As a result of my first course at UCLA Extension, here’s a list of writing prompts that I plan to respond to over the course of the next 30 days.
Thirty Days of Writing Prompts
1. My favorite (or least favorite) sound…
2. I cannot the smell of …
3. A particular car you drove or rode in
4. Something you weren’t allowed to do as a child
5. A time you left (someone, something, a place)…
6. Imagine my surprise when …
7. A scar (physical) you have
8. A lesson you learned the hard way
9. I resist…
10. A time you got into trouble
11. A hospital visit (your own or visiting someone in hospital)
12. A good deed you did
13. I never remember…
14. What do you miss most about your childhood?
15. You may visit a public place that is closed and do anything you want,
with no repercussion. Where do you go and what do you do?
16. Who will play you in the movie of your life and why?
17. Write about a pet, yours or someone else’s
18. You’re god(dess) for a day and can change one tiny thing about the
world. What is it?
19. Draw (or write out) a map of your life—the homes, apartments, cities,
towns, neighborhoods—Then after a brief meditation on all that, pick one
and write about it
20. Your three favorite possessions
21. What is just out of your reach?
22. A relative or friend is describing you to someone who has never met
you. He/she says…
23. A teacher
24. In my free time I always…
25. When it’s cold outside, I …
26. The worst fight I ever had…
27. I can never sleep when…
28. The last time you laughed hard
29. Your first love (not necessarily a person)
30. I sleep best when…
31. I feel melancholy whenever…
32. My worst enemy is…
33. I most like the way I …
34. What almost no one knows about me
35. I am most afraid when…
Hm, I suppose the creator of this list added some extra in the event the writer could absolutely not bare some others. I’ll pretend that I don’t even see them. Choosing from a list is counterproductive to the reason I’m using a list — to avoid choosing. “You get what you get and you don’t get upset,” the little kids at New Hope Community Development of Acadiana, where I volunteered in college, had learned to repeat when receiving treats.
Have that timer ready, set to thirty minutes, look at the prompt and vas-y! Start writing!
(Though I did a copy/paste of the prompts to this page, I’m making a point to not actually look at them, not digestively. I don’t want to have thought about it. I rather start the timer and go. I wonder if that’s productive, or no?).
At the time of coming over here to have the list availabe on my site, for convenience, content, and simply because it’ll be cut from Canvas, I’ve already responded to day 1’s writing prompt. It’ll go live tomorrow. I figure since this month has 31 days, and I so happen to be starting this 30-day writing challenge on the 1st, I’ll use today to set the stage.
After each post of this 30-day writing challenge has gone live, I’ll come back here and hyperlink what I’ve written for each prompt on the list. The last time that I did this, a 30-day writing challenge, it was one I’d found from Pinterest, I think, and I missed 5 days or so throughout the month. I’m not going to go look right now, as my friend texted me about 15 minutes ago saying that he’d be here to pick me up from the library in about 15 minutes.