The World as Writing Prompt: 9 Ways to Invent Inspiration

Look around you, whether just glancing across your kitchen table or taking in the building thunderheads and blossoming lilac right outside your window. The world is our writing prompt, and not just the world supposedly external to us: the worlds of our memories, insights, and connections can spark new poems, stories, essays, and more as well as help us complete ones we started.

One of many misleading to damaging myths about writing is that inspiration strikes from some mysterious source and only then does greatness ensues. On the contrary, anyone who writes—or makes their way regularly to the oasis of creating anything—knows well that sometimes the pond is dry, sometimes there are too many squabbling animals watering there, and sometimes we start writing and trip or leap our way into something good.

Getting there entails practice and also ways to get going. First a bit on practice: We show up, ready to work and surrender what we think that work is, and voila! Something happens. Or nothing happens, but no matter: showing up is what counts.

When I started teaching English 101 at the University of Kansas back in the last century, I regularly told my students, “Pay attention. Expect nothing. Keep writing.” I tell my students and workshops participants the same today, and I especially remind myself.

But sometimes it’s tricky to know where and how to start, whether you’re sitting down to write some new or add more to something already in the works. But if you can tilt your mind—drawing on what’s readily available in your home, right outside the door, or in your lived experience—you can access all kinds of ways in. Here are nine ways to get rolling.

Inside Writing Prompts

1. The Old Book Trick:

Pick up a book, anything from a dictionary, collection of Polish poetry, murder mystery where the butler clearly did it, travel guide to Ireland’s back roads, or exploration on how lightning bugs evolved. Open it randomly to a page, find a few words you like, and put write them down. Do this multiple times (and feel free to use multiple books) until you have 20-30 interesting words.

Variation: You can also just land your finger on a word without looking to see what serendipity gives you.

Take a breath, and then start writing something that incorporates some or all the words. If and when you get stuck, pick up the book or another book and let your fingers do the walking to find new words to integrate.

2. If These Walls Could Talk:

What would the walls of your living room, kitchen, bedroom, or other interior spaces that surround you say if you let them talk? How might they recount the long night when your cousin Murray arrived with his six chihuahuas and demanded your help to dress them in purple tutus for a performance at a local pub? Or what would the kitchen walls tell of that Thanksgiving when two arguing siblings fought over the last turkey leg while you played footsies under the table with your new squeeze?

For that matter, let’s not just limit narration to the walls. I bet the couch, kitchen table, dresser, kitchen counter, and little end table you found on the curb have a whole lot of stories. Maybe the kitchen appliances and gadgets have things to say also. Consider writing your own “Self-portrait as…….” poems or tiny stories (confession: I do have a poem called “Self-Portrait as KitchenAid Mixer”). I bet you have plenty of inanimate objects, furnishings, and structural elements in your apartment or house with strong opinions and vivid memories.

3. What’s Ready to Come Out of the Closet?:

Our clothes carry a lot of memories and hopes. Maybe that silk blue dress that saw better days has something to say about one of those better days. Those brown vintage Hush Puppy shoes you paid too much for in hopes they would help you feel smarter and strong, even if hardly worn, have a history that might even entail scandal, neglect, and resurrection. Write the story of a piece of clothing that means something to you or let the shoes do the talking (as well as walking).

4. History of Here:

Research a little history of where you are right now. This could be the geological history of this land under your apartment building, house, or yurt or what happened 20 years ago in this neighborhood. You could look into the indigenous people who were who once lived or passed through here. Perhaps you’re drawn to the species of flora and fauna that once inhabited this space. Or you might just want to concentrate on the imagined history of the people who lived in this room before you.

Outside Writing Prompts

5. Going Outside of Yourself:

Go outside, no matter the weather, with a pen and paper. Have a seat somewhere if you can, and close your eyes. Listen carefully for a few minutes. Then open your eyes and write a line about something you heard that you never heard quite the same way before. For even more direction, write something you can smell, hear, see, taste, and touch. Use this as a diving board to ender the new writing that calls to you.

