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Wrote 5 prompts in a diner on a rainy Tuesday and got 3 story ideas out of it
Last Tuesday it rained all day here in Portland, so I ducked into a diner on Belmont with a notebook instead of going home. I gave myself five prompts and wrote one paragraph for each, just whatever came out. The one about a guy returning a library book 20 years late turned into something I'm still working on. The other four were dead ends, but three of them sparked ideas I never would've found at my desk. Does anyone else get better prompts from a weird location than from a prompt list at home?
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jana_scott9d ago
My friend Dave does this thing where he writes at the laundromat on 3rd. Two years ago he was stuck on a short story for weeks and then wrote the whole ending on a folding table while his socks spun around. He says the noise and the weird lighting switch something on in his brain that his quiet apartment can't do. I tried the same thing at a coffee shop near my place and got maybe one good line out of an hour, so it doesn't work for everyone. It makes sense though, different rooms push your head in different directions.
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williams.jenny9d ago
All due respect to Dave but writing in a laundromat sounds like a nightmare. The spin cycle, the beeping machines, someone's kid screaming in the corner while you're trying to get a sentence to land. Give me a plain quiet room with a door that shuts every single time.
And the different rooms thing is mostly in your head. People write on planes, on trains, in jail, in hospital beds. The room is not doing the work, the person forcing themselves to sit down is.
Jana, you got one good line in an hour because that is just how writing goes sometimes, not because the coffee shop had the wrong lighting. Dave probably would have finished that story in his apartment too, he just happened to be at the laundromat when it finally clicked.
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