photo courtesy of Flickr: Click on the image to see the photographer's page.

You are a writer, but do you sometimes find it hard to write?

One of my best friends is a chef. You wouldn’t believe how often he has a hard time deciding what’s for dinner.

This is normal. Whatever your occupation, you are subject to the same fatigue as anyone. Dentists get tired of looking at teeth, plumbers get tired of pipes and writers, well no matter how much you might love language, sometimes you’re probably going to get a bit tired of slinging words.

The amazing thing is, once you crash through that inertia, your brain will be there to delight and surprise you. There is nothing better for a writer trying to smash their writer’s block than to simply start writing. One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever read was simply, Give yourself permission to write a first draft.

Your first draft can be terrible and it doesn’t have to make sense. It’s primary function is to get your fingers and brain working together.

Once you start writing, magic happens.

This is the idea behind the Creative Copy Challenge, our six-week-old site that has been doing gangbusters in the community aspect. We would love to bring some of that creative energy to the Inkwell.

We plan on publishing one prompt per week to get our writers writing as well as helping us to know our community a little better. We did this a couple of times last year with interesting results. We don’t intend for this to replace Creative Copy Challenge, but to rather work in a slightly different manner, exercising different creative muscles.

Prompts will be either visual or written. Both David and I will contribute our own entries in the comment section.

Here is the first prompt:

“She placed the box on the sidewalk, looked over her shoulder, and then slowly walked away.”

We look forward to reading what each of you come up with. Write a short paragraph or a full fledged short story, whatever you want.

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I like to watch people.

Okay, that probably sounded kinkier than planned, but that’s okay, we’re all friends here. The point is, I love people watching. One of my favorite places to have done this was New Jersey, where I saw a wider variety of people than I’d ever seen before. It was a people watcher’s paradise!

Usually when I watch people, I try and imagine their lives. Either what they are doing or thinking at the moment or what their lives are like. I like to think I’m accurate in my guesses, but the only way to know is to follow them around. And usually the police get upset when you do that. When I was younger and didn’t have a car, I took the bus a lot and would write about the imagined lives of the people on the bus. Man, some of those people had incredibly bizarre lives!

So, what does this have to do with you?

The name Collective Inkwell isn’t just our chosen online studio name. We want to help inspire and foster creativity in our community.

Following suggestions and positive feedback from our story contest earlier this year, we want to invite you to take part in more creative writing exercises. We’ll try some different things from time to time depending on how popular they are.

First up, the photo story prompt.

Here’s the idea. Using the photo below as your prompt, you leave a comment with a short story describing the scene below. Feel free to use this only as a launching point, if you like. Be creative.

We look forward to seeing how you interpret this scene.

Please tweet this post and help spread the word.

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