100 writing prompts

 

1. Complete this sentence: I AM NOT….

2. Complete this sentence: MY NAME IS…

My name is mood maker

Today my name is ache filled chocolate centre

Yesterday my name was wind freedom

Tomorrow my name might be rain watching head banger

Inside I know my name really is caramel centred wafer protected  heart owner

Secretly I want my name to be lightening seeker

A name is everything and nothing. When someone calls my name they endow it with all the words that stand for me mood maker wind surfer rain hunter teared dancer. And still if my name was erased from my body I would still be me. but how would people call me? how would they talk about me? would it be like being deaf blind invisible, and, at the same time, made more visible by the lack of one single binding word. So that maybe to call me they would have to say you, girl with long black hair shimmering in the sun shade. Or maybe, you with the sun charged laughter and lightening eyes. Or maybe, you thundering cloud, you flooding rain maker, you ocean of feeling.

My parents think my name is hermit blood red rose

I sometimes think my name might have been electric blue lightning rod

My boyfriend thinks my name is sweet baby corn rain fed

My best friend thinks my name is crushed mint flavoured dream maker

My parents want my name to be star fisher

I sometimes wish my name was sky walker

 Don’t be afraid to diverge from the topic. If it takes you in a new tangent follow it. Write faster than you can edit. Edit tomorrow. For today, just write.

[this prompt is from susan wooldridge’s ‘poemcrazy’. A fabulous book of ideas and fun.]

3. Complete this sentence: I WANT TO SAY…

I want to say come by in the evening and maybe we can make something happen something magical or something silly something sad and funny at the same time. I want to say, if you leave it up to me I will run every time you get close enough to give me a butterfly kiss racing through the motorcycle traffic of Kathmandu to some place with open space and no cuddles something less scary than a face close enough to see your scars and freckles.  I want to say look up a little, there is a sky of support and laughter and rain and sunshine. I want to say run through  the mustard fields bare feet with me.

 Start with ‘I want to say…’ and keep going. Say ‘I never said…’ or ‘ I wish I said…’ or ‘why didn’t you tell me…’

 4. Pick an evocative, layered word: Butterfly Effect, Skyhook, Whiplash.

5. Open your notebook. pick a random phrase. Write from there. Repeat the phrase whenever you get stuck. Go where it takes you. travel with your writing.

Past paragraphs of love letters, house key exchanges and shoe boxes full of relationship ephemera lives the questions: will this survive? Past paragraphs of love letters, house key exchanges and shoe boxes full of relationship ephemera is an opening of self that must happen for any of these to be meaningful. None of these mean anything if inside the face that is smiling at you in that photograph is not a fire that glows at the thought of you. None of it means anything if while you were watching that movie of the ticket you have saved he was thinking of you as much as about the movie. None of this means anything if beyond that photograph there was not a smile in the eyes that a camera cannot capture. Past paragraphs of love letters, house key exchanges and shoe boxes full of relationship ephemera is an open sky under which is endless grass and air that smells of gardenias and there is space between the two of you, open empty space and it is how fully you can exist apart from each other, as individual wholes. If you can smell the gardenias and smile at the sky and spreads your arms out like wings and run free and think of home as each other inside of you, you are truly home; and this will survive. Past paragraphs of love letters, house key exchanges and shoe boxes full of relationship ephemera is a study room, like a library, wooden shelves glowing deeply in the warmth of the fire burning in the heath, a comfortable leather chair in front of an open desk, windows that look out into the green and open space outside; it is a study room that has the cramped cosiness of hajurba’s study and looks out from two windows, like that room and the memories of our study room packed with the lives of each of us in this house; shelves are lines wall to wall and they are the shelves of our lives. each shelf containing small circular photo frames with pressed flowers;  report cards; sea shells collected from each place we ever went to together, each one a different memory/story; a life-size model of your hand is in there, skin warm and soft and slightly scarred like yours are, open so I can see all the lines of your palm, each line a story; there is a globe in there too, a globe inside a globe inside a globe, one for each time we said you are my world; there are skulls in here too, skulls the remains of fights and lies; there is the red rose you left for me on the tree in front of daddy’s office in Durbar Marg, a whole shelf to itself, still red and blooming and fragrant as the day you left it there, as if frozen on that tree and on that day forever, made immortal by the depth of feeling, this shelf is its tree now; there is a yellow sign with an exclamation mark that reads ‘caution wet floor’ as though reminding us to tread carefully; on the ceiling is a gold left painting, a fresco of our lives, of the stories of our lives. This fresco will continue long after we have ended as a relationship, continuing to add to your life and mine, linked inseparably by the 5 years of our friendship, and influenced in some way forever by each other so that even when you are no longer here I will think of you and make up a lie to tell you or draw a flower on a tree for you; there are pearls from all the tears we cried when we first were apart, sending love across miles like sms, we have enough there to make a set now, chocker necklace, dangling earrings and wrist bracelet with gold piping;

