THE NUDGE

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JANUARY 2024: Create a Collage using words.

You can approach this any way that you would like--whether you use words that have already been printed in a magazine, newspaper, advertisement, brochure, etc, OR you decide to create your own word artwork that you then use in a collage. 

Add photographs and imagery. You could even make the collage 3D in some way. Explore the possibilities.

Once you've created the collage that incorporates words in some way, write a prose piece and/or poem related to the collage. Perhaps the collage represents you and/or your views about a topic, you could approach the writing as an artist's statement or a poem expression of the collage. Even if you later incorporate the poem into the collage, write a separate piece as part of this month's writing prompt exercise.

The prose could be nonfiction but it could also be fiction. As a fiction writer, consider building a collage using words from your characters' points of view. You might approach this by making a collage to represent each of your characters from a single story or novel.

This month's prompt is inspired by the exhibition, "Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage" For more information about the book and exhibit, click here for the book

and here for the exhibit.

FEBRUARY 2024: A New Hairstyle

New hairstyles require courage sometimes, and other times, they are a welcome release that everyone compliments. Write about a new hairstyle for yourself or for your character, if you're writing fiction. 

Consider writing about enforced hairstyles and haircuts. What about hair cuts given without consent? Also, consider writing about the cultural standards that are often imposed for "gender norms."

You might also write about body hair as well as hair on peoples' heads or lack thereof.

Write about hair not only as a beauty standard for many people and cultures, but how hair is protective and/or comforting as well.

MARCH 2024: Stranger in a Photo

Go on a search for a family photograph that includes a stranger, preferably even someone whom your family members can't quite remember. Maybe they were a friend, neighbor, a distant relative, or someone who just happened into the picture. Make up a character using that stranger's description, set a story in motion with her, or perhaps as in the photo, she is simply passing through the story--another time a stranger, but this time in story version. Allow what you know from the picture to inspire you further. 

If you can't find a family photo, look through photos from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. One collection is Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives

If you scroll down through these images, you will find photos containing many unnamed people.

For nonfiction, when you consider these people and images, are you inspired to learn more about the photographer or the place or what is known about the photograph?

April: Prank Gone Wrong

Write a short story or scene in which a prank goes wrong. This could be what begins as a harmless joke among friends but turns into a fiasco, a secret, and/or something much more sinister in the end. You have plenty of opportunity to explore a light-hearted story or a narrative that takes a dark turn. 

For inspiration on a scary turn of events, consider Stephen King's Carrie. 

For children's literature, The BFG by Roald Dahl, and Matilda by him, too, are worth exploring. Don't forget Beezus and Ramona and Ramona the Pest, both by Beverly Cleary.  

Consider true story pranks such as the Angry Penguins hoax in Australia. Actor George Clooney's letter to comedian Tina Fey is another example. 

Letters and events are great ways to stage pranks in a story. Mainly, both letters and events are out of the normal routine or course of events for your characters. Letters allow a voice without a face or in person meeting. If the letter is believable, then the recipient might suspend any disbelief they would have if the proposition or encounter were to take place in person. 

Events create an environment that gives you a stage and a setting that could be festive and involve a crowd. All of this provides the recipe for the crowd to focus on a humorous, disastrous, and/or embarrassing prank. 

MAY: A Place Transformed

Focus on showing the difference in a place's purpose and/or usage over time. This prompt might require some research, but it could also be purely imaginative as well. You might write about how a place is off limits or gated, barred, and otherwise restricted, and then later available to the public, or vice versa. Perhaps the purpose changes from a site of religious ceremony or spiritual value, and a place no longer holds that sentiment for people. You might reflect on the economics of a place and how they change over time. Images of old crumbling swimming pools or forts turned into parks come to mind. You could look at towns in which the prominent homes once lined a riverside, and those neighborhoods are replaced in value by new ones closer to the interstate system. 

For inspiration, consider E.B. White's "Once More to the Lake" (nonfiction). White shows not only the shifting changes in the resort family vacations within American history, but also what families valued during those times and how some of those outings and items retain only sentimental value. 

The mansion in the It's a Wonderful Life movie is an example from film, and it shows how two characters view a place differently and yet it is symbolic of the story of home ownership and historic preservation in the film. 

From fiction, children's lit, Katherine Applegate's book Wishtree is an excellent example of how a place reflects shifting attitudes of people and how the natural elements of that place resonate deeply within our communities.

The One and Only Ivan, also by Applegate, is another excellent book that causes a reflection on how nature does and/or does not fit into our manmade landscapes and those changes in the attitudes of people over time about how they regard place and the effects of humans.

JUNE 2024: Growing summer fruits and/or vegetables from seeds

If you can find a variety of seeds for this writing prompts, that would be great. Look and feel the seeds. Get descriptive about the planting process, the type of soil, perhaps the impatience of waiting on the seeds to germinate, their growth process, how the plants leaf, flower and fruit, as well as what is attracted to them. Is there anything that surprises you about a particular plant. Are any of them sticky, prickly, fragrant, soft, protective, etc. 

...Continued in July...

Poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction--try all three genres.

