A Wednesday Evening Prompt (Applicable to any evening, morning, afternoon, mid-afternoon, twilight, light dusk, etc.)

Posted: June 9th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Uncategorized |

Be naughty, counterintuitive, and perhaps counter-everything-you’ve-learned-about-writing. Write towards a superlative– any extreme. Write the saddest/silliest/ dullest/numbest/coldest/pithiest/Lynchiest/most exuberant/whatever-your-choice-may-be piece of writing that you’ve ever written, or, even more challenging, that you’ve ever read. In so doing, notice how this approach impacts your authorial voice: in order to truly attain such a goal (obviously not objectively speaking), should voice/style/structure change at all, or are you deft enough with plot to not have to neglect your typical writing tendencies? Do you have to stifle emotional flexibility within your piece, or can something only truly be, say, crushingly sad if it encompasses all those other elements? Simply notice what you must abandon and what you must adopt in using this method, and whether, in the end, you’re written something readable or something that purely sounds like an exercise.

–Moze Halperin (Intern)

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