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Paid $30 for a beat-up writing prompt book at a garage sale in Boise and it got me through a dry spell
Two years back I hit a stretch where I couldn't start anything, just sat there staring at a blank page for weeks. A garage sale down the street from me in Boise had this old prompt book for $30 and I grabbed it mostly to feel like I was doing something. It was beat to hell, coffee stains on half the pages, and the first prompt I opened to was "write about a door that shouldn't be there," which sounds dumb but I banged out a whole short story that night. I still use that book when things feel stale, even though half the prompts are kinda the same thing said different ways. The other half are weird enough that they actually get me moving. I'd say the 30 bucks saved me more than any class I ever paid for. What's the oddest place you've found a prompt that actually worked?
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david_johnson6328d ago
Gotta disagree with the whole idea here. That book didn't do anything for you, you did the work. Plenty of people buy prompt books at garage sales and they sit on a shelf forever collecting dust. The dry spell probably just ended on its own and the book got the credit because it happened to be there that night. Calling it better than any class you paid for is a stretch too, since a class at least gives you feedback from a real person. A beat-up book with coffee stains can't tell you why your story works or where it falls apart. What really got you going was sitting down and writing instead of staring, and you could've done that with a cereal box.
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