January is named for Janus, a Roman god of “beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.” This week’s creative prompts draw inspiration from Janus—take a few minutes, or more, to consider thresholds as the new year begins.
Remember: Don’t think too much about which prompt you pick—just select the first one that seems interesting and get started as quickly as possible. Here’s to a new year filled with writing (or painting or dancing or whatever creative activity you love).
- Write a scene or stanza in which the action begins with a knock at the door.
- The human body is full of portals and passageways. Choose one, or several, as starting points for a piece of poetry or short prose.
- Make a sensory inventory of all the doors in your home: appearance, texture, heft, sounds made when opening and closing, etc.
- Write about a time when you became aware of having passed from one stage of life into the next: puberty, middle-marriage, senescence, etc.
- Find creative inspiration in all sizes of underground or underwater passageways, whether animal- or human-made. Consider something as large as the Channel Tunnel, and as small as the passages made by moles beneath the surface of a lawn.
- Describe a moment, in verse or prose, taking place at the threshold of two states of consciousness—from sleep to awakening, life to death, ignorance to understanding.
- Write a scene or poem taking place just before, after, or during a journey through a revolving door.
- Consider the last time you interacted with a gate. Describe the two locations separated by the gate, the gate’s practical function, and any way that you might’ve felt different after passing from one side to the next.
- Think about any metaphorical doors in your life that you’ve been avoiding opening. What might happen if you did? Write about the best- and worst-case scenarios.
- Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, Sweet Sixteens. Coming-of-age ceremonies mark the passage from childhood to adulthood. Write about one from the perspective of the person being celebrated.
- Imagine a fork-in-the-road moment when you made a life-changing decision. Start from that point-of-entry and consider what would happen if you’d made an entirely different decision. How would that story begin and how would it end?
- What if you had access to a passageway that would take you to any place on earth, somewhere you may or may not have been before. What kind of passage would it be and what would you do when you got there?
Did you miss earlier prompts lists? Here they are. Whether you’re trying to write every day, every weekday, once a week, or just once in a while, prompts can help you take down the blank page, get your creative juices flowing, or take you in a new and fresh direction.
Like what you’ve written? Put it away for a week, then revisit, and revise, revise, revise. When it’s ready to go, submit. If you have feedback, or ideas for prompts, please get in touch.
Image of door in Gerberoy, Picardie, France by Submittable team member emeritus Laurie Pace.