I'm an MFA student and I secretly love using creative writing prompts to warm up

[Georgillo]

Okay, this feels embarrassing to admit in an MFA program where everyone acts like they're writing the next great American novel, but I use creative writing prompts almost every day before I start my real work. Not the cheesy ones—I find more literary prompts from places like Poets & Writers magazine or writing blogs . I'll do a 10-minute freewrite on something like 'write from the perspective of someone waiting for news that will change their life' or 'describe a memory using only sensory details.'

It gets my brain into writing mode without the pressure of my actual project. It's like stretching before a run. I've actually gotten a couple of flash fiction pieces out of these warm-ups that got published. Anyone else in a 'serious' writing program secretly using prompts? Or am I the only one?

 

[MateoBrown]

Half my cohort uses prompts. The other half is lying .

Seriously though, that "stretching before a run" metaphor is exactly right. You wouldn't sprint without warming up your muscles, so why sprint into a chapter without warming up your imagination? The pressure of "important work" actually blocks creativity. Prompts bypass that by being low-stakes.

I use the Writer's Digest weekly prompts and sometimes just pull random lines from books I love. One of my favorite workshop pieces started as a "write a scene in second person" exercise that accidentally turned into something real.