Category: Writing Prompts

Travel prompt 2: Berlin

There are a few streets in Berlin, the residential ones, where each building sports a different colour. The buildings have each been designed with very precise and immaculate architecture, drawing your eyes to the details around the windows, doors and roofs, each adorned with white frosting.

I’ve found that walking through some of these residential streets brings a sense of peace and contentment not often found in a city. These streets are quiet, uninterrupted by the movement of crowds that inhabit the more tourist-ridden areas. On my way to meet my friend, I feel contained by the calm, the quiet. The trees are rustled by the breeze, but stand still, protecting my progress with a soft shade that keeps the strong summer rays at bay. The silence is interrupted by the peals of church bells, drawing the few people strolling the streets towards it. A call to gathering. I stop for a moment, absorbing it all, and wait for the bells to cease their calling to continue down my path.

Writing Prompt Update

Hello my darling readers,

Just a little heads up on the writing prompts process. Over the next five weeks, I’m going to be traveling. I’ll be in Berlin, Sweden (Stockholm and Karlstad), London, and Toronto, and then will spend some time in my family cottage near Ottawa. As I have committed to packing light for this trip, I won’t be lugging around my book of ‘642 things to write about’. So, for the time I am away, I will, instead, obtain my prompts from things I see during my travels. For instance, if I see a funky looking person walking down the street in Berlin, I may write a story based on that person. Or, if someone I meet says something interesting that inspires me, I’ll write a piece based on that phrase.

When I return, I’ll delve back into the regular prompts from the book.

Thanks to all of you that take the time to read me!

Ali

Prompt 68

“Google search your own name. Write about the search result that is closest to your name but isn’t you.”

If I search my name, Alison Cameron, I inevitably stumble on multiple pages dedicated to one of the doctors from the famous show, House M.D. Allison Cameron is one of the first doctors to work with the controversial main character and, once she changes position in the hospital, she plays a smaller, but still influential role, in the show. Granted, her name has two Ls in it instead of one, but Google does not discern this particular difference as it expects that a number of people will mistakenly think her name has one L, having not seen it in writing before.

Even with the show having been done for five years now, she still sits at the top of the Google search pile of Al(l)ison Camerons. I can’t say I am too concerned with being ‘found’ at the moment, so I have no problem with the fictional character retaining her position there. Maybe one day, however, if my writing catches someone’s eye, I’ll at least be second?

Prompt 67

“Your favourite piece of playground equipment” 

When I was little, there weren’t many occasions where we would go to playgrounds. Our family lived on a farm, and our playground was our garden, with low hanging branches to climb and fallen tree trunks to walk across.  Read More

Prompt 66

“What you were doing this time last year”

This time last year, I was in the process of packing up my life in Toronto. I was selling furniture, filling boxes meticulously with our possessions, debating over what to keep versus what to give away or throw away.

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Prompt 65

“Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one
The mouse ran down
Hickory dickory dock.”

He was cursed, this mouse was. His name was Remus. He lived in a hole in the wall, underneath the staircase of the Fairchild household, right across the room from the Fairchild grandfather clock that had been in the family for generations. He spent most of his time in his home glaring at the clock, hating it and the hold it had on him.

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Prompt 64

“What does writer’s block feel like?”

I think that just as much as every writer has their own process for writing, each and every one probably experiences writer’s block in different ways.

The easiest way to envisage writer’s block is a pair of clawed hands holding the writer back, rendering him or her unable to reach their pen, keyboard, or quill. It’s those hands, though, that take on different shapes.

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