It's Your Parade!

It's a parade, for you! You're all dressed up, sitting on the back of a fancy white convertible with a rain of confetti pouring out of tall buildings all around you. What did you do to gain such fame and attention?

The Last Place you Would Look

You can't find something important. But you know it will be in the last place you look cause when you put it away you were careful to make sure you could find it again so you put it in such a good, safe place. Also, once you find it you're very likely to stop looking so of course, that will be the last place you look, literally. So, where is the last place you would look? Think about it, something creative and interesting that isn't really entirely logical.

The Derelict Lighthouse and the Hungry Sharks

You're shipwrecked on a little island. An island so small you can see across it from one end to the other. Just enough land for you to feel you won't drown at high tide. The only man made structure on the island is a decrepit lighthouse. Obviously it's been abandoned for some time. Luckily you have your digital camera so you spend your first hour or so taking really interesting and artsy photos of the derelict lighthouse. Now, how do you get them off the island, onto your home computer? Can you rig up something with whatever resources are on the island or will you just try to swim home, see if you can out race the hungry sharks?

Mad Scientists and the Ant Farm

You were captured by a tribe of mad scientists. Shrunk down to the size of an ant and stuck into an ant farm. Now, how do you get out of it and back to your usual human size? Don't forget you have to escape the tribe of mad scientists too, you can hear them giggling as they watch you crawling along the tunnels of the ant farm.

Mosquito Bitten

You've just been turned into a particularly nasty and hungry mosquito. Who do you bite first and, more importantly, just how nasty are you?

Chocolate Santa

You're delivering pizza on Christmas Day (someone has to do it!) it starts to snow, heavily. The car skids and slides over the road and you wind up stuck in a huge snowbank. While digging your way out you discover Santa and his sleigh. A chocolate Santa and his sleigh, of course. The wrapper seems to have a weird glitter or is that just salt from the road? Would you eat it, why or why not?

Name Yourself a World Ruler

What would you name your own country, it's provinces (states) and the capital cities? What kind of ruler would you be?

Something for the World to Remember you By

You've been invited to contribute something to a time capsule. What would you pick to put in there, something not too private or personal and yet something uniquely you. Something for the world to remember you by.

Curing the Cold

You've invented the cure for the common cold, finally! Take a moment to be proud and then write your press release. How do you announce your great discovery?

Write your Own Adventure

Write your own adventure. You're dropped out of the sky and into the jungles of Columbia, somewhere. How did you end up there and what happens to your afterwards? Most of all, how do you get through the jungle with just whatever fit into the small backpack you managed to grab before you were expelled from the plane?

I'm Late... For a Very Important Date

You're late... what are you late for? What was the first thing that came to your mind when you think about being late. Write about how you ended up being late, the story of the journey.

The Great Outdoors

On a day when you feel really discouraged from writing. Stop. Pick up your purse and any other essentials and get outside. Take a bus, drive or walk your way to somewhere you can sit in the outdoors. It may be a park bench or the middle of nowhere if you live near enough to it, or for some the best you can do is a window overlooking the street outside, but find a bit of nature and the outdoors and let it blow the cobwebs out of your mind.

Your Real Birthday Wishes

What did you REALLY want for your birthday this year? Within reason of the standard working person's budget and abilities to wrap up with a bow and transport in the average vehicle.

About A Week Before Christmas

Write about the story behind your favourite Christmas tree ornament.

Never Never Land

You have the choice of living on a planet that never gets hot or a planet that never gets cold. They both have the same geography: oceans, mountains, lakes, beaches, deserts and so on. The only real difference is that one never experiences winter and the other never experiences summer. Which do you choose and why?

Life on the Small Side

You've just been reincarnated/ recycled as a bug, an insect if you want to get technical, what kind of bug are you? How is life as one of the smallest creatures?

Surviving the Afterness

The world suddenly ends, civilization is broken up and people are just surviving in little pockets or alone. Communications are down, no Internet. No electrical power but for the odd generator still managing to function. Think about it... how would you carry on? How would you find food, shelter and the other basics for living? Would you stay alone or find a group to pool resources with? What skills do you have that might be just a hobby now but suddenly become valuable in the new way of life?

Switch Around

You wake up one morning to find you have switched lives with your best friend. What things can (or will) you do now that you could not have done when you were still yourself? Why can you do these things now and not before?

