Stuckness Prompts

Lo and behold, following my blog appeal late last week, Moira reached me! [hi, Moira] So I was able to supply her the promised Stuckness Prompts from the 26 Nov blog entry. Still doing penance for having missed those comments, I continue with stuckness this week, so nobody has to ask -- here it is in the blog.

I created '8 Days a Week' for my class who were deep into their own pieces. The writers were in completely individual worlds and stages of their work in hand, and by the 'rules' of novel-in-a-month method should have been writing every day. They should have overcome the blank page freeze syndrome for themselves, as part of the experience, but I softened and provided this emergency escape. The report back from the writers proved this a worthy invention.

It is an envelope for each writer containing 8 slips of paper -- each envelope bearing the student-writer's name. Each slip has a starting phrase or situation, very simple and sketchy to allow for the variables in their work -- I printed out the sheet of them and cut into slips. Each writer got the same slips... but might have drawn them out in any order, and NOT every day. Instructions: to be used Only for Stuckness.

• The phone rings.
  (If yours is a period world, then There’s a banging at the door.)
• Your character is bothered by a dream he/she had last night.
• Everytime it rained she…
  (Everytime it rains he…)
• Something reminds your character of her/his mother.

Cheat! I will supply the other four next week. Because right now I have to continue my task as editor of the British Haiku Society quarterly newsletter, the brief. Eeeek, on deadline.