Starters

• "I stood up and gave my name..."
• "After the door shuts and the footsteps die..."
• "The stain will not come out..."
• " The inside of an egg..."
• "The distance between two points increases over time."
• "This morning marks the anniversary, the anniversary of two people dying."
• "The afternoon..."
• "My life is made up of seconds..."
• "My last memory of..."
• "I stood up and gave my name..."
• "In the event of an emergency..."
• "If you are reading this..."
• "Foolproof plans for..."

Use this phrase

• "turning into silence"
• "pendulum"

Titles

• "Prolonged Exposure"
• "Flowers for Ann"
• "non-descript"
• "everyday object"
• "At This Very Moment"
• "Hidden Camera"
• "faded denim"
• "Clippings"
• "The Man" or "The Woman"
• ✔ "How Curiosity Suffers"
• "Parenthetical"
• "arrivals and departures"
• "Spending Purgatory with... "
• "Why Claire Left"
• "The Color of Smoke"
• "The Use of an Elevator"
• "Shallow Breath"
• ✔ "Mundane Occurrences"
• "Identity"
• "Removing the Stitches"
• "Summer Falls"
• ✔ "Lines of Conversation"
• ✔ "Between Silences"
• "Writers Anonymous"
• "Paradise of Strangers"
• "The Ladder at the Edge of the World", (or "Fire Escape")
• "Three Shades of White"
• "The Secret Life of The Flower Vendor"
• "Attention Deficit"
• "The Apology"

Themes

• Write short prose or poetry using the following theme: transparency
• Write for 20 minutes without editing using the sense of black and white vision, as in film or photographs.
• Write for 20 minutes in any genre using the phrase, " The door shut, before I....". Or, "Three scenes depicting *__________". (i.e. death, love, karma.)
• Write a poem that is about the "un-truth"

Character names

• "Vegas"

Settings

• Laundromat

Poetry

• Write a series of questions and answers to compose a poem.
• Write a poem that begins with a description of an event, telling what appears to be happening. Then give a description of what is really occurring.
• Write a poem using, "how to...". For example, "how to write a poem", "how to break my heart"," how to distinguish a flower from a frog".
• Write a poem that repeats a selected word in each line. Consider using foreign translations of the word. (cat, gato, catze).
• Write a poem about seasonings. For example, "Salt and Saffron".
• Write a culinary poem celebrating food.
• Write a poem that is representative of language/communication.

Prose

• Create a legend, myth, or fairytale about falling stars
• Write series of short sketches in which one character is relating stories or experiences to another. For example, "What the Moon Saw", by Hans Christian Andersen: http://hca.gilead.org.il/moon_saw.html