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Once there was a city where everyone had the gift of song.” -Kevin Brockmeier, The View From the Seventh Layer
Fiction Writing Prompt: Use the first line of the week as the starting point or inspiration for a scene, story, poem, or haiku.
Journaling Prompt: If you had the gift of song, what kind of music would you enjoy singing?
Art Prompt: Song
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about how the world and our culture would be different if everyone could sing.
Photo Credit: x-ray delta one on Flickr
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“My mother believed that her entire life would have somehow been different had she been given piano lessons as a girl.” -Daphne Kalotay, Calamity and Other Stories
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene or poem based on the first line of the week.
Journaling Prompt: How do you wish your life was different?
Art Prompt: Piano Lesson
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about the damage of living in the past or thinking “what if?”
Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks on Flickr
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We’re playing R&B: ‘Smokestack Lightning’, ‘I’m a Man’, ‘Road Runner’ and other heavy classics. I scrape the howling Rickenbacker guitar up and down my microphone stand, then flip the special switch I recently fitted so the guitar sputters and sprays the front row with bullets of sound. I violently thrust my guitar into the air — and feel a terrible shudder as the sound goes from a roar to a rattling growl; I look up to see my guitar’s broken head as I pull it away from the hole I’ve punched in the low ceiling.
It is at this moment that I make a split-second decision — and in a mad frenzy I thrust the damaged guitar up into the ceiling over and over again. What had been a clean break becomes a splinter mess. I hold the guitar up to the crowd triumphantly. I haven’t smashed it: I’ve sculpted it for them. I throw the shattered guitar carelessly to the ground, pick up my brand-new Rickenbacker twelve-string and continue the show…. -Pete Townsend, Who I Am: A Memoir
Fiction Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene, poem, or haiku focused on the description of sound.
Journaling Prompt: What your most electrifying musical memory?
Art Prompt: Smashing Guitars
Non-Fiction / Speechwriting Prompt: Write about your favorite rock and roll moment.
Photo Credit: Suicine on Flickr
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I checked my watch. The cucumbers were due to start singing in about thirty minutes, but sometimes they go off early. I’m never sure exactly when they’ve gotten here, which makes the timing tricky, and that means I wasn’t about to open the door. -Susan Palwick, Cucumber Gravy (free to read online at Lightspeed Magazine)
Writing Prompt: Write a story, scene or poem about an unusual reason why your character can’t answer the door.
Journaling Prompt: Write about a time when you were embarrassed to answer your door.
Art Prompt: Singing Cucumbers
Photo Credit: Dorocia on Flickr
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I can only conjure up one god cult that believed the universe would cease to exist if its singing ever stopped. All of its members perished in an avalanche thousands of years back, of course. The universe, to my knowledge, has not. -Maggie Clark, Saying the Names (free to read online)
Writing Prompt: Write a character sketch for someone who belongs to a cult. What does he or she believe? Why?
Journaling Prompt: Write about the strangest thing you’ve ever heard someone claim as truth.
Art Prompt: Song of the Universe
Photo Credit: waywuwei on Flickr
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“Everybody is aware of the risk of cell phones and texting in automobiles, but I see more and more teens distracted with the latest devices and headphones in their ears,” says lead author Richard Lichenstein, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and director of pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “Unfortunately as we make more and more enticing devices, the risk of injury from distraction and blocking out other sounds increases.”
…Researchers reviewed 116 accident cases from 2004 to 2011 in which injured pedestrians were documented to be using headphones. Seventy percent of the 116 accidents resulted in death to the pedestrian. More than two-thirds of victims were male (68 percent) and under the age of 30 (67 percent). More than half of the moving vehicles involved in the accidents were trains (55 percent), and nearly a third (29 percent) of the vehicles reported sounding some type of warning horn prior to the crash. The increased incidence of accidents over the years closely corresponds to documented rising popularity of auditory technologies with headphones. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write about a distracted character and the accident their distraction causes.
Journaling Prompt: Write about an accident that you had because you were distracted.
Art Prompt: Accident
Nonfiction / Speech Writing Prompt: Write about the dangers of distraction
Photo Credit: Ed Yourdon on Flickr
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tin ear (n): Insensitivity to and inability to appreciate the elements of performed music or the rhythm, elegance, or nuances of language
Writing Prompt: Write a scene, story, or poem using or inspired by the word of the week
Journaling Prompt: Write about someone you know who has a tin ear.
Art Prompt: Tin Ear
Photo Credit: Travis Goodspeed on Flickr
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If you’re writing about teens, consider including music in your story.
The amount of music that 8- to 18-year-olds listen to has increased by 45 percent in recent years, rising dramatically with the popularity of MP3 players, such as iPods. Previous research has indicated that there is a strong link between exposure to sexual media (on screen and in music) and sexual activity. Teens tend to overestimate the sexual activity of their peers and one source of this misperception is the entertainment media. -Science Daily
Writing Prompt: Write a scene about a teenager listening to music. What do the lyrics mean to him or her? What thoughts arise? What actions do the lyrics prompt?
Journaling Prompt: How does music and the lyrics affect you?
Art Prompt: Music
Photo Credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³ on Flickr
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I believe that the most important thing about writing is to HAVE FUN! You can worry about things like commas, point of view, tenses, etc., later. Right now, just start writing!
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