We're Back!

Hi! We're back! With two exciting announcements.

The first is that on Wednesday I found out I won the 2017 Young Buck Poetry Prize through the literary journal Contemporary Verse 2 for my poem "Crystals"! This poem will be published in CV2's summer issue. 

The second is that IMPROMPTU Instagram is officially launched! I hope you'll follow along, @impromptuprompts. As of today, all of the posts are up to date, and curated in conjunction with this blog. Tomorrow is IMPROMPTU #40 and we will be starting fresh. 

I started this blog because I personally love writing from prompts. Writing from prompts helps me to be more improvisational in my writing practice, to follow the spirit of the moment, to generate material. In the very first IMPROMPTU blog post, I talked about how in music, an "impromptu" is a free form, improv-style composition. I think this term can be applied to writing too, to describe the energy of the free write, the first draft, what happens when you say YES to your ideas. I hope that @impromptuprompts will become a place where folks can share their impromptus (pieces inspired by IMPROMPTU prompts), and I do hope to share some snippets of my own impromptus, my own writing. 

I also love coming up with prompts and exercises that I think will inspire other writers. Over these past couple of months, I've loved receiving feedback from fellow writers and friends saying that they've been enjoying my posts, that they've created something from one of my prompts, that my prompts have helped them to reconnect with their writing practice. This is all I ever could have asked for from this blog. I hope that this community will continue to grow, that folks will continue to be inspired, and continue to share with me. 

Join me over here, @impromptuprompts. 

Much love and light to you, writers! Let's do this. 

Tiny Hiatus

Hi friends — I'm going to be taking a tiny baby hiatus from posting prompts, probably just for this week. The reason for this is actually very exciting! I'm starting to get the IMPROMPTU Instagram account rolling, and I just need a bit of time to get myself organized. Once things get rolling with @impromptuprompts on Insta, it will be all prompts all the time JUST YOU WAIT. Keep your eyes peeled and ears to the ground (and other idioms).

IMPROMPTU #39: Portrait of the ___

Read this beautiful poem, "Portrait of the Horse", by Jaswinder Bolina. 

Write a poem or short story titled "Portrait of the _________"  (after Jaswinder Bolina). You fill in the blank. Portrait of the Elephant. Portrait of the Child. Portrait of the Ghost. What does the figurative elephant-child-ghost represent in your life? Is it the noisy anxiety that wakes you in the morning? Or is it the silence between you and your mother? Are you sometimes the elephant-child-ghost? Or is it something you wish you could be? Something you pretend to be to avoid something else? How do you feel about it, how do those feelings shift—do they move the way an elephant or child or ghost moves?