by Christine Swint
Establishing a daily writing practice can turn into an adventure if you spend some time moseying around the web. Writing prompts appear on many different sites, on every day of the week, beckoning the poet to link up and share a few lines or read what others have to say. In fact, you can even organize your writing warm ups around the prompts that appear on a weekly basis.
The following list of community writing prompts represents only a fraction of the different memes* out there. Whenever you’re in need of an inspiration infusion, get your lead out while you surf the web — you’re sure to note many items of interest to fuel your poems.
Any day:
- A wonderful blog for finding new poets, prompts, photos, sculpture, music, and painting is Big Window by Robin Reagler. Robin’s collection of visual, creative prompts are sure to inspire anyone. Her post, Eat my shorts, offers a very fun prompt for those who are fond of dadaism and randomness.
- And while you’re exploring, check out the amazing poems Robin’s students have written on A Poem a Day.
- Poetry Express has a randomizer to inspire poets. E-muse asks the writer to fill in the blanks with adjectives, nouns, verbs, names, and places, and then produces a poem using a skeleton format of linking words.
- Totally Optional Prompts: Authors Mike McCulley and Tiel Aisha Ansari provide what their site’s name implies — optional prompts to revv up creative engines. The hosts post their suggested prompt on Saturdays, and on Thursdays writers can link their blogs to the site using an auto-link. Road signs was the prompt for the beginning of December, totally optional, of course.
Monday:
- The Monday Mural at Poefusion, by Michelle Johnson: paintings, photos, and drawings to describe or intuit through poems. Michelle also gives examples of many different poetic forms, some of them based on math, like the fib, from the Fibonacci sequence, and the cadae, based on the digits of Pi.
- The Monday Poetry Train, by Rhian at From my Brain to Yours: quirky photos and video to spark your creativity.
- Monday Poetry Stretch by The Miss Rumphius Effect, a blog aimed at educators and children’s literature. The prompt for Dec. 3 was about the villanelle, with links to several poems illustrating this form.
- ReadWritePoem, but you already knew that!
Wednesday:
- Three Word Wednesday, affectionately known as 3WW, offered by Bone at If you only read one blog this year. The words for December 5 were “absent,” “notebook” and “persuade.”
Thursday:
- Inspire me Thursday: the word for Dec. 6 was “ice.” The author of the site, Melanie Lyn Hamilton, states “Inspire Me Thursday is weekly dose of inspiration for mixed media artists and creative types to nurture their muses and CREATE!”
Friday:
- The Friday Five, at Poefusion. The words for Dec. 7 were “mustard,” “piano,” “elastic,” “moat” and “notorious.”
- Fiction Friday at the Write Stuff, by Paul Anderson, Janie, d.challener, Tammi, Andrea, and Karen. Post #32 was about a villain who want to rule the world. The Write Stuff also sponsors writing carnivals for all genres and poetry contests.
Saturday and Sunday:
- Sunday Scribblings by Meg Genge and Laini Taylor. Their theme for Dec. 1 was “competition.”
* meme: n.
A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Answers.com
A final site to wander through: The Daily Meme, a directory of hundreds of sites offering provocative questions for you to answer, suggestions, words, videos, photographs and themes.
Thanks for the nod to Totally Optional Prompts!
You might want to note that 3 Word Wednesday moved to a separate blog at http://threewordwednesday.wordpress.com/ althought Bone still has his personal blog at http://littlenibbler.blogspot.com/
Thank you for taking the time to write all this out! It’s very helpful and I’m going to print it and hand it out to my poetry-writing students. I’ve been telling them about some of the cool sites and they are interested. I wish blogs weren’t blocked at our school because there are so many possibilities for creative use of them. I’m glad, at least, that this site is not considered a blog! I am able to access it during school and am planning to have my students use the prompt generator, if nothing else, for their assignments.
Again, your hard work is very much apreciated!
This is a great list, very handy for someone like myself who is totally unorganized! I’m going to print it, too, and put it over my desk.
Minutes before I read this, I was noodling around on my blog, deciding what handwritten poem to type up, when I found in my journal a cento, or stitched together/patchwork poem, inspired by my fellow poets at Collaborative Poetry. Then, I was inspired to invite other poets to try it with me on a bi-weekly basis.
My post is here: Patchwork Thursday
This form is also great for collage artists, although, not sure how you could share it on the web… Anyway, I hope it’s ok that I offer this here. The more the merrier! I have found that collaborative poetry is great for inspiration.
Thanks, Jillypoet, for the prompt on the cento. I think a patchwork poem is a great way to over come “page fright” and to get the mind thinking in a creative zone.
Tiel, thanks for the heads up on 3WW. As soon as this article came up I realized he had moved his page. We’ll fix it.
Linda, how wonderful for your students that they have a poet for a teacher. I’m glad this post will help them. Who knows, maybe they’ll start a poetry site and link here!
Thanks for taking time write this comprehensive listing and descriptions. Some I know have enjoyed the challenges. Others are new to me.
My partner in crime and I have started a modest site of our own. Next time you’re at BES, please check us out and if you like it, maybe we can be added.
There is so much to read and learn here at readwritepoem. Everyday, I am discovering something new on the site.
Thanks for all the work the rwp team does.
A few more you might want to add:
Manic Monday at http://morgenfiles.blogspot.com/ Usually a one-word prompt that gets posted mid- to late in the week; responses appear on Monday; open to any kind of writing
Poetry Spark at http://novemberskypoetry.blogspot.com/search/label/poem spark Monthly prompt
One Deep Breath at http://www.onebreathpoetry.blogspot.com/ Weekly haiku prompt
blogFriday at http://www.blogfriday.net/ Weekly one-word prompt; new prompt Friday afternoons; open to any kind of writing
Weekend Wordsmith at http://weekendwordsmith.blogspot.com/ Usually on Saturday, various prompts; open to any kind of writing
It’d be great to have this list in the RWP sidebar and keep adding to it.
Thanks for the list, I know some and will check others out, though I don’t have much time for daily writing at the moment.
My biggest problem with these sites is the invitation to post on a particular day. My probelm is that I don’t know when Wednesday, for instance, is. Should I post on my Wednesday? Or Wednesday in the US? Or in some other time zone? The “rules” seem to vary from site to site – here for instance I can get my link up whenever the post goes up to link to, and at Sunday Scribblings people seem to start linking right away even if it’s only Thursday (a shame, I think, as it encourages hasty writing)
Catherine,
I here you. As a newbie to these sites, I initially felt rushed to post and some sites will close off submissions. I’ve been online for a decade now, running forums and being a member of others. While I lost my bearings coming into blogosphere, I’ve regained some senses: I’m no longer going to rush a write for a prompt. I’m not going to attempt a write unless I’m genieunely interested in a prompt.
Writing is process, work and an art. It’s not taking a pee just because you hear water running.
And one more thing about when to post: I’m going to post when I have a draft I want read. If I miss the traffic of comments from first responders, that’s okay. I write to be read not to rack up comments.
[...] generally getting those creative juices flowing, here’s my favorite literary link of the day: get the lead out: it’s noting, really, a post chock-full of links to blogs and websites that offer writing prompts of all kinds. [...]