For this week’s creative prompts, the theme is water. It’s vital to our survival, it makes up most of our bodies, it’s fun to swim in! Take a few minutes, or more, to consider our life source, in all of its beauty and wonder—or art it out, or dance it out, whatever your medium may be.
Don’t forget: these pieces don’t have to be perfect. They don’t have to be anything, really, except something new you create in the world. Let go of your worries about who you are as an artist or writer; let go of your worries about whether or not a future reader might like it. Use this time to explore yourself and your art freely.
- Remember a time when your body was fully submerged in water—even if only for an instant—and it affected you in some way. Write about it.
- Describe your morning hot drink preparation in great detail, as though for someone completely unfamiliar with it. Be sure to use sensory details, and write it so that someone else could prepare it for themselves.
- Water gives us life, but it can also be extremely dangerous. Write a scene, story, or some stanzas involving the destructive power of water.
- Read ‘Rain’ by Kathleen Norris, and use it as a model to write about an experience of having come to understand some aspect of weather in a new way.
- Use images of underwater ghost towns as creative inspiration.
- Plan an imagined year-long ocean voyage. Include itinerary, company, provisions, and packing list. Be as spare or luxurious as you like. What’s the point or goal of your voyage?
- Let this Arctic icebreaker provide the background soundtrack for your writing time.
- ‘The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea’ (Karen Blixen writing as Isak Dinesen). Use this quote as a starting point for something, whether it’s a story, essay, poem, painting, or dance.
- Write about thirst, whether for water, or for something intangible. What does thirst for water have in common with thirst for something else? What’s different?
- Select an antique water map to use as a diving off point.
Did you miss earlier prompts lists? Here they are. We recommend these exercises as a weekly way to keep your creative mind limber, or simply as a refreshing break away from bigger projects that may be bogging you down. They only take a few minutes—and they usually get fun once you get started, we promise.
Like what you’ve written? Put it away for a week, then revisit and when it’s ready to go, submit. If you have feedback, or ideas for prompts, please get in touch.
[Photograph of Montana’s Flathead Lake by Submittable team member Kelly Hart]