This week’s creative prompts are inspired by the sweets and sugar that often pervade the holiday season. Sweet treats can offer us a moment of mirth in our mouth, but too many can be too much. Take a few minutes to study the saccharine, in writing or art.
Don’t take too long worrying about which prompt to pick—instead of dawdling, choose the first one that peaks your interest and run with it. This isn’t going to be etched on your gravestone, it’s just a short exercise in creative thinking.
- Write about a time you encountered the unfamiliar holiday sweet treats of another family or culture. How did it taste? Did you like it? Where were you that you got to enjoy a treat from outside of your comfort food zone?
- From fro-yo to tutti frutti, fun words for the sugary abound. Do something wild with them.
- Ask a family member for a recipe of an oft-made holiday treat from years ago. Re-create it with diligence, and write about the experience of preparing and/or consuming it. How can you capture the spirit of baking it, and the exact taste of it?
- Listen to a sweet song multiple times while free-writing. See what comes.
- Pour. Stir. Drizzle. Glaze. Make a list of baking-related action verbs and incorporate at least half of them into a poem or short piece of prose. You get extra points if your baking words go into a story or poem that has nothing to do with baking.
- Recall a favorite holiday treat from childhood. Describe the taste, the ingredients, who made it, and any specific memory of eating it.
- Focus on a sweet dream, recalled or invented.
- Consider the powerful sugar art of Kara Walker in writing.
- Travel back to 1960’s sweets. Include one or more forgotten desserts in a poem or piece of prose. It doesn’t necessarily have to take place in the decade.
- List a Baker’s Dozen of things, people, or conditions that you’re grateful for this holiday season.
Did you miss earlier prompts lists? Here they are, if you’re hungry for more.
And here’s your completely unsolicited writing tip for the week: just like candy and cookies and things, you can always have too much of a good thing. Be sure to enjoy a few of the holidays without writing or thinking about your writing projects. Focus on life, get outside to ski or skate, curl up with a good book, and let your brain take a little vacation. You might be surprised how ready to go it will be when you return to your desk.
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.