D.I.Y. Writing Prompts

Create your own writing prompts with ease

Photo compliments of author

Blank pages come in myriad forms. Ghostly rectangles on desktop screens. College-lined blue on white cheap paper. Yellow schoolchild tablets. Heavy pebbly stationary with a monogram. Yet they have a commonality: blank pages beg to be filled. With writing.

I prefer the blank white of my desktop. My fingers can fill a page up in no time at all, except when they can’t. When I’ve hit a wall and don’t know what to write next or what to write at all. Those are the times I need a prod, a prompt, a reset.

Writing prompts fit the bill for these and many other situations. They come in all shapes and sizes on the internet, but I tire of hunting for them and deciding whether or not they’re worth a share of my email address. Instead, I prefer the freshness of creating my own writing prompts. You might, too.

Here’s a few ways to create D.I.Y. writing prompts. All of them can be used multiple times.

Pick a favorite eloquent speaker

When you need a prompt, choose one of their quotes. Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, and Eleanor Roosevelt have left many pithy quotations. How could you be blocked after reading Angelou’s “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.”