Nature guides can be particularly helpful in showing you the cast of thousands in a square foot of lawn, field, or forest. You can also find all kinds of new images to ground your writing in the here and now.

6. A Walk Around the Neighborhood:

Wherever you live—even if, like me, you’re in the country surrounded by prairie and brome fields—is full of intriguing beings, humans and otherwise. Imagine you’re perusing your neighborhood, narrating it to yourself as if you’re seeing it for the first time or after a long absence or from the vantage point of what writer David Abram calls the more-than-human world. Let a tree frog describe the scene or write about it from your vantage point as if you just arrived here from another city or planet.

7. Time-Travel:

Wherever you are, there’s a whole lot that happened in this place beforehand. Do a little research or just use what you already know to write about what might have been happening here a decade or a century ago. Who could have been ambling down this sidewalk? What might they have been worried sick or wildly-thrilled about?

For some inspiration, check out Robert Crumb’s “A Short History of America,” showing how one particular place can change, here made into a video by Terry Zwigoff.

Key Moments

8. Fence-Post Writing:

A lot of what we remember and experience most deeply in our lives are fence-post moments, moments that are bigger and stronger than average passing time (such as when we lie on the couch and watch Netflix). All the fence-post moments link the time before one important moment and the next. In Kansas where I am, there are limestone fence posts on ranches, each post made of cut limestone and linked together with wire to keep cattle, llamas, buffalo or other herds in or out. But literal fence posts can be made from wood, metal, plastic, and so much more. The fence posts of your lived moments can be made from giving birth to a child, reading a book that changed your life, driving all night with your best friend, losing a cat, or just about anything.

Fence posts are weighty moments. They may be huge moments (when our mother died or child was born or we quit our job to travel the world), medium-sized moments (our first car, a minor surgery, or family reunion) or very small moments (sitting in the backyard watching the changing sky through the leaves of a cottonwood tree and realizing you’re entitled to relax). What’s true of all these moments is that they’re turning points when we realize or know or discover something (or unlearn something we thought was true but no longer is).

9. Make Lots of Lists:

The best way I know of to generate a lot of great ideas is to make lists, such as lists, leaving you with custom-made list of writing prompts ready to roll: all you need do is take something off your list and write it. Just writing one thing on a list will likely light up a memory of another thing and so on. What’s more is that you can keep adding to the list over time.

Here’s a list of lists:

• Firsts: first love, first car, first loss, first time living alone.
• Loves: who you first loved and/or who first loved you, dear friends for a time or for life, children or parents or partners where love was at the wheel.
• Beauties: people, places, things and other sources of specific beauty.
• Important things you’ve learned.
• Useless things you were told to learn (for example, does algebra play into your life anymore?).
• Greatest meals.
• Magical things you’ve witnessed.
• All the times you laughed so hard you almost fell over.
• Bests: best meal, movie, book, night out, concert, time when you got lost but it all worked out, friends, finds at a yard sale, etc.
• Most precious things you’ve owned or own now.
• Animals you’ve lived with over the years.
• Roommates you’ve loved or endured.
• Houses that housed you.
• Placed you lived or traveled that you never want to forget.
• Lasts – last time you _____
• A list of your own design.

Classes with Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg for Writing Inspiration

• Get Inspired!: Poems and Poets to Light Up Your Writing
• Poetry Playhouse
• I Walk the Line: Lines, Stanzas, and the Music of Poetry
• The Body and Soul of Your Memoir: Shape, Focus, and Write Your Memoir
• Long Night’s Journey into Day: Writing Poetry Through and About Serious Illness

More Sites of Inspiration

Find more prompts and inspiration at the following Writers.com articles:

• 36 Creative Writing Exercises to Become a Better Writer
• 100 Poetry Prompts for New Poem Ideas
• NaPoWriMo Prompts for National Poetry Month
• Poetry Inspiration: How to Find Inspiration for Poetry