 

this is the first 5. there are 95 more. they will arrive slowly, they are friendly and approachable, and they get paid to inspire. respond to them. make a new friend.

in praise of questions *UPDATED*

automatic answer generator

 

answer seeking answer leaking answer peeking into the next person’s paper answer eater answer generator andwer me whole seeking in dusty places diamonds in the dust answers drown the questions living at the heart of questions will i make it? do i want this? how will this all play out? question hunting a glove full of questions the heart of a question. at the heart of every answer is a question.

 

in praise of questions

 

answers often come to me in blurred, crystic forms. an image i can’t quite catch. like dream images. so real until i reach out to capture them and then suddenly, vapour.answers often come to me in floating words, a sign on a hoarding board, an overheard conversation.

i have asked questions and you have given me answers.

[in this post titles Welcome, Gifted Seer]

 

now you ask a me a question. a book will be your answer. hot off the shelf from a wooden floored, sun filled bedroom in kathmandu.

*UPDATE*

here are four readings. names randomly pulled out of a pot pourri bowl by my 6 year old cousin. thanks for the emails!

p.s. all four of you asked to be kept anonymous (some because the topic is sensitive for you, and one because you’ll get fired if jwt googles your name and finds this ) so will include links to you in future, unrelated posts

CJ is a face lover, doodle maker, and singer of bathroom songs. She says she has been contemplating leaving her marriage for the last few years. any guidance will be welcome (please if the rest of you will also pull cards, book paragraphs, anything to give her more answers, she’d love it).

CJ, your reading is from ‘writing down the bones’ by natalie goldberg:

“we hear about people who go back to their roots. that is good, but don’t get stuck in the root. There is the branch, the leaf, the flower-all reaching toward the immense sky. We are many things.”

MMM is a writer, lover, sky-reacher from Burma. She asks if she is being brave staying in her country full of turmoil and questions, but also home and comfort, or if this is her taking the easy way out. M, your reading is from ‘poemcrazy’ by susan wooldridge:

“i sometimes think poems come from electricity in the air, a hum inside, impulses we can feel in our body.  when i sense an electrical charge around a person, event, or place, i know there’s a poem in it, waiting for words. poems are often about something so important to us we can fele the need to write as a physical urge”

PS is a grass lover, freedom seeker, and loud laugh-er. she asks how having another baby might affect her career at this stage. For you, P, the answer is from ‘writing alone and with others’ by your almost-namesake, Pat Schneider. Your answer is a poem:

Your Boat, Your Words

by Pat Schneider

your boat, they will tell you,

cannot leave the harbor

without discipline.

but they will neglect to mention

that discipline has a vanishing point,

an invisible horizon where belief takes over.

they will not whisper to you the secret

that they themselves have not fully understood: that

belief is the only wind with breath enough

to take you past the deadly calms, the stopped motion

toward that place you have imagined,

the existence of which you cannot prove

except by going there.

Popsicle Hunter has a fake name over and above his cryptic blogger name. He makes words like ‘press conference’ and ‘client’ sound cool. he wonders what’s the best way to get promoted above his boss. P, your reading is from ‘opportunities’ by edward de bono:

“imagine that you are attracted by tall blondes and that you are at a party and spot a tall blonde at the other end of the room. the room is crowded. you move about the room asking your friends whether any of them knows the blonde well enough to introduce you. it is a tiresome process. yet had you looked around before starting off on the quest you would have seen that just behind you was an even more attractive blonde conversing with a good friend of yours. the moral is that opportunities may not be difficult to see in themselves but they remain impossible to see if we happen to be looking in the wrong direction.”

PH, this made me laugh out loud! lol

Introducing Chamki

star gazer

dream weaver

wonder maker

 

INTRODUCING CHAMKI

23, dramatic, and truckloads of fun.  she makes super cool drawings like this, and eats poems for breakfast. this is a page she did in a journal we had together. She gave me ‘best of luck’ notes every day of my final college exams. And we spent many long mornings walking around Bandra saying it would help us get in the mood to study. she writes love stories with charm. she wants to do a series of audio visuals to leave for her grand children, titled ’see with eyes shut’. when i moved to wordpress and realised the limit on uploads she said ‘i knew when you left blogger it was a bad idea’. Chamki is the giver of advice that is always honest, often surprising. Strange and interesting things happen to her. here are 20 more random things about her.

