Creative Writing Prompts & Processes

Having done precious little in the way of writing since December - when I finished the final draft of the 16,000 word dissertation for my Master's Degree in Creative Writing and felt like I might never want to write again - today I gutted my writing desk and sat down to work on a little idea that's been niggling at me for weeks.

In the process of said desk-gutting, I found the pinboard I use for photographs/writing notes/oddments and several old assignments and commentaries discussing my creative process. One of my most-read blog posts here is entitled Writing Prompts for the Creative Scribe - The cover words from a notebook I bought some time ago. Of course, everyones prompts and processes are different, but I'm a fairly visual person and long before writing workshops and the need to analyse my process for academic purposes, I always set off to create myself a 'writing moodboard'. I find this particularly helpful at the beginning of the writing process when it's easy to lose the essence of what you're trying to write, so I thought I'd jot down a bit of what I do here whilst I gather together what I'm after to work on a first draft later today. I hope you find some of it useful, insightful or can take ideas from it. If you find it a load of rubbish that's fine too! It's worth noting that I tend to favour realism and this post is geared towards that, though the principles would probably translate to other genres too with a bit of tweaking.

Anyway, here we go:

1) What do you want to write about? Can you embody that in an image? I live in the middle of nowhere and my life is full of animals, but actually I much prefer writing about people and cities. I've tried writing about rural life and managed about 25,000 words before I hit a brick wall I had no desire to get past. You can write about whatever you want, but a few images that embody that world for you can make getting in the zone that bit easier, especially if what you're writing about isn't what you're immersed in away from your desk.

2) You probably can't embody an entire idea in an image (you'd need to be writing very short flash fiction) so can you break it down into locations and characters? I usually pin my images up in front of my desk so they make a collage or moodboard of my fictional world. Don't use images you think you should be. Use what appeals to you, whether you can explain it or not. I find Pinterest perfect for this. Experiment with search terms - the results can be surprising.

3) You can go the other way too - don't know what you want to write about? Find an image and let it trigger something. It might be a sentence, a paragraph or it might grow into a bigger idea.  Just have fun with it. I did some 'grab an image from the table and you have 10 minutes to make it into a little story' sessions several years ago now when I was an undergrad and when you are on the spot like that it's amazing what you can come up with. Mine were typically shorter than anyone else's because I agonise over my first drafts in an unhealthy way (I'm getting better!) but it forces you to start writing and that's presumably what you're reading this blog for. I've included a couple of my old inspiration images in this blog for you to try it with.

4) Music. It's a powerful writing tool. Use it. You know when you're driving along a motorway on a late April evening; the clouds are hazy pink and gold and you've dug your sunglasses out for the first time that year and you're contemplating the vastness of the whole summer ahead and then the perfect song comes on your Spotify? Use that.

5) As an extension of the last point, try to visualise music too: One of my staple writing albums is Editors - The Back Room, I visualise that entire album as being in black and white in smoky upstairs rooms with bare floorboards somewhere in London. I've often considered how that kind of attachment often comes from years of prolonged listening to an album in different places, but it's a big part of how I write. I think creative people are often find connections and parallels between mediums and use one to flesh out another.

6) Write whatever you can't get out of your head. There is no obligation to make anything of it. If you've replayed something over in your head enough times then get it out somehow. You can play with point-of-view, length and style for effect. If you've visualised it over and over the details of things are often easy to see but hard to write. Finding a way to describe them perfectly is one of writing's greatest satisfactions.

7) Don't procrastinate and write your blog instead of your ideas.