Our most creative and original writing is often spontaneous and intuitive. Responding to writing prompts within a limited time frame can help you to write without over-thinking. This is why I offer fifteen minute writing prompts in workshops and classes.
words on words
Writing to Heal
We are the stories we tell ourselves. Image by Sabine Van Erp The stories we live become the stories we tell, and the stories we tell become the stories we live. What stories do you tell yourself? Are they reinforcing beliefs that no longer serve you? Writing can help us to heal by transforming the … Continue reading Writing to Heal
Write Now
We create the stories we live by, and live by the stories we create. We can’t change the past, but we can transform its influence on us with creative writing. It turns out, writing can have side effects. Happiness is complicated. Write to heal. Find out more at http://www.ellenszabo.com
Love and Apocalypse – Externalize Your Inner Apocalypse with Creative Writing
Available on Amazon. This book is for anyone who wants to use creative writing to feel better by externalizing their inner apocalypse. Using 25 writing prompts with evocative photographs, readers are encouraged to make meaning of their life experiences by discovering, emphasizing and illuminating changed perspectives. Every character and every story we write, is autobiographical. … Continue reading Love and Apocalypse – Externalize Your Inner Apocalypse with Creative Writing
taking leave
How and why we take our leave from a place can define who we become - and it can make us unreliable narrators of our own lives. ebszabo Write the character who has lived here, beginning with the moment they walk away. Capture the ways in which memory (back-story) is influenced by their reason for leaving, … Continue reading taking leave
co·nun·drum
In great story, the beginning starts in the middle, and the ending is in the beginning. ebszabo Writing Prompt: Demonstrate this truth, with a story from this photograph.
frozen
A metaphor is an implied comparison between two things that are unlike each other but have something in common. When used with restraint, metaphor is an economical way of conveying depth and complexity without ‘telling’ your reader what to think. Think about how an eggshell conveys fragility, an icicle conveys chill, or a shredder conveys … Continue reading frozen
on giving advice
Caution: 'All advice is autobiographical' Austin Kleon This woman is about to give advice that will unintentionally reveal who she really is. Write her life story as it becomes evident in this phone call. photo: Bill Branson
from ruins
This is the front door of the Dalmore House in Scotland, completed in 1881, deemed uninhabitable in the early 1960s, and destroyed by fire in April 1969. Life is short, and we are transient. Walk through these doors and discover who lived here, retrieve their stories, reveal who they were by what they believed and what they … Continue reading from ruins
bub·ble
A bubble can can look like a world. Bubble: 1) a thin, liquid sphere, filled with air or another gas; or 2) time limited good fortune that is isolated from reality. Writing prompt: create a 150 word story titled The Bubble, in which the character(s) have been living a seemingly idyllic life, isolated from reality - … Continue reading bub·ble
