My latest blog post for Ploughshares offers writing prompts inspired by abstract art, with wisdom from Jeanette Winterson, and features a fantastic, electric illustration courtesy of Amy Frierson.
Back when I was slogging through the first draft of my first novel, I looked to visual art every morning as a prompt. I had a big stack of Dover art stickers that I would randomly choose from, and stick in my journal, and over time, I found that Kandinsky helped me write my protagonist. I have no idea why. But when you’re focusing on just getting words on the page, you do whatever works, right? Now I’m working on a couple projects dealing with art more deliberately, one of which I’ve written a bit about in these posts; the other is a bit too embryonic, but I’m excited about it and look forward to telling you more here when the time is right.
That’s great!
Thanks, Justina! Glad you enjoyed it.
You’re welcome. I’m always glad to find another tool to fight writer’s block. A blog post a week and a novel to work on can leave my brain fried.
That is a lot! There are more writing prompts in my previous posts for Ploughshares too–not to distract you from your own writing 🙂 I’m always hopeful that one of the prompts will unlock something important for another writer: http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/author/ancaszilagyi/
I appreciate it! I’ll check them out the next time I’m stumped.