floriental:

1. Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don’t worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up north—just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen, a half hour.
2. Begin with “I remember.” Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don’t be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago. Everything that isn’t this moment is memory coming alive again as you write. If you get stuck, just repeat the phrase “I remember” again and keep going.
3. Chose a color—for instance, pink—and take a fifteen minute walk. On your walk notice wherever there is pink. Come back to your notebook and write for fifteen minutes.
4. Write in different places—for example, in a laundromat, and pick up on the rhythm of the washing machines. Write at bus stops, in cafes. Write what is going on around you.
5. Write about “leaving.” Approach it any way you want. Write about your divorce, leaving the house this morning, or a friend dying.
6. Who are the people you have loved?
7. Write about the streets of your city.
8. Take a poetry book. Open to any page, grab a line, write it down, and continue from there. A friend calls it “writing off the page.” If you begin with a great line, it helps because you start right off from a lofty place. Every time you get stuck, just rewrite your first line and keep going. Re-writing the first line gives you a whole new start and a chance for another direction.
9. Visualize a place that you really love, be there, see the details. Now write about it. What colors are there, sounds, smells? When someone else reads it, they should know what it is like to be there. They should know how you love it, not by saying you love it, but by your handling of the details.
10. Write about:
11. swimming
12. the stars
13. the most frightened you’ve ever been
14. green places
15. the closest you’ve ever felt to nature
16. physical endurance

From “Writing Down to the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg.