What is your current obsession? How might/do you see it fueling your creativity? Do you make your obsessions known or are they furtive? Write a creative piece of any format inspired by this obsession.

Prompt #117:
1. What were you taught to value and aspire to as a writer? What canonical authors & works were you taught to revere?

2. What people and/or institutions influence your work, and how does it show up in your writing?

3. Of these, what beliefs or conventions do you not resonate with, and want to unlearn?

Rounded characters, climax and denouement, linear narrative structure– these are all considered fundamental to “good writing”. Yet many of us do not experience life according to these terms.

Prompt #117:
1. What were you taught to value and aspire to as a writer? What canonical authors & works were you taught to revere?

2. What people and/or institutions influence your work, and how does it show up in your writing?

3. Of these, what beliefs or conventions do you not resonate with, and want to unlearn?

I don’t think grammar needs to be so tight. I love when writing reflects the way people speak. And people never speak with perfect grammar. In my own writing, I want to write more characters that speak the way kids in my neighborhood spoke growing up. 

I saw a video recently about how the AAVE (African American Vernacular English) construction like “he be doing the most” is actually the creation of a new continuous tense. How beautiful is that.

Prompt #118: 1. How might you re-invent conventions of the English language so that it better serves your soul’s true expression? This can be grammar-related, like capitalization, tense, and syntax; or larger craft aspects like the linearity or understanding of a piece as a whole.

2. Thinking back to last week’s prompts on unlearning institutional literary values that no longer resonate, let’s look ahead to building something new—your own creative values & beliefs. What type of work do you aspire to create? What values does that work hold?

1 - Irregardless is not a word. That’s what my eighth-grade English teacher told me. Of course it’s a word. Anyone who speaks the language knows exactly what it means. It would have been better to teach us that irregardless is non-standard and should be avoided in formal writing because it’s redundant. I don’t know how this word became a flash point, but it seems generations were schooled wrong. But it’s more than one point. It’s representative of a mindset that goes beyond the prescriptive vs descriptive debate to the point of revision. If the formal education system can do that to a common word, then what else are they doing?

Prompt #119: Think of a topic or story that feels pleasurable to write about. If there’s something that feels too indulgent, self-serving, or frivolous, that’s a hint—you may want to write about it. With your new creative parameters in mind, write about this topic in whichever form flows out—whether it be a poem, flash fiction, or stream-of-consciousness.

Dear John,

I know how happy you are about the publication of your novel after spending ten years writing and revising it, and then to boast this week being a finalist for the “prestigious” Hemingway Award. How exciting!

I can’t celebrate with you, however, because your novel is a 466-page bloated mess. It was “published” not on merit, where an agent or small press was willing to invest their money in your work, but because you paid someone to print it for you. And your award “nomination” was the result of meeting the contest’s sole criteria of paying the $54 entry fee. It’s an “award” that everyone wins (as long as they fork over that entry fee). There are no cash prizes for “winning” these contests, just the right to put a classy little sticker on your book cover (for a nominal additional fee, of course).

Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art.