Her favourite memory,

by chamki

 she says, is her ‘first day of school. While little girls stayed clutched to their parents and cried as they were separated and made to sit on primary colour benches. I sat at my bench with my arms folded and feet crossed watching my parents smile and wave to me. I have a very clear memory of the distance from my feet to them accompanied by the feeling of being a lady.I knew that was a big day.’ Yes, Chamki is brave and observant, and turns out she was born with these qualities.

if you are feeling low, chamki reccommends you ’spend time by a tree or many trees and less people. trees shed that layer of meaning we add to our life.. that unnecessary layer.. a small way of thinking you are the centre of the universe.. just by the way they stay rooted to the ground letting all the wind sway them. they enjoy where they are and whatever comes to them.’ She guarentees instant upliftment.

 by chamki

She says she wants to know what other people think of  as trustworthy/believable’… just how much they trust their association, their ideas about reality or life or anything that originates from them. I want to know what people hold as ultimately true.’

Tell her your truth(s)

when i talked to her on april 13, 2008, that sunday full of anticipation and questions, she wrote this:

Sunday, April 13, 2008

lusty peasant child

The whole world seemed to melt away when I heard Mahima’s voice on the phone this afternoon. She is the mild yellow light that exposes the softness of sharp objects in long patient tarot readings. Mahima is also, the lusty peasant child standing at a stationary store. Mahima is colours gradually blending and completing a book of thoughts. FULL TECHNICOLOUR. Mahima is M for moodiness. Mahima is also afternoons in the sun spent laughing. Mahima is calling me to Nepal again!
 chamki in my room

I called her to nepal and she came and got drunk on raksi and taught us some bollywood dance standing on the dining table at 3am. I meant it when I said she is truckloads of fun.

This post is for Chamki and for the many years of changing and growing and silliness and rambling we have left.

by chamki

 

an insurance policy for lovers

In the insurance business

There should be an insurance business for love. So if a man or woman walks into your life and guarantees you the stars and the sky and every colour of paints you ever wanted and then leaves you stranded and cold and without your house keys in the middle of the night the insurance company would pay for your loss. And how would we quantify that policy? I suppose the value of a love affair should be based on the promises made, the expectations created. If (s)he promises you the stars and chocolate kisses in bed every night then your loss should be measured by these standards. That is the void the insurance company must strive to fill. If he promises you a hand to hold and a meal together when he can, your loss should be measured accordingly. But how would you quantify the value of that warm, kind hand and the laughter in those meals; how would you tell the insurance company that that was all you ever wanted and the loss of that to you is greater than any promise of the moon or the stars?

writing booth cafe

Cafe Nyatapola

Coffee with Tom

This is an impromptu writing booth. The sign on my table reads: writer. Writes for free. Give me a topic. Expected randomness. A stack of A5 sheets lie next to both of us. People come. Give us a word. We write. One minute per word. A carbon sheet copies as we write. We hand one sheet over to the curious topic-giver and file the other.

Here are some of mine: picked randomly from a stack of 45 sheet-word-prompts. Tom got googely poo. Blackberry. Beanie babies. I got ordinary. Delicious. Dream weaver.

(and many, many more)

 

Ordinary

I have a problem he came to me and said. it is a very ordinary problem. I cant sleep at night. I lie awake thinking to myself

I am so damn happy its unreal.

Ordinary shordinary. Ordinary marriage. Ordinary thunderstorm. Bombay is a smudged line. Its is no ordinary line. Ordinary is a word which has no place in a relative world. What is ordinary anyway? And who decides? If you keep your eyes open and heart exploring nothing is really ordinary. Everything shimmers with the light of a million surprises.

 

Delicious

I met someone in a cafe in Newcastle and we got into a discussion on the best desserts we ever had. Where was your best hot chocolate fudge? Theobroma in Bombay. Best cheese cake? Finer Things Cafe, New York. Best chocolate fondue? Lisa’s homemade cakes in London. Best carrot cake? Helena’s Bakery Kathmandu.  And so we kept going a full circle till we came back to the hot chocolate fudge in Theobroma and the boy I shared it with on a sticky skin-warm Bombay afternoon.

…i want to be somebody’s delicious winter.

