Improbable Press Blog — Writing Challenges

Holidays… Japan's celebration of the new year, Ōmisoka. The Jewish celebration of Hanukkah.  The African-American holiday of Kwanzaa. The pagan-derived Christian holiday of Christmas. These are your prompts this week, be directly inspired by them, veer wildly, combine, mush, mix, invent a holiday or celebration all your own As ever these challenges are here to prompt writing of any and all kinds. What you write may be connected or unconnected, loud or quiet, polite or profane. You do you. The Whole Point is to Write Something If you want to write something that is. And maybe think about that this...

Dragons and laughter and the boiling blood of a mountain…that's what people saw in the last prompt. What do you see in this one? And hey, how are you? What do you need? Diversion? Focus? Company? Alone time? Would a writing challenge help, hm? I don't always write for the prompts I put up, but I think I'll challenge myself to write for this one, 100+ words before the weekend is out. There's something about that swoop and the impressionist painterly feel of this, there's something about the evocative phrase a box for wishes that calls me. How about you?...

Here's a little idea for NaNoWriMo, if you're going to do it: Let it mean anything. I know it stands for National Novel Writing Month but it can also stand for taking those same hours to copy all your digital files onto an external hard drive. Or weeding out old magazines. Or sending out job applications (every cover letter can be part of your word count if you still want to track things that way). What I'm suggesting is don't break yourself this month because you make the rules. So you can change them. And right now things are so...

Two new people wrote with us! Hello! Do eet again? I love, love, endlessly love to see these prompts through your eyes so please, share again what you see with us? And for anyone who wants a nudge about how to do this, I can highly recommend the JUMP IN WITHOUT THINKING school of writing. You're here. Write. Don't think. Write. Glance at the prompts and the first thing to arrive to your fingers goes on the page. This is by far the easiest way for me to do these and maybe it'll work for you? It's Time to Take...

As noted previously, some weeks there are story themes and this week's writing prompt, though its dance card was not full (weeps delicately), it tended toward science fictional fills. Contemporary fantasy maybe?Whatever it is, I love these sorts of stories, and I love that you come and share yours here. What a delicious gift, to get something fresh-baked to read each week. Thank you for that.Speaking of 'each week' I thought maybe two weeks between prompts would garner more responses but I think I'll go back to once a week. I enjoy these too and two weeks seems, I don't...