As promised, here is this week’s workshop in form of a creativity drill. No stuffy mission statements or essays on the purpose of your writing and future endeavors in the field. Just good ol’ fashioned prompting. Enjoy!

Writing can often become stagnant. Let’s face it, we are caught in the grooves of our lives and sometimes a fresh idea is hard to come by. Even if we do stumble upon it, someone else has inevitably done it before and we’re left with the blank-page-stare, wondering if we’ll ever have that audacious lightning bolt that will shock the world awake with its brilliance.

I’ve been reading a little bit of Russell Edson’s short work and he has the most fascinating way of taking something mundane and jolting the reader with the unexpected. Edson would sit down at his typewriter and belt out ten first lines, no editing, just whatever strange little tail of a thought was hanging in the forefront of his brain:

“A man wants an airplane to like him”

Or

“A husband and wife discover that their children are fakes”

Or

“The household toilet wants to be loved and leaves when it isn’t”

 

What came of these lines is ridiculous and beautiful and like nothing I’ve ever read.

 

And that’s your FUN assignment for the week:

Write ten ridiculous lines

Pair things that don’t go, give life to the inanimate, sauté a hat, use the perspective of a floor or the voice of a garden snail. Make a shoelace dance round a fire at Burning Man. I don’t care; just be extraordinary.

Bonus: Take your favorite one or two lines and whip out a flash fiction piece (500 words tops).

Go play. Send me your favorites, don’t let them sit, face down on your desk, not bringing joy.