Yup, it is time. We have gone through the prompts of 2023. Some I have missed, others I wrote. I missed very few this year, which I am sort of proud of. Some will end up being stories, others provide characters or settings or even story ideas. Others are really the clearing of the mental fog that gets my mind in the right place to write.
The thing is, they don’t have to be good. A prompt isn’t designed to actually give you a good story. It is designed to get you in the habit of writing everyday no matter if you feel like writing or not. More often than not I get the best writing on these prompts on the days where I just don’t want to write. And when I am through, no matter where I started that morning, I feel ready to write.
I say this because I know a lot of people will wait for a sentence that appeals to them to join in on prompts or they will get nervous about what they put on the page not being good enough because they didn’t have time to think about it.
In case you haven’t figured out from some of my truly awful fifteen minute writing prompts this year, You are free to write the worst drivel imaginable during these fifteen minutes. Be horrible. Be grammatically incorrect, spell like a drunken monkey flailing at a keyboard for the first time. Its fine. Just let the words out. Later you can edit, or delete, or shred pages or toss them in a bonfire while you dance gleefully in the night. (fire restrictions permitted of course). You don’t have to be good with these prompts. You just have to keep writing for fifteen minutes.
So with permission to write badly, here are the first prompts of the new year, take them and run. Or wait for Monday and write along with me. Your call.
Monday, January 1st: The gift had no tag on it.
Tuesday, January 2nd: He buttoned up his coat.
Wednesday, January 3rd: The clouds were heavy and gray.
Thursday, January 4th: The smell of furniture polish stained the air.
Friday, January 5th: “Am I interrupting?”
As Always I will see you back here bright and early Monday morning. Have a happy and safe New Year’s everyone.
Ten til Midnight 