• You’re digging in your garden and find a fist-sized nugget of gold.
• Write about something ugly — war, fear, hate, or cruelty–but find the beauty (silver lining) in it.
• The asteroid was hurtling straight for Earth…
• A kid comes out of the school bathroom with toilet paper dangling from his or her waistband.
• Write about your early memories of faith, religion, or spirituality; yours or someone else’s.
• There’s a guy sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper…
• Write a poem about a first romantic (dare I say: sexual) experience or encounter.
• He turned the key in the lock and opened the door. To his horror, he saw…
• Silvery flakes drifted down, glittering in the bright light of the harvest moon. The blackbird swooped down…
• The detective saw his opportunity. He grabbed the waitress’s arm and said…
• There are three children sitting on a log near a stream. One of them looks up at the sky and says…
• There is a magic talisman that allows its keeper to read minds. It falls into the hands of a young politician…
• And you thought dragons didn’t exist…
• Write about nature. Include the following words: hard drive, stapler, phone, car, billboard.
• The doctor put his hand on her arm and said gently, “You or the baby will survive. Not both. I’m sorry.”
• The nation is controlled by…
• You walk into your house and it’s completely different — furniture, decor, all changed. And nobody’s home.
• Write about one (or both) of your parents. Start with “I was born…”
• The most beautiful smile I ever saw…
• I believe that animals exist to…
• A twinkling eye can mean many things. Start with a twinkle in someone’s eye and see where it takes you.
• Good versus evil. Do they truly exist? Are there gray areas? Do good people do bad things?
• Write about your body.
• Have you ever been just about to drift off to sleep only to be roused because you spontaneously remembered an embarrassing moment from your past?
• Get a package of one of your favorite canned or boxed foods and look at the ingredients. Use every ingredient in your next piece of writing.

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• Free-write on your relationship to education, learning, thinking, reading, and/or writing.
• Find a new poem on the internet, print it out, tape it into your notebook, and read it by writing a detailed response to it.
• Write a (complicated) love letter to yourself.
• Go to your favorite public space (coffee house, fountain, football game) and write details of your observations. Try with abstract language, or just dictating what you see, smell, hear, just as it is.
• Go to a public place you have never been before, and write details of your observations.
• Write about a place you are glad or sad to have left. Write it entirely in third person.
• Write about a place you visited only briefly but something significant occurred there for you. Write the account in the second person, addressing your "I" as "you".
• Write a personal narrative of the house you grew up in. Write it in the first person, from the houses perspective.
• Write an account of the last time you remember being truly quiet