📖17 Writing Prompts from Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down The Bones ...

17 Writing Prompts from Natalie Goldberg’s book Writing Down The Bones 

#1 Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don’t worry if it is night and your curtains are closed – just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen minutes, half hour.

#2 Begin with “I remember”. Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don’t be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago. Everything that isn’t this moment is memory coming alive again as you write. If you get stuck, just repeat the phrase “I remember” again and keep going.

#3 Take something you feel strongly about, whether it is positive or negative, and write about it as though you love it. Go as far as you can, writing as though as you love it, then flip over and write about the same thing as though you hate it. Then write about it perfectly neutral.

#4 Choose a colour – for instance, pink – and take a fifteen minute walk. On your walk, notice wherever there is pink. Come back to your notebook and write for fifteen minutes.

#5 Write in different places – for example, in a laundromat and pick up on the rhythms of the washing machines. Write at bus stops, in cafes. Write what is going on around you

#6 Give me your morning. Breakfast, waking up, walking to the bus stop (or metro station). Be as specific as possible. Slow down in your mind and go over the details of the morning.

#7 Visualize a place that you really love, be there, see the details. Now write about it. It could be a corner of your bedroom, an old tree you sat under one whole summer, a table at McDonalds in your neighbourhood, a place by a river. What colors, sounds smells? When someone slse reads it, she should know what it is like to be there. She should feel how you love it, not by your saying you love it, but by your handling of the details.

#8 Write about “leaving”. Approach it any way you want.

#9 What is your first memory?

#10                    Who are the people you have loved?

#11                    Write about the streets of your city.

#12                    Describe a grandparent.

#13                    Write about:

swimming

the stars

the most frightened you have ever been

green places

how you learned about sex

your first sexual experience

the closest you ever felt to God or nature

reading and books that have changed your life

physical endurance

a teacher you had

Don’t be abstract. Be honest and write the details.

#14                    Take a poetry book, open to any page, grab a line, write it down and continue from there.

#15                    What kind of animal you are? Do you think you are really a cow, a chipmunk a horse underneath?

#16                    Write about a meal you love.

#17                    What are your deep dreams?

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