Pick a current issue. Describe variously held positions. Respond to the issue or to one of the positions.
Narrate a moment of being as a child. Try taking on the child’s perspective using tone, word choice, organization, etc.
Do you act differently around certain people? Who? Why and/or why not?
List things you are curious about.
Describe an experience that has changed a long-held viewpoint or opinion that you have had.
Other than anatomy, what things make you a woman and/or man?
Pick an emotion (anger, sadness, envy, fear, joy, lust) and write in a way that illustrates (through detail, arrangement, stylistics, tone) that you are feeling that emotion.
Pick a type of person (farmer, teacher, 3 year old, grandpa) or someone you know and an emotion. Write a paragraph or two that attempts to arouse that emotion in that person.
Write about the last social event you attended. You could write about it in an autobiographical way, composing it as a reflection on a past event; or, you could try to write about it in the present tense.
Think about a moment when you had a disagreement with someone. Rewrite his or her point of view in your own words.
Read Joan Didion’s essay “Why I Write” (on D2l). From your own experience, describe an “image that shimmers” in your memory
Pick a recent personal experience. Describe it. Analyze your feelings about it, answering the question, "Why do I feel this way?"
Express something that has been bothering you. Try to discover why it is bothering you. Propose a solution.
Describe a place. Discuss the feelings associated with it. Tell an event that happened there.
Compare an event, object, or feeling to something different. Try to draw as many parallels between the two as possible.
Imitate someone else’s style writing style, but use your own subject.
Copy a saying or short passage from someone else’s writing (story, book, poem, essay). Tell what it means to you, how you feel about it, and why.
Explain what you learned about yourself in your first job.
Explain a worship service you have participated in to a person who has never gone.
Create your dream apartment.
Write down every thing that is within six feet of you.
Write about the first time you returned home after leaving.
Describe a process you often go through: brushing teeth, programming the VCR, ordering pizza.
Describe your most memorable celebration experience--a birthday, holiday, wedding, graduation.
Close your eyes and listen. Describe everything you hear.
Close you eyes and feel your surroundings. Describe everything you feel.
Do something you've never done, and then write about it, describing what you did and how you feel about it.
Write down the lyrics of your favorite song; explain what they mean.
Describe something you use all the time (a pen, a fork, the sidewalk) and describe it from a new perspective.
Write a poem.
Go someplace you never go alone--out to eat, bowling, a show-- and explain how you feel.
Write a character sketch of someone you are close to and admire. Describe their appearance, their mannerisms, their speech. Tell a story about them.
Write a character sketch of someone who aggravates you or of someone who makes you angry.
Write a scene in which you say something you wish you had said (but didn't).
Watch an animal for a while and make up a life story about it.
Dream a little. Describe what kind of life you will have ten years from now.
Walk down memory lane. Tell stories of your past experience. Describe people you once knew. Describe places you've been. Tell how you used to do something.
Assume the role of a character in history and write to another character in history.
Name the most terrifying moment of your life so far.
What three things would you change about your life right now? Why?
