Word Magik

Write one true sentence. Hemingway's rule. The truest sentence you know right now, no editing.

Describe the room you are in as if you have never seen a room before. Make it strange.

Write a letter from your future self at 80, to you right now. What did she want you to hear?

Open a window. Listen for 60 seconds. Write everything you heard, in the order you heard it.

Write the conversation you would have with your mother if you both knew it was the last one.

Describe a smell from your childhood with such specificity that someone else could almost smell it.

Write a paragraph that ends with the word 'almost.' Begin anywhere.

Write the moment a character decides to do the brave thing. Do not show the brave thing. Only the decision.

Write a love letter to something inanimate — a chair, a kettle, a parking meter. Make it tender.

Write the eulogy for a version of yourself that has died. The one from five years ago, maybe. Or yesterday.

Describe a place that no longer exists. Your grandmother's kitchen. A torn-down school. A first apartment.

Write a 100-word story. Beginning, middle, end. No more, no less.

Write what your dog or cat would say to you today if they could speak for exactly one minute.

Choose a single object on the table in front of you. Write its biography.

Write a paragraph in the voice of someone you cannot stand. Find their dignity anyway.

Write about the last time you cried. The mechanics of it. The body part that gave first.

Begin a story with the sentence: 'She had been warned.' End it 200 words later.

Describe an entire weather system in five sentences. Make the reader cold.

Write a list of every job you almost took. The forks in the road. The lives you did not live.

Open a book at random. Write the first sentence on the page. Then write your own paragraph that follows it.

Write the dream you had last night. If you cannot remember, invent one. Either way, do not name the meaning.

Describe a meal that mattered. Not because of the food. Because of who was at the table.

Write a scene where two people fall in love but never speak. Use only what they see and do.

Write a curse. Make it specific. Make it deserved. Then decide whether to keep it.

Write a blessing. Make it specific. Make it deserved. Send it.

Describe what you would do tomorrow if you knew nothing bad would happen for the next 90 days.

Write about a stranger you saw this week who you cannot stop thinking about. Why them.

Write the sentence you wish someone would say to you. Then write who would say it.

Describe the sound of your house at 3am.

Write a paragraph about color. Pick one color. Do not name it until the last word.

Write a letter to a body part that has been hard on you lately. Apologize. Then thank it.

Write what you would do with one perfect uninterrupted hour. Be honest. Not aspirational.

Describe the worst gift you ever received. What it taught you about the giver.

Write a list of things your hands have done this week. All of them. Even the small ones.

Begin: 'The first lie I ever told was...' Continue for 200 words.

Write the obituary you want. Not the one you fear. The one you want.

Write about a piece of music that physically changes you. Try to describe the change in the body.

Describe an animal you have never seen in person, as if you have. Read about it after, not before.

Write the apology you never received. From whom. For what. What it would have changed.

Write the apology you never gave. To whom. For what. What it would change.

Describe a room in a house you have only ever imagined.

Write a paragraph that begins and ends with the same word but means something different by the end.

Write a scene where nothing happens externally and everything happens internally.

Describe a recurring dream. Or a recurring feeling. The pattern matters more than the content.

Write what you wish you had said in a moment when you said nothing.

Write the prayer you would offer if you believed someone was listening. Write it anyway if you do not.

Describe your body as a landscape. Where the mountains are. Where the water runs. The weather.

Write the rules of a religion you would actually join. Three rules. No more.

Begin a story with a piece of advice. End it by showing why the advice was wrong.

Write something you will delete. Promise yourself that before you start. See what comes out then.