Slightly Off KIlter

I’ve been working on a lot of writing prompts; I find that I enjoy them
greatly.

I treat them as “essay questions”; I try to respond in complete sentences,
preferably several complete sentences. Also, I try to
put some thought into my answers. If there are several questions, sometimes I
respond to them one at a time; lately I’ve been mixing my responses together
into one entry.

As I’ve been doing this, I find it’s getting easier. I am also noticing that that my
responses are changing. Initially, some prompts just wouldn’t “do it” for me.
I’d look at them and think “I have nothing to say”. Or “I have a few one word
answers”. Then I’d go away and do something else and my mind would noodle on
the prompt… and I’d come back and write a page and a half.

As an example, my first reaction to the
Friday 5
prompts for January 23 was
“This doesn’t do much for me… it’s 5 simple answers and I don’t even have an
answer for most of them anyway”. Then I thought about it and wrote my 1-page
response which
begins:

This week’s Friday 5 is about “current favorites”. It doesn’t do much for
me, but I’ll take a stab at it by answering in my own perverse fashion.

Isn’t it amazing how much you can write when you don’t have anything to say? 🙂

I’ve had similar reactions to a number of prompts… each time I end up
writing something that, for me, responds to the prompt (which is what they’re really
for after all), even if my response isn’t, perhaps, quite what the prompt
writer “had in mind”.

The most recent was the latest (and last) Past,
Present, and Future Meme. My first reactive thought was “I have nothing to
say”. My second, somewhat facetious, thought was, “here; there; where”.

Then I sat back and let my mind wander… Three simple questions
lead to a 900 word essay in response.

Do you like writing prompts? Do you find yourself discovering how much you can (sometimes)
write when you initially thought you had nothing to say?