Pro tip: Skip the fancy prompts and just describe your morning coffee.

I've been getting flak from my workshop for claiming that mundane, everyday scenes make the best writing starters, but it's how I wrote my first published piece, so what's the most ordinary thing you've turned into a story?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_riley7d ago

Totally with you on the 'describe your morning coffee' idea. My first sale was about untangling earphones (I read somewhere that Anne Lamott praises writing about 'short assignments' like that, you know?). It's shocking how much drama fits in a knotted cord.

xenarobinson7d ago

Honestly, the mundane is a goldmine. I once spent an hour describing a stuck zipper, and it turned into this metaphor for personal frustration that just clicked, which reminds me of how we overlook these daily struggles. Anne Lamott's bird by bird approach really resonates when you zoom in on those tiny, infuriating moments, like untangling earphones that somehow become epic battles against chaos. It's not just about the physical act, it's about the emotional weight we attach to these things, you know? We're all fighting these micro-wars, and capturing that is where the real writing happens.

kevin_davis6d ago

Absolutely! @the_riley gets it, those tiny fights with earphones or waiting for coffee are full of real feeling.