 

B

Dearest B, I want to write. Talk to me. swallow me with your brownness and soft skin.  I want to say, I miss you for no apparent reason. I want to say dear b, come home and spend your life with me. we can spend our lives side by side holding hands spinning intricate dreams, sitting in the porch by sunrise. Dear b I want to say, your name has changed. B is for better now than never. B is for brown hands full of blood warmth. B is for butter in my chocolate cake. B is for buy me your laughter for Christmas. B is for brave blossom blade. B is for brief updates on twitter will not do any more. B is for bright yellow thumb-pins on m softboard (marking memories). B is for boils over. B is for baby, you have no idea…

 

Mix

Its funny what happens when two different people mix together. Sometimes one dominates and the other changes to fit. But mostly even in the most balanced relationships a kind of dance begins to take place within a few months of mixing. One responds to the other with subtle changes. In tone of voice, in tilt of head, in line of argument. And then slowly if it goes well they dance forever together, evolved by each others’ evolution.

 

There’s more…will transcribe as time allows. What are your words?

 

p.s. my curent writing project with tom finished a few days back. it was fun! i wanna do it again. see project cafe (tab on top) for details!

 

so it looks like this is now going to be a writing practise blog of sorts for awhile (maybe with hints of drawings and ideas sprinkled on top). mainly free writing…brain wanderings…that kind of thing. the laziness to scan and upload an image is overwhelming right now but maybe in a few days some new drawings and artwork will make a peek.

meanwhile, tell me what you’re writing about. i like mine random. write with me.

xx

m

23.05.09

random phrase: 

 

“When you find it, may not be the perfect companion”

From Erica Jong’s fear of fifty

A perfect companion is a healer of sorts, a magician of sorts an amorphous changing substance of sorts morphing into whatever the combined moods of you two needs them to be. In trying to be perfect companions we much all become master shape shifters. Shape shifters are like the hairball on my floor which turned out to be a caterpillar slowly inching its way towards by window. Or like the cockroach in my dustbin which turned out to be a hairball. Shapeshifters are in us all. We are shape shifters. We are weight shifters. We are voracious writers. In writing we are shape shifters. Trying to be both ourselves and another and the reader at the same time. Trying not to get our identities too mixed up so they don’t merge into each other forming one combined porridge of personalities. A goey over boiled entity. Why do we search for the perfect companion anyway when the reality is that we really need perfect companions. One for when we hang to sit in the balcony and draw the sunset. One for when we want to tangle ourselves in bed with their legs and fall asleep. Some for when we want nothing more than a night of laughter and noise making. Some for when we want to find in ourselves something dangerous, exciting, forbidden. one for long haul flights when you want a part funny part lazy traveller who will entertain you and still let you sleep. One person is not made to be all these and if he were, he would be confusing, overwhelming, volatile.  We are not made to be exclusive. We are made for inclusion-arms open heart on your sleeve letting in people because they fit in this moment.

This is how you play the game: the goal is to draw a person and be as innovative and surprising as you can. Start at the bottom or top of the sheet by drawing the very tip of that person. In this case, I started at the shoes. Fold the sheet so that only the tip of what you’re drawn shows so the next person can continue from there. Continue back and forth till complete. :)

This is with Sara on the train to Edinburgh drawn on the caffe nero napkin from our take away cappucino.

for 4 days last month i turned my phone off, left it at home and lived as usual. but life felt different. like a reminder that life is worth celebrating even without having to constantly send a text, a photomessage, or call to say this is what i saw, this is what i heard, this is how life felt in that moment to someone else.

for the first time since i got here 9 months ago i felt like what i am- a student onher own a million miles from home discovering a new world.

i loved it!

TRAVELLING JOURNAL CALL

 

Well, it’s the week week and I feel compelled to start something.

The last travelling journal I send out is two people away from me and yes, it’s time to launch a new one.

 

 

If you want to play, email me.

Or just comment here and I’ll get back to you.

 

 

There’s place for all kinds. Come play.

 

UPDATE:

OK! we’re good to go. Thanks for the emails. This journal players:

M

Sophie

Vatsala

Jen

Wendy

Surabhi

Ian

Lucy

Delia

P.S. Just FYI: after this, the post and the progress of the journal will be tracked on the Projects page (select from the tabs on top of the page)

Also a quick update on the previous travelling art journal:

The players

Willie Baronet

Bluma

Maddie

Chamki: the journal is currently with her. It’ll leave Bangalore, India this week.

Dawn

Nicole