What inspires you?
Distant Dwellings #3: Prompts, sparks, and awakenings
True Confession:
I have an uneasy relationship with writing prompts. Assign me a topic and I freeze. Set a timer and I forget how to use language. Suddenly I’m back in elementary school and I haven’t done my homework all year. Then I head to the grocery and I’m exploding with ideas. Those red peppers! The rebellious shopping carts! The lobsters crying from their murky tank!
Turns out that writing flows more easily when I let go of my schoolgirl mindset. A prompt is not a test. There are no right or wrong answers, no grades, no penalties for straying off topic. A provocative prompt can encourage writers to break rules, approach familiar material in new ways, and discover surprising combinations of words and images. I’ve found all sorts of inspirations in newsletters like these:
Weird Auntie Joan's Writing Substack by Joan Kwon Glass. A recently published poem and a prompt in your mailbox or online every Friday. Paid subscribers receive additional prompts and craft tips.
Diane Lockward's Poetry Newsletter. Once a month, Terrapin Books Editor Diane Lockward sends this free Mailchimp newsletter packed with many resources, including a poem with a step-by-step prompt.
Two Sylvias Press' Weekly Muse. This Substack newsletter isn’t free, but it offers weekly exercises, prompts, craft tips, a support group, access to classes, and lots of other goodies.
I also draw inspiration from lucid dreams, open mics, talkative trees, raspberry scones, and radiators that ping in the night. Maybe instead of prompts I should call them sparks. Or jogs or leaps. They are the surprises that bubble up when I eavesdrop on conversations at the Amtrak station or stroll through a sidewalk art fair. I grew up with artists and my muse is often stirred by images my mother and sister painted while I was growing up.
Here’s a detail from “Mass Confusion,” a trompe l'oeil still life by my sister, Sharon Craven Kinzer. So much is going on here — Broken eggshells, hammered scraps of wood, a wistful face, a pocket watch, an evocative newspaper clipping. Every time I look at the painting I see something new. “Mass Confusion” is featured on the cover of WHISH, a collection of surrealistic poems in which I imagine minutes and hours as pesky human characters.
What inspires you?
Do you get your best ideas in the shower? On the seashore? Have you found prompts that fire you up? How about reading favorite authors, listening to music, talking with friends? Do you have a muse? Please do jump in with comments and ideas.
Now for a personal note…
I’m excited to announce that WHISH launches on April 13. WHISH won the Press 53 Award for Poetry and can be ordered from the publisher or your favorite bookseller.