September: New Term Daily Prompts

Here are writing prompts for the new school year. Just ten to fifteen minutes a day can make a huge difference. It is good for you, for your energy and well-being; it is brilliant CPD; it will make a difference.

Find the space for your own writing. Writing is often the thing that we set aside for other things, for other people. We make appointments for the dentist, to see an anxious A level student, to help a colleague. Make an appointment with your writing. If you have a calendar write it in there. Colour code it. Put it on your phone and set the alarm. You need only fifteen minutes. If that is all you have between one thing and another, set a timer just short of the time you have available and get going.

But don’t feel guilty about it. Just make it part of your routine like brushing your teeth! And enjoy it! In fact, you don’t even have to enjoy it.

1 Getting Ready for school

Whether you are a child or a teacher, the end of the summer, the return to school, is filled with mixed feelings, rituals, ancient layers of familiar preparations. Tell us about your approach to the new school year. Are there new pencils? A different notebook? Uniform, shoes, school bag. What things do you do as school approaches -a last late swim, a barbecue, a walk by the canal. And what are the tell-tale signs? For me, there is always something about the weather, that move from August to September.

2 LISTS

You could write a list every day. They are so full of promise. You could just write a September of lists. And some of them may sprout a poem or a piece of prose. Today’s list is coats. Make a list of all the coats you have worn, own, borrowed, lusted after. Choose one and tell its story.

3 A million billion miles away from home

What do you remember of your very first day at school, or your first day at a new school, or just the first day of a new year? Think through the senses. Take us there. Who was there with you? Bring them into the picture.

4 baffled and amazed

‘If we are not sometimes baffled and amazed and undone by the world around us, rendered speechless and stunned, perhaps we are not paying close enough attention.’ Ben Marcus.
What baffles and amazes you? Go.

5 right here right now

Describe where you are. See it through a camera lens: line up the shot. Try a broad sweep, then focus. Give the detail. Be the camera. Translate what you see into your own words. Give the light and shadow. Draw attention to the unexpected. Allow us to imagine ourselves in that space.

6 Begin with a touch

You might wish to start by listing textures and surfaces; things that you touch and those that touch you -rain, velvet, a low branch, rotting lettuce. Choose one, then, and start with the touch, where or what does it remind you of. Can you capture how it feels? What is the story?

7 talking shop

Where’s the nearest shop to where you live? Or work? The shop you pop to for a carton of milk, the necessary bar of chocolate. Part of a chain, a supermarket, the corner shop? Who serves there? What are its specialities and eccentricities? Take us on a tour. Introduce the regulars.

8 paying attention

What have you noticed today? The single blue trumpet on the morning glory plant, the ribbons braided into Carol’s hair with such precision, the shield bug, startlingly lime green and the size of a pinhead, making its way around the plant pot. List a number of things, or elaborate on one.

9 animal magic

List all the animals that have ever been a part of your life: cats, dogs, guinea pigs, gerbils; the school rabbit, horses, snakes and stick insects. Names, habitat, food, sleep. What did they get up to? Who really owned them? Who did they believe owned them? Choose one to expand on.

10 Workspace scrutiny

Try photographing your workspace in words -where you teach, where you write. Try out a range of lens, zoom in, zoom out, wide-angled, fish-eye. Sharpen the focus. Move in, close up, to a part of the whole. Notice.

11 A little thing happened

Tell a story from today, an anecdote. Think back and choose an incident, however small, from your day. What happened? Then just let the pen go: what you thought at the time, what it makes you think of now. Just see where the story takes you.

12 iMAGINE A LIFE

Choose someone that you have seen today, someone you passed on the street, noticed while ate your lunch, encountered briefly in a shop, or at the petrol pump. What is in their pockets? Where do they live? Let them go about their day. Tell their story.

13 MY life in sugar

Sugar has a checkered history. It rots the teeth, is implicated in the slave trade, is blamed for our obesity. Most of us crave it. What is your sugar story? Tea with or without? Sweets? Biscuits? Cake? Sugar Puffs or Coco Pops? Are their sugar rituals in your family? Weak points? Cravings?

