Rands Writing Prompts #4 (February 12th, 2024)

Infinite words

1. What is your favorite word? Write 100 words about your favorite word.

2. When do you feel most productive?

3. What was your favorite part of your last vacation?

Welcome to Week #4 of Rands Writing Prompts. The prior week is here. I’ve written  12 prompts now. How much have you written?

One of my greatest writing achievements is my slush pile. A slush pile is a collection of half-written pieces that fall into one of three states of done:

1. Not at all. A title or a sentence or two. When I glance at this piece, I can barely remember why it was important when I wrote it. This is the minority of the slush pile.

2. A half-thought. This abandoned piece had a couple of hours of devoted work. Multiple paragraphs. There was a good chance this would be an article or a chapter, but I lost my way. Maybe the piece was heading in a strange direction (this is fine), or I lost interest (also normal). This is the majority of the slush pile.

3. Just about done. This is strange and doesn’t happen a lot. If I have sufficient energy to get past the half-thought, I usually have enough in the tank to finish it. The most common cause is failure to find an ending. What was the point of this piece? What knowledge do I want to convey? How do I summarize what I am teaching? If I can’t find that last inspiration piece, I might stop. Writing trick #1: the reason this doesn’t happen a lot is you can repeat your beginning with different words and — viola! — there’s your ending.

Writing is an endeavor in creative energy management. The potential origin story for a given article is the topic of another article, but most articles start with an immeasurable spark. Oh. Yeah. I gotta write this. With each subsequent sentence, I’m withdrawing from that energy. If I fail to find additional inspiration as I write, the article may never be finished. That’s another article, too.

When a piece is unfinished, it lands in the slush pile. Mostly forgotten. I am calmer when I infrequently look at this slush pile because its existence reminds me that every word is not precious. There are always more words.