Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: You have traveled 20 years into the future. Your older self is sitting beside you, giving you advice that could change your life in significant ways. Write a scene about this encounter. Do you take the advice? How does your life change in the past/future after heeding the advice?
Inspirational Quote: “I sometimes give myself excellent advice. Occasionally, I even listen to it.”
-Jim Butcher, Ghost Story
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: Start a story with: ‘My life changed forever when my car stalled in front of a creepy, open gate.’
Inspirational Quote: “Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind.”
-Dean Koontz
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: Write a story about a baker who is able to use truth as an ingredient. All who eat his baked goods have to tell the truth for an entire day.
Inspirational Quote: “Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.”
-Emily Dickinson
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: Start a story with: ‘It was an ordinary day until a character from my favorite movie asked for my help to save the world.’
Inspirational Quote: “Remember, the essence of storytelling demands that we place our main characters on a path. A quest with something at stake, with something to do, to achieve, to learn, and to change.”
-Larry Brooks – Story Engineering
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: You are an alien on a ship headed toward Earth in the year 2036. What are the first five things you see when you transport to the surface of the planet?
Inspirational Quote: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: Hogwarts has made you the new Potions teacher. What potion is brewing in your students’ cauldrons today?
Inspirational Quote: “I’m always writing. There is always a story brewing in my head.”
-Mel Gibson
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: Write a short story using the first line: The text message said, ‘Meet me in the cemetery at midnight…I’ll have the evidence you need’.
Inspirational Quote: “I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.”
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: While on a hike in a remote area, you discover a tunnel that you walk through. At the end of the tunnel, you are transported to another place and/or another time. Where are you?
Inspirational Quote: “The way that people feel changes everything. Feelings are forces. They cause us to time travel. And to leave ourselves, to leave our bodies. I would be that kind of psychologist who says ‘you’re absolutely right-there are monsters under the bed’.”
-Helen Oyeyemi
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: On your eighteenth birthday, your mother reveals that you are not human. She presents you with a leather-bound book that explains your nonhuman origin. What are you? How does knowing this change your life?
Inspirational Quote: “You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”
-Neil Gaiman
Muse Mugging Monday
Writing Prompt: What is your personal definition of perseverance? Think of all you’ve overcome because you just didn’t give up. Write about a memorable event in your life in which you were rewarded for your persistence even if the reward was merely personal satisfaction.
Inspirational Quote: “…you’re going to want to take the entire manuscript and throw it in the trash at times, but you know you’re going to get through it…I think if one word describes any writer in the world it’s perseverance…If I had any piece of advice for anyone out there to finish any job it would be, don’t stop, just don’t stop…get to it and get through it.”
-Rita Clay Estrada
Rita was the first president and a founding member of Romance Writers of America. The RITA, RWA’s signature award for romance writing excellence, is the namesake of Rita.
