Last weekend I visited the Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. It was fantastic—like taking a walk through his life as an artist. I was interested to learn about a practice he called “Fantasy Sketches.” In this exercise, he listened to a piece of classical music and challenged himself to draw a complete story before the last note sounded. Some of these ended up being the beginning seeds of books that were later published. (Like Where the Wild Things Are.)
I’ve been wanting to do more writing that’s just “for play”, to keep things feeling fun for myself, and the combination of sharing my prompt for Storystorm last week, plus seeing the Maurice Sendak exhibit, has sparked the idea of giving myself weekly writing prompts. And I thought maybe it would be fun to share these prompts online, too, in case anyone else wants to try them out. If you’re a teacher, feel free to use these with your class! I’d love to hear how the prompts work for you, if you do try them.
I’m also going to share my own responses to the prompts on Substack with paid subscribers. These will be my actual handwritten responses—no edits or revising— and that feels way too vulnerable to share beyond those who are seriously interested in learning about my writing process and/or having conversations about writing. I might also include some after-the-fact commentary about the prompt and my response, and if I do continue developing an idea, I’ll share that over there, too.
But priority #1 is to have fun with writing. Come play along!
