Self-care can come in many forms. For some, it may be an indulgent bite of chocolate to reset in between Zoom meetings, or a bath salt soak to unwind from a stressful week. For me, it's cracking open a journal and allowing myself the space to free write. That is to say, putting pen to paper with no agenda other than enjoying the delights of my own stream-of-conscious rambles in an attempt to create something new. It's also a helpful forum to digest and archive what's going on in my life and in the world around me. Sometimes it takes the shape of a poem, while other times it's a bulleted list of scribbles I can barely read the next day. Because there's no added pressure that these writings will be published or seen by anyone else, I generally come away from the experience feeling lighter and with a sense of personal accomplishment and heightened creativity.
But in the attention economy we're all navigating through today, finding time for a personal writing practice is freakin' near impossible. Why would one ever stop scrolling through the endless wonders of the Internet to confront their feelings and get vulnerable? In my humble opinion, there's much to gain from a little introspection every now and again, and who knows? Your writings might unlock a new creative side you didn't know you had in you.
In honor of National Poetry Month, we've curated a number of creative writing prompts to help you cultivate your own poetic ritual. Try one prompt each day for the month of April in service of building a new routine, or skip around to the poetry prompts that inspire you most. I'm committed to following my own advice and will also be writing one poem a day using the thought starters below for creative fuel. If you decide to join in and want to share some of your writings, I'd love to read them (DMs are open). Now, onto the creative writing prompts!
Creative Writing Prompts To Spark Your New Writing Practice
- Describe your ideal day, from morning to night. Where are you, what will you do, and who will you spend your time with (if anyone at all)?
- Write a poem about your favorite food using all the senses.
- Write a ghost poem inspired by a song lyric or line from a book you love. That is, take the original sentence and use it as the first line of your writing. Then begin adding to it until you come back to the beginning and erase the first line that inspired all the subsequent lines — effectively making the inspiration a ghost.
- Describe your favorite color without naming it. Or, imagine your color aura and describe that.
- Come up with your six-word memoir. (Fun fact: did you know that a one-line poem is called a monostitch?)
- Walk the reader through a place you can't wait to visit again, sharing all of the sensory details that make it like paradise to you.
- Write about your life if you lived in a different period in history. For example, you wake up and it's 1970, what's the first thing you'd do?
- Confront your fears and write about what scares you most.
- Select a piece of art and write an ekphrastic poem about it — that is, a poem that describes the work of art (sculpture, painting, drawing, performance, film, or photograph) in effusive detail.
- If you were to host a dinner party, who would you invite, dead or alive? What meal would be served, how would the table be set, and what conversations do you imagine would take place?
- Think of a trip or commute you've taken many times. Jot down your observations and memory of said journey and recreate it for the reader. Then decide what's more important to you, the journey or the destination?
- Find an object in your home that brings you joy and tap into why it's so meaningful in a descriptive poem.
- Think of someone you had a miscommunication with and explore what would happen if you said everything you wanted to say.
- What's your favorite month and why? Orient it in the season as part of your description.
- Write about the emotion you experience the most and list out what situations, people, or things make you feel that way.
- Where do you come from? Start a poem by exploring and defining your origin story.
- Describe a recent dream of yours in vivid, fantastical detail.
- Explore what you'd say to your 13-year-old self, or another pivotal age from when you were younger.
- Write about what it'd be like to encounter a long-lost love, years later.
- Manifest future you with a poem describing who you'll be in 5 or 10 years.
- Think of the happiest day of your life and write about what made it so magical. Can you capture that feeling in poem form?
- What lessons have you learned from your elders and ancestors? Write about the ones that still show up for you today.
- Think about all the cities you've lived in. Pick one to write about that's had a lasting impact on your identity.
- What's a youthful memory of a time you were reckless or misbehaved? Write about that experience and what you may have learned.
- Identify your alter ego, or someone totally opposite of you and write a poem from that point of view. What would they do that you would never dare?
- What is one of life's biggest mysteries you wish you had the answer to? See if you can come up with an answer in your poem.
- Write a poem about a beloved character in a book, movie, or show that you adore.
- Personify an inanimate object (such as a crystal, a postcard, or vintage scarf) and tell its story. Where all has it gone before it made its way to you?
- Turn something mundane, like a grocery list, into a poetic writing exploration. How can a few creative adjectives and alliterative details make it shine?
- Pick someone you're drawn to, even a stranger on the street or in a coffee shop, and write what you imagine they're like in real life.
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Lead Image courtesy of Thought Catalog on Unsplash.