JULY 2024: Make a meal from at least one of those fruits and/or vegetables

...Continued from June...

Consider the harvest and flavor of the fruits and/or vegetables that you or your characters have grown. What is the process to retrieve them, clean them, prepare them. How do they smell as you harvest them, as you prepare them, as you taste them. What textures and flavors surprise you? Do any disappoint you?

...Continued in August...

Poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction--try all three genres.

AUGUST 2024: Include a failure and/or loss pertaining to either the fruits, vegetables, or the meal.

...Continued from June and July...

Write recipes related to your fruits and vegetables. Play around with ways in which you can intertwine these recipes with your stories in nontypical ways. Experiment by preparing the recipes and serving them to your friends and/family or prepare them with your friends and family. Include these later experiences in your writings as well. What is revealed about how you and/or others experience growing and/or preparing and eating food together? What are your emotional connections to food? 

Poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction--try all three genres.

SEPTEMBER 2024: Go back, travel in reverse, and retell a story that you already wrote from the end to the beginning. 

Consider writing the story from a different character's point of view. Maybe it's someone who isn't even mentioned in your original story, but you can create a space for this character now by looking at the first story in reverse. Or, maybe you stick with the same point of view and see what happens to the voice if you change the order of the story or the order of telling the story, both could be compelling.

Poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction--try all three.

 OCTOBER 2024: Time to tell a seasonal story. We've discussed witches, headless horsemen, and woodboogers over the years.

 So, what about this year? Hypnotize us somehow. Get creative with the sandman, or some other hypnotic nod to superstition and mesmerize us.

HAVE FUN

Poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction--try all three.

 NOVEMBER 2024: Musical driven writing. Pick a band, a musical genre, an instrument, a song, and center the story, poem, or book on this topic.  

 You might also focus on a single singer or musician, especially if you're interested in writing nonfiction or historical fiction. Try experimenting with genre when appropriate to reflect a musician's experimental process and/or a certain type of music or musical expression.  

Poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction--try all three.

DECEMBER: 

Throughout 2023, you'll receive a thematic writing prompt as you did in 2022, but you will also receive one to two vocabulary words to add an extra challenge to the theme and the writing prompt. You look up the definitions and try to add the monthly vocabulary word(s) to your writing. Good luck in creating good writing this year.

January 2023: Theme--Permission. Write a story or poem that centers on the theme of permission, gaining it, giving it, the act of asking, the reluctance to give it, etc.

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. aspirant

2. profligate

February: Theme--"Out of Fashion"

Write a story, chapter, essay, or poem that centers on the theme of an object, idea, institution, way of life, and/or person going out of fashion. Consider not what is the replacement, but the battle, the fears, challenges, and customs to keep this idea, object, idea, etc. in fashion, when it is becoming increasingly clear that it is out of fashion. 

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. slough

2. dobbin

February BONUS 

Set the table for tea time and invite your characters to attend. See what happens when you serve tea and start writing.

February Novel Inspiration BONUS 

This bonus is inspired by FINDING GRACE & GRIT by Khristeena Lute. The protagonist, Meredith, is studying literature in a PhD program, specifically the work of Grace King who lived during and after the Civil War. Meredith worries about reconciling King's point of view on race and social class with the 21st century (page 235 in the novel). Similarly, scholars, readers, and authors struggle with the work of other authors. Pablo Neruda is one example, and you can read about that dilemma in The Washington Post Book Club Newsletter here. 

Taking inspiration from that, give your character a similar predicament. Maybe they are a fan of a musician, actor, director, writer, artist, etc. and then discover something that causes them to see that person differently.

March: Theme--A Meadow

Observe a meadow now, and begin a poem, short story, or longer work. Put this piece of writing aside, and we'll revisit the meadow later in the year. If you don't have access to a meadow in person, check out a webcam. Here's one from Big Creek Meadow in Yosemite. 

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. conviviality

2. vitiate

March Novel Inspiration BONUS Prompt 

COOKING WITH SOMEONE FROM ANOTHER GENERATION

Inspiration for this prompt comes from THE MOSQUITO HOURS by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo. In the novel, Tania regularly cooks with her great Aunt Anne, and in fact, Aunt Anne teaches Tania to cook. Find someone from another generation, preferably an older generation than your own, but a younger one is okay, too, and ask them to teach you how to prepare a dish, meal, and/or drink in the way that they prepare it. Use this cooking experience as inspiration for a story, essay, blog, or poem. Did you learn something about their generation while you were cooking...maybe something unrelated to the dish or drink that you were preparing? Do you see them differently after the kitchen session with them?

April: Theme--A Spontaneous Gathering

Follow a group of characters as they go about their lives and suddenly find themselves gathered together for an unplanned event. Perhaps they are friends who throw an impromptu celebration or "let us cheer you up" party, OR maybe, they're strangers who meet at a crystal expo, a parking lot carnival, or a lonely gas station alongside a long traffic jam and then have dinner together. Whatever the circumstances, write it in reverse, too, from at least two different character's point of view. Have some fun with this spontaneous gathering.