14 I SPY on the pavement

Did you ever have an I-Spy book? It lists things for you to spot, and allocates points for each spot, depending on its rarity. In I-Spy on the Pavement (price 6d), beside a drawing of Piccadilly Circus it says: ‘You’ll find the pavement is really packed with hundreds of things worth hunting for. An illuminated street map; people working; objects in iron, stone, concrete, wood, aluminium; What have you spotted on the pavements near you?

15 pen portrait

Choose someone you teach. Describe them: how they look, move, speak - everything you notice. Their preferences; who and how they relate. What do you know *about* them? What do you wonder? Poems by Stanley Cook describe different children in a class. Now there’s a project!

16 A sense of smell

Here’s another one where you might need to make a list first – smells, good and bad. What do they remind you of? Is it a person or a place? What stories do they hold? A distance in time or more immediate? Tell us.

17 Soundscape

Try ‘recording’ sound. Bring a place to life through sounds that you hear there: the place where you are writing now, your school, your grandfather’s kitchen. Build a picture through sound. Throw in some music, a snatch of song or fragment of speech.

18 classroom moment

Describe something that happened in your classroom, something you noticed. It need be only as brief as an exchange of glances. Write what happened. Let the pen go.

19 A Glimpse of a life

An eavesdropping, undercover assignment. Sit in a public space – a park, a café table, at your front window, and watch the world go by. Choose someone who interests you. Show who they seem to be: note clothes, movement. Who are they with? What do you imagine of their life?

20 Doors

Doors are great for fact or fiction; there’s the hobbit door, the secret garden, the door at the back of the wardrobe. There are the doors in your life: the shabby student house door, your aunt’s front door, the door to your childhood bedroom. List the doors. Let one attract your notice. Tell its story. Or create a fictional door. Describe the door and then open it and walk in. Where are you?

21 The sound of the past

What are the sounds that tell stories for you? Ones you no longer, or rarely, hear? The man who sold ice cream from a tricycle who rang a hand bell to let you know he was near, or the slice of a spade in the earth, or heavy bass beats pulsating? Start with the sound. Take us there.

22 Weather

*Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining but the feeling of being rained upon.*
E. L. Doctorow.
Show us weather -today’s weather. Or a particular memory in which weather plays an important part.

23 I spy signs

“Beware of children, cows, dogs.” Found texts can be a great starting point for writing – or a poem in themselves. On a wall near student lodgings, someone painted: ‘Mary Poppins is a junkie’. What words are embedded in the landscape of your life? Let them set you writing.

24 A taste of honey

Begin with a taste. Maybe list tastes you remember, for good or ill. Choose one. Where does it take you? Tell how you know it. What is the story?

25 WOrkspace documentary

You’ve been a camera and written an audio recording, now document your workspace with a live commentary. Perhaps where you write, your classroom, or it could be your garden or the kitchen. Take us behind the scenes. What really happens?

26 mini essay

*One of the things I love about the essay as a form - both as a reader and as a writer – is that it is an act of attention. An essay, like a photograph, is an enquiry.* Robert Hass. What subject will you pick to attend to today? What do you have to say?

27 no need to sparkle

*No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.*
Virginia Woolf.
Write down yourself. No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. Just say how you are, who you are, just at this moment.

28 clouds

The Cloud Appreciation Society believes that clouds are unjustly maligned, that life would be poorer without them, that looking up at a cloudless sky, day after day would be dull and monotonous. Take a look at the sky. What do you see up there? Describe it. Are you able to name the clouds? Does it matter? Tell us about the sky in your life.

29 I SPY FOR YOU

Make your own I-Spy of somewhere known well to you. See September 14th for more. Perhaps an I-Spy for the children in your class -to spot on the way home or around school. And what about an I-Spy guide to your home territory, house, garden, maybe beyond? What items should we look out for when we visit?