To write with:

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• Prompt 1

  • collect ten books from your room, if there are no books than magazines, if no magazines then movies you have watched recently, etc. Type these ten titles of names up and arrange them into a list that can be read as a poem. Title it the most recent thing that you have eaten.

• Prompt 2

  • Is there any paper around you, notes to self, to do lists, recipes? Pick one up and grab a few words from it to be the first line of your letter, write for a few minutes whatever comes to mind. If no paper notes around what about your calendar, planner, mental lists or recent text messages.

    • When you look up from your writing what is the first thing your eyes go to? Write this down to begin your next paragraph and continue writing whatever comes to mind for however long you would like.

    • Is there a color that you have thought of recently? If not what is one color around you that you notice? Title your piece this color. Or rewrite your letter to this color.

• Prompt 3

  • Google colors and find one you have never heard of or one whose name jumps out at you write it down. Think of one smell that has stuck in your nose recently good or bad, burnt food, cherry blossoms, etc. write this down. Spend ten minutes or how ever long you want answering the question “What is going on?” Pick two lines you like from this free write and weave with what you wrote down from steps 1-3. Title the piece the first thing that comes to you head.

• Prompt 4

  • ​ Write without using “I” and instead writing with “you”. See how it feels to be making statements about someone else, how does this affect your thoughts? 

• Prompt 5

  • Respond to these quotes.

    • ​“Somehow, in the midst of ruins we must maintain enough curiosity to notice the strange and wonderful as well as the terrible and terrifying” (Swanson, Tsing, Bubant, and Gan, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet)

    • “Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling” (Carson, Anne, Autobiography of Red)

• Prompt 6

  • Respond to this quote and poem. 

    • “It is easier to imagine the end of the world then it is to imagine the end of capitalism.” Jeff Chang, Who We Be

 

"Success is counted sweetest

By those who never succeed.

To comprehend a nectar

Requires sorest need.

 

Not one of all the purple host

Who took the flag to-day

Can tell the definition,

So clear, of victory,

 

As he, defeated, dying,

On whose forbidden ear

The distant strains of triumph

Break, agonized and clear."  Emily Dickinson, Success

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