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. tamp

2. bauble

May: Theme--A Nest

Write about a nest or the act of nesting. If you approach this as a personal free write topic, think about how you were taught to nest. Were you shamed into nesting in a particular way? Do you judge the nests of others? Did you have to defend your nest and fight to protect it in some way? 

In nature writing, you might think of a bird's nest right away, but consider other nests. Wasps, bees, ants, mice are some other obvious examples. Something to consider, do you think that plants nest or only hold nests and/or are the materials used in constructing nests?

Whether you're writing a poem, a work of fiction, nonfiction, or journaling, explore how your nest and acts of nesting help with your creative process.

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. mystic

2. fatalism

June: Theme--Walls

You might approach this by writing about a big wall, one that is blocking access to a place and/or a group pf people. Perhaps you approach the story symbolically, showing the invisible walls that exist within societies.

Think about walls that are defined by shock (for pets) and electrical current (electric fences), walls to hold water in a dam, walls to hold a road, walls to separate, walls to protect. 

Think about the walls that are the result of natural processes--sand dunes and walls of water, bluffs of stone, for example.

If you're journaling, maybe you look at mental walls and barriers, those that block your creativity and/or those that help your creativity to flourish by making you feel protected and safe in the creative process. 

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. opaque

2. dinky

July: Theme--Keys

Maybe your character locks his keys in the car, or perhaps she finds the keys to a door that was locked for years.  Is the act of having the key(s) or getting them more stimulating than what happens once the keys are in place?

If you're journaling, think about the new keys in your life--where they led, how you felt when you were entrusted with them, what awaited you in life? And, how elusive have certain keys been?  

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. tuft

2. leeway

AUGUST: Theme--First Memories

Pull out all of the details from your first known memory. Do you recall images, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings? Which is the strongest, and which do you think that you have remembered the longest? Sometimes relatives and friends will tell stories that coincide with our first memories. Do you have any incidences of family or friends telling you about a time that you recall as one of your first memories? Why do you think that you held onto this memory?

If you're writing fiction, create the first memories that a character retains and make those significant to the overall story in some way. Have fun exploring the various ways that you can reveal a character's original and/or resurfaced memories to your character and the reader. 

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. ascription

2. manifold

SEPTEMBER: Theme--Another planet, real or imaginary

Learn about another planet. Make up one. Incorporate knowledge about another planet into your story by creating a character who is interested in Jupiter. Perhaps you create a star-gazing and planet viewing evening in your romcom story. Get creative and learn about the planets out there, other than Earth.

If you've never done it, experiment with science fiction and write a flash scene. Incorporate multi genres and really play around. Have some fun out there! 

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. fellowship

2. undauntedness

 OCTOBER: Theme--Local Legends

We've visited the theme of local legends in years past for the writing prompt, but this time deliberately write a short work placing a local legend in contemporary times. Consider more well known examples, the Wood Booger legend (aka Bigfoot) in Appalachia and the Bell Witch in Adams, TN. While these two examples have inspired international Bigfoot hunters and ghost hunters, almost every town has a ghost story or local creature legend that hasn't been made famous, and perhaps some of them are about creatures from out of this world. So, dig into your town's local scary stories and/or legends and write a spooky short story.
Washington Irving's famous, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is an example, though most adaptations have left the story firmly centered in the past. You might intersect history and modernity, just as Irving did in his time.
A fun, children's story that adds a twist to classic characters, the witch and the dragon, is the book, Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Schleffer.Get creative!

Vocabulary Words for added challenge, 1-2 from Irving's short story and 3-4 from Donaldson's children's book:

1. marauding

2. akimbo

3. plait

4. shriek 

 NOVEMBER: Theme-- A Porch Conversation

The porch, how much transpires there? Deliveries, drop offs, pick ups, chance encounters, surprise packages, guests received, goodbyes expressed, boxes and presents and mail.
If you're writing fiction, place your character on the porch, having a conversation. What type of porch? Are your characters on the steps leading to the porch? Is it a stoop? Or, does it wrap around to a balcony? Do they seek the porch for retreat? Do they use it to listen to the outside world, to the inside of the house coming out? What does the porch contain?
Is your character talking to a stranger? To herself? Does she take someone's calls on the porch for privacy?
If you're writing nonfiction, describe a porch that was important to you or a moment in your life. Look around and notice how other people use their porches.

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. colonnade

2. portage 

DECEMBER Theme-- Magical Writing Utensil

Give a magical writing utensil to your character or to a secondary character. You might think about the obvious, pen and paper, pencil, and secret journal.
Consider using a typewriter. You might decide to write with a typewriter while also giving one to a character for their use. For inspiration, consider Steve Soboroff's collection of typewriters (considered "the world's greatest collection") once owned by famous folks.
Perhaps you come up with an unconventional writing tool endowed with a surprise ability for those who wield it. For some characters, such magic could be dangerous and/or disruptive.
If you're writing nonfiction and/or journaling, have you held a particular writing utensil and/or method of writing in such high regard that you've become superstitious about it? Have you experienced inspiration based on the method you used during the process of writing?

Vocabulary Words for added challenge:

1. dripless

2. reverie 

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