I’m recovering from a mental slump. As much as it pains me to say, I’m suffering from the divergence of my personal goals from my professional ones. It was easier said than done when I wrote this post on passion and strengths. Getting overwhelmed by a series of projects taught me that I also needed rest (for at least two months) and that dreams, no matter how ambitious, can be derailed.

To get me back on track and to avoid beating myself up with thoughts of “You weren’t too greedy enough to pursue writing!”, <please insert a gif of The Devil Wears Prada Andy Sachs telling her father, “I wrote those emails.” I can’t find one lol> I searched for these prompts that will help me generate ideas when I can’t wait for them to come to me.

50 Creative Nonfiction Prompts Guaranteed to Inspire (BookFox)

Creative nonfiction was a genre I excelled in when I was younger–something I was made to believe by the certificates I got from competitions. I hope that by bookmarking this link, I could get to publish not only book reviews but a different piece in this blog.

The prompts I’m interested in are the following:

• Choose a location that you’ve come to know as an adult. Compare how you interact with this setting now to how you interacted with similar settings when you were a child. How has your perspective changed?
• Show yourself in a scene pursuing the thing you want most in the world. Try to show the reader, without telling them, about your character flaws.
• Take a small, boring moment that happened today and write as much as you can about it.  (This one though I intend to keep in my journal lol)

Weekly Writing Prompts (Reedsy)

Reedsy is a writing platform that encourages writers to participate in their challenges. There is a section devoted to prompts where writers can submit their responses and get a chance to win a cash prize. I read a number of wonderful responses and it seems that the platform has built a community among writers and reviewers based on the feedback some pieces have. If I feel more gutsy, I think I can respond to those prompts one of these days. For now though, I just want to use a couple of prompts to get this blog back on track.

The prompts I’m interested in are the following:

• (Nonfiction) Write a story where a particular piece of clothing appears three times.
• (Nonfiction) Write a story about waiting — but don’t reveal what’s being waited for until the very end.
• (Character) Write about someone who critiques things for a living, or acts like they do. (I’m really interested in this.)

31 Blog Writing Prompts to Break Your Writer’s Block (Hubspot)

This site offers generic prompts which I think is pretty handy for writing practice. Whereas in the first two sites, my goal is deliberate practice, in this one, my purpose is to have a regular one.

The prompts I’m interested in are the following:

• Choose three photos with different scenes and create a story to tie them together.
• Reveal a superpower you’d love to have and what you’d do with it.
• Write about the goals you’d like to work toward in the next five years (Another journal-worthy prompt.)

Other prompts for possible content:

• Create a writing playlist.
• Day In The Life As A  _________ (Insert Your Career) – Although I already posted a piece about my current career here, I think what I do for a living is so different from what this blog is about. I will try my best to work on this piece though.

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These days, fanfiction ideas float around when I’m in a meeting so I take it as a good sign. Just for fun, tell me, how do you get over writer’s block?