laptop keyboard (or notepad and pen) on the table. Place your fingers on the keyboard and feel the gentle pressure of the keys. Listen to the playful clicking they make as you begin to write. Or, feel the friendliness of the faithful pen in your fingers, twisting it around between them as you imagine your first sentence. Bringing pen to paper, you hear the familiar and comforting scratching telling you that you’re on to something.
And you first words are…
I really like this prompt, Amy. I’ve already gone so far down the caffeinated rabbit hole that I feel like I have to make a pot of coffee to write anything of quality, whether it’s a blog for work or a poem for myself. If I keep going on like this, who knows how many cups I’ll need to write in 10 years… or how yellow my teeth will be! I’m definitely going to try this out.
Amy, I don’t know weather it’s going to help me or not… I’ll try this today…. and what I loved was reading the content…. I was so into it.