Every day at roughly the same time, close your eyes, flip through this book, and point to something on a page. Whatever prompt you’re touching, write about it for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes! That’s it! You can do almost anything for only fifteen minutes. I don’t care if you think it’s a stupid prompt. Don’t look for another one. You’re stuck with it. If it’s very different from anything you would ever imagine yourself writing, that’s good. And if it’s a prompt that makes you think, “I know nothing about this subject,” I don’t care. You might know more about it than you realize at first, and anyway, the point is to get your imagination going. Write a description, a short scene, a conversation, a paragraph—whatever comes into your head is fine. For those fifteen minutes, write fast. Don’t judge what you’re writing. It doesn’t have to be high quality. It just has to be writing. Get it out there. Do this once a day for two weeks. Now, while you’re doing it, two weeks may seem like a long time. It’s really not. How many weeks have you spent not writing at all? You may not enjoy this process. Change is often uncomfortable, and it takes effort. Then again, you may have fun with it. You won’t be under any pressure to create a finished, brilliant story—and that pressure may have been shutting you down in the first place.
Every day at roughly the same time, close your eyes, flip through this book, and point to something on a page. Whatever prompt you’re touching, write about it for fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes! That’s it! You can do almost anything for only fifteen minutes. I don’t care if you think it’s a stupid prompt. Don’t look for another one. You’re stuck with it. If it’s very different from anything you would ever imagine yourself writing, that’s good. And if it’s a prompt that makes you think, “I know nothing about this subject,” I don’t care. You might know more about it than you realize at first, and anyway, the point is to get your imagination going. Write a description, a short scene, a conversation, a paragraph—whatever comes into your head is fine. For those fifteen minutes, write fast. Don’t judge what you’re writing. It doesn’t have to be high quality. It just has to be writing. Get it out there.