Hoping for some writing time over the next few weeks? Here’s some more prompts to get you started…

  1. A gift is delivered incorrectly to your home. It’s an intriguing shape. What do you (or your characters) do? Choose your genre.. is the gift magical? Sinister? Suggestive of an imminent crime? Do you open it – or is this a human story about what happens as you seek the rightful owner?
  2. Write for ten minutes without stopping, beginning with the following prompt: I packed a suitcase, the scent of winter in the air.

  3. Attempt a picture book for the holiday season. Your main character is a child who has never seen snow.
  4. Write about one of the first holiday seasons you can remember. How old were you? What did you find magical about the occasion? What did you find perplexing?
  5. Focus in on one tiny part of a holiday experience and write about it in infinite detail, for as long as possible, without stopping. Example: peeling an orange, holding a new gift and anticipating what may be in it, lighting a candle. Try to use all the senses in your writing as you bring the experience to life for a reader.
  6. This one is for those of you who love world-building: create a holiday tradition from scratch. Imagine the tradition as one tiny part of a fantastical culture you are beginning to invent – whether a culture from another planet, or another dimension. Begin describing one part of the tradition or ritual, then move outward from this close up, so that gradually the reader experiences broader aspects of your invented culture (beginning with something microcosmic and moving outward is a terrific strategy for building new worlds, by the way).

 How do you keep writing this holiday? The best policy is to set time aside and promise yourself you will write, without promising yourself you will produce anything great! Just write – and see what happens. Even if you dislike whatever you produce, you will have the satisfaction of knowing you wrote something – and who knows? You might revisit your writing a few days later, and see it in a whole new light!

What do you do if you feel uninspired? Write about being uninspired, and see where that takes you! Or, open a novel at random that you have never read, select one phrase from the start of a paragraph and another from the end of a paragraph somewhere else in the novel. Write between the two phrases and see what you can create!