An Ordinary Event in the Scheme of Things

Nearly time to leave for work, you're catching the bus today. Pretty plain and simple event in the ordinary scheme of things, right? So, what three things happen on the way from the house to the bus stop? Write about three ordinary things you see or do between leaving home and arriving at the bus stop.

The Big Deal Family Dinner

Your new in-laws are coming over for dinner, for the first time. You want to make a good impression mainly because you actually like them and have had a few really good dinners when you visited there and other family. What do you decide to make? How do you decorate the table settings? How does the whole thing work out?

Belated Birthday Wishes

Your significant other forgets your birthday. You wait till midnight, just to be sure there wasn't a surprise party, then you make plans. Do you take revenge or do you give yourself your own birthday party, for one? Give details about which choice you make and why.

Choosing Web Scripts, Gadgets and Widgets

One thing I have learned to watch for when I look at free web scripts, gadgets, widgets and such for adding to my blog are hitchhikers. Before you paste the code into your HTML paste it into Notepad first. Read the code. Do you see a link to a third party URL? A site not your own or the one you are using the code from.

Some of the sites offering freebies are also making a buck by using your blog to spam another site. Watch for it. You can remove that part of the code or just choose not to use the script, find something else.

Why does it matter? Well, not a big deal, but do you really want someone else using your blog to make money for themselves? Whether your blog is completely spam/ ad free or not, do you want people getting away with piggy backing on your work?

Your Super Hero Power

If you could pick any super hero power (speed, telepathy, immortality, freezing, fire-breathing, shapeshifting, and so on) what would it be? Now write about your own adventures as super hero. Or, would you be a hero at all? Maybe you would choose to be a super villain instead. Either way, write yourself an adventure to remember.

Speedy Introductions

Think of some people you know, some characters in a book you have read or just randomly write up a person. Now, give them an introduction as if they just sat down at the table across from someone, speed dating. In a quick introduction how would you sell them to the person on the other side of that small table?

Would You Like Coffee With That?

Do you want a hot mug of coffee or do you want a mug of hot coffee? Do you watch your word placement as you write and edit? Make sure you are describing a hot coffee and not a hot mug.

Something like "I'm an antique lover." Works in conversation, spoken words have tone to show their meaning and feedback to help any confusion. When writing calling someone an antique lover could be misunderstood. Do you love antiques or are you the antique? This really makes a bigger difference when you are trying to describe an idea of sequence of events to someone else. It is also one of the things I was told I do a lot when I was writing in college.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Take an ordinary word like.... pancake, bookbag, pencil, cards, or carrots and turn it into a naughty story. How could you write about carrots in a wicked way? Naughty and wicked don't have to be adult but it should be something you wouldn't read to the kids as a bedtime story.

Snowflakes In the Air

Just draw a bunch of snowflakes. Each one should look different just as real snowflakes are never two the same. Go online for inspiration if you don't know where to start. But why not just give your brain the chance to be really creative. After all no one needs to be a great artist to draw a few straight(ish) lines.

Give it a Snappy Ending

You go to the grocery store, pick up a few things you needed. Get out some extra cash at the bank machine. Stop for a quick lunch at the local diner then head home. Kind of boring and every day? Give it a snappy ending. What happens on the way home, something really out there and completely unexpected.

Letter to the Tooth Fairy

Write a letter to the Tooth Fairy. Send interview questions that you could build into a real article. Why does she have an interest in teeth? What does she do with them? Come up with good, interesting questions and then answer them all so you can write the interview.

A Best Friend is Timeless

Through all history and through all the world of people living or dead (and considering we never really know anyone all that well) who would you pick to be your best friend? Someone you confide in and someone who can confide in you. Someone who you can depend on and give back the same. Why would you pick that person? Write a scenario where you and your fictional best friend talk about a problem you are having right now.

Happy Ever Afters

With the ups and downs of relationships, getting disappointed, lied to, getting really hurt, maybe even divorced. Can you still let someone love you, can you even believe it if someone says they really do want to be with you (other than sexually)? Where are you feeling in all of this? If you can't identify with all those emotions/ feelings can you write about someone who is?

Write about falling in love, again, after you've been left by someone else who made you believe in happy ever afters.

Close Your Eyes...

Close your eyes... pick up something (not your hot coffee cup!) and describe it by touch alone. What do you miss by not being able to see and more importantly, what do you discover through touch that you would have overlooked if you could just plainly see what it was? Consider all your senses next time you describe a scene, a person or a thing.