A sample writing prompt, plus my response, for your own playful writing practice.

I love designing spaces that are part hands-on and part reflective, or part theory and part practice. Writing Playground is a good example of this: Part generative writing time, then part reflection and skill-building, so you can expand the scope of your writing in fun new ways and deepen into a consistent, sustainable, pleasurable practice.

I love to write along with everyone in the workshop as we respond to our prompts (and I throw in some new ones every time, too). 

Writing Playground is made to feel like a playground on every level: and it’s so fun to see how we all interpret the different prompts and the directions we go. There’s always a really cool underlying thread to discover (a big one last time was, well, how we experience time).

I love the breadth of prompts we write from too: Some long (like the one below), and some short, all spreading across different topics and perspectives. And all full of possible directions.

Each time I teach it, I add in a few new prompts on top of the old ones, but I wanted to share one of my favorite prompts to inspire you to expand your writing practice this week.

So this week, here’s a playful writing prompt from the workshop, plus my own response from last year.

If you want to write from this prompt:

Give it a read first, then give yourself 10-20 minutes to just freewrite. No need to edit or self-censor, this is just for fun. Just let yourself write out whatever wants to emerge, and follow down whatever path the narrative takes you.

For best results, wait to read my response until after you’re done, so it isn’t shaping yours. And please share yours (just tap the comment button below), if you’d like: I’d love to see it!

Writing Prompt: Shifting Time

In this prompt, we’re thinking from the perspective of one (or more) beings with a different lifespan than us and writing from their point of view.

Consider one, or all, of the questions below as you decide what beings and lifespans you want to write about:

How does your view of the world change based on the length of your life?

How is the experience of a fly that lives 24 hours different from a whale that lives 100 years? And how are they the same?

If you were alive for hundreds of years, what insights do you have that other humans wouldn’t?

Likewise, if you have to fit your whole life into the span of a couple days, what does that brief and flurried experience feel like?

How you experience time itself, what you do to fill your days, and how you experience place and the other beings within it? Are they faster/slower than you? How do their faster and slower lives impact your own (for example, how do multiple generations of woodpeckers interact with an ancient tree?)

What does the sensory experience of food and eating feel like in this timeline, whether eating it as we do or being nourished through roots and leaves like a tree?

Longer time: A star, a Redwood, a blue whale.

Shorter time: A housefly, a squirrel, an annual plant.

My Response: How Does a Star Eat?

How does a star eat?

Slowly.

When you have millions of years to digest your food, there’s no need to masticate.

Everything breaks down given enough time, and the nutrients I need absorb naturally into my body. So how do I taste my food? I taste with my whole body, like an earthworm, using flavor to navigate the heavens.

My tongue, my whole being, tentatively reaching out to taste: Taste being the determinant of good or bad, sustenance or poison, creation or destruction. Taste being how I sense the universe around me, and everything in it.

Like an earthworm, I feel my way blind, seeing through senses other than sight. Perhaps blinded by the light radiating from me, but to taste everything without seeing offers its own perceptions of the universe.

Playful writing

Is the above my most polished work? Not really. Does it sound the way I usually write? Maybe not. But, is it fun? Did it ask me to think about, and approach writing about, the world in a new way? Yes, absolutely.

So what do you think of this prompt? And, just for fun, how do you think a star eats?  

Come for the playful writing, stay to learn ways to build play into a lifelong writing practice.

We start August 1st, meeting each Sunday for 2 hours (don’t worry, the sessions are recorded if you can’t make it).

And, between sessions, I offer weekly themes and prompts, plus personalized coaching and gentle accountability.

Use the code SUMMERFUN for 60% off, and get in touch if you have questions. I can’t wait to write with you!