Prompt: Share a secret desire or goal that you have for yourself as a writer. Go on ahead, put it out there ✨

**Poetry prompt: Consider something you’ve always sought in life. Now write about it in the style of a classifieds ad.**

WANTED: An Undeniable Sense of Style (i.e. Self)

Must be irreverent with a colorful softness that can only be characterized as graceful. Clean, tailored lines preferred so as to communicate dignity, but with nasty notes of artistic embellishments that say, "don't fuck with me." To apply, be almost entirely unobtainable and a bit too proud. Must deliver your most treasured piece in a custom bag that gives off scents of saffron, amber, and mint.

**Fiction prompt: Write a scene that takes place entirely in an elevator**

“What’s your opinion?”
“Of Chelsea?” Jake replies. I nod. Chelsea. Her name thrums in my brain as Jake hits the button and the elevator begins its descent.
“She’s a good kid,” Jake continues. He uses the language even though Chelsea is 27, but it’s in a protective way, not demeaning—you have to know Jake to get it. He’s compassionate. It’s why he’ll entertain a conversation like this with me in the first place. “She loves her parents to a fault. Cares too much about what they think. Doesn’t care enough about what SHE thinks, and it’s wreaking havoc on her self esteem. But she doesn’t take it out on anyone. Some destructive coping mechanisms, that’s for sure…” Jake shifts uncomfortably. We both want to think the best of Chelsea, but her life choices are hard to rationalize. “But she never hurt anyone,” he finishes, as the elevator bounces to settle on the lowest floor. “M.”
“I like that. Thanks, Jake,” I whisper. And I watch him wheel Jane Doe—no, Chelsea—to her cubby in the morgue, the last story anyone would make up about her a kind one.

**Prompt: Parents. We don’t choose ‘em but we all have 'em. In what ways do your parents’ or parental figure’s quirks show up in you or your character? How did that realization come about and what has the effect been?**

Parents
Are like the soil
Sometimes sun baked clay
Sometimes rich and fertile
And we are the acorns
That grow
Into oaks
Nourished or starved
But thriving
And repeat the cycle
Again
And
Again

**Poetry prompt: Take the subject line from the last email you received (before this one) and write it into a stanza**

Street safety rally tomorrow
Who will show?
Will it be the ones who matter?
Or the ones who always know to show?

— — —

Save 50% off all lifetime purchases
reads a sign at the Devil’s Emporeum
Hell is hot but this deal is hotter
He strokes his beard, eyes the shelves
You become inventory here when you sell your soul

**Prompt: Let’s do a character sketch. Describe yourself, someone you know, one of your protagonists, that person your mind keeps drifting back to year after year (you know who) or literally anyone. Use prose, poetry, stream of consciousness, alliteration, hypothetical questions—use your words in whatever form they come to you.**

What’s in a friend? Is it watching a movie under blankets late one night — the movie doesn’t matter — and a cheap bottle of wine on the coffee table? Is it that the used $100 couch is worn in and stained because it was all we could afford with our terrible entry level salaries? Is that we checked in to make sure we knew what the other was doing? Is it confiding in our crushes, our bosses who we couldn’t stand, our dreams, our nightmares? Is it missing each other when we’re apart? I have a friend in you.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.