Writers’ Well – Friendship is…

Tags

creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, friends, friendship, poem, poetry, writing, writing prompt

 

I am blessed, as I hope and guess are you, with some truly incredible friends. This week’s prompt was inspired by gratitude for the gift of friendship.

We began by taking 3 pieces of blank paper each, on which we completed the phrase, Friendship is … 

We then put all those ideas on the table, and moved them around until we had a collective poem of sorts. See the stitched together version in the photo, now hanging from my wardrobe as a beautiful reminder. If you can’t read the writing, it’s typed out below..

Friendship is…

caring and worrying about them
integral to human community
a way to build community
surprising and lovely when it happens
a way of showing/spreading love
what makes the world go round
a walk in the park
the sun that helps me bloom
possible with trees and animals too
putting somebody’s feelings before your own
having fun and laughing
laughing with someone on your wavelength
something to celebrate
what I turn to when life gets too big and frightening
a gentle trusting between souls
nourishment to the soul
sharing a meal that lasts three hours longer than intended…

 

We then each used that as fuel and inspiration for an individual poem, written in just ten minutes. This is what I wrote. By no means a brilliant poem, but I think the sentiment is clear…and I may work on it more another time. For now – enjoy!

 

You are not alone

I am here with you

 

And it doesn’t matter

that the new pasta sauce

you wanted to try

spices the roof off our mouths

because the food is the excuse

not the main source of nourishment

 

friendship doesn’t come

with cooking instructions

sometimes soul spills over

and I try hard to mop it up

without the mess

and the need to clean

being seen

but you’re too quick

 

let me help you with that

and the light in the soul

we mop up brings

a shine to us both

 

and though I am me

and you are you

now there’s a bit

of me on you too

 

because soul spills

stain in a way that can’t

be washed out

 

the more I spill and break

the more I share and lose

because the less of me

I hold on to

the more room I make

for pieces of you

to stain me too

 

Mosaics are colourful

broken bits breathed into new life

that feels an image that’s whole

and finds a place for every broken

piece until the rediscovered beauty

is complete

 

Because it is not alone

but surrounded by beauty that

is like its own but

shaped differently

 

I was tired

you were tired

but time had lost its power

and the ‘move on, move on’

refrain fell further

and further away

 

friendship spills

from diary notes that

say it ends at nine

 

You are not alone

I am here with you

and there is always time

 

 

What are your thoughts on Friendship? Comments section is waiting! And don’t just tell me – tell those friends! Let them know how special they are.

 

Love and blessings all…

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

 

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Writers’ Well – Safety

Tags

creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, poem, poetry, safety, writing, writing prompt

 

This prompt began with each writer being asked to complete each of the following three half sentences five times, with their own thoughts:

 

I feel safe when… (x 5)

I don’t feel safe when… (x 5)

When I feel safe I can… (x 5)

 

We then, individually, re-read what we’d written and used that as a springboard to write a poem in ten minutes. This is what I wrote:

 

 

First do no harm

First find a place

A space of no harm

Then, like a turtle

or snail coming out of its shell

let all that you are

be available to you

 

Can we look for a bigger shell?

If safe spaces are too small

we risk shrinking and disappearing

into fear

 

So what is safety

in a world full of risk

where all life is vulnerable

like spring blossom

soft and delicate

 

waiting for the bee

with no control over the weather

that might deny

its destiny to fruit and feed

 

but the blossom will not refuse to

reveal itself when the conditions are right

we cannot wait for guaranteed safety

before offering to serve

only blossom with trust

that we have played our part

and given the bees the opportunity

to play theirs

 

I was quite surprised by the questions this exercise brought up for me. Safety is sold to us as something that can be guaranteed, and for which certain individuals and/or organisations are responsible for ensuring. But the truth is, life is by its very nature vulnerable and risky. So, what do we do with that truth when we face fear? I don’t have answers, just sharing my questions…

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

 

 

Writers’ Well – Listening

Tags

creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, listening, writing, writing prompt

Photo Credit: http://www.theguardian.com/uk

The prompt I’d like to share this week is inspired by the young people who took to the streets of the UK last Friday to campaign for action in relation to the Climate Crisis. On Thursday, the day before the action, I heard an interview on the radio with a man whose name I’ve forgotten, but the derision and patronising tone was unmistakable and unforgettable. He is one of those who is not listening, does not hear what these young people are leaving their classrooms to have heard. Not being listened to hurts. It’s not about agreeing – of course there will be, should be, must be, differing opinions…but please, Listen.

To warm us up on this topic, I asked each writer to complete the following half sentences five times, with whatever thoughts came:

When I am not listened to…

When I am truly listened to…

When I truly listen…

I then asked everyone to re-read, just for themselves, what they’d written and take that as inspiration to write a poem – in ten minutes.

 

This is what I wrote:

 

 

Be careful what you wish for

You never know who’s listening

 

Good listeners are fishermen

Patiently sensitive to the

Slightest movement on the line

Letting it drop down deep

 

Good listeners are bakers

Letting the yeast of your story

Feed their understanding and curiosity

Until there’s enough to nourish

Many more but it must

Be baked daily

 

Where are you

Fishermen

Bakers?

 

If someone speaks

And there’s no one to hear them

Did they say

Anything at all?

 

I listen to the song of the river

The drums of the earth

The whisper of the wind

And the hum of the sun

 

They don’t interrupt

When I ask them to listen back

And when I let them

I am free

The wild in me comes out

And hears itself

 

Until life gets noisy

And it runs away

Like a startled doe

 

Not lost

Just gone deeper

 

Listening is a topic I’ve returned to a few times, because I seem to regularly need the reminder of its importance, both in the receiving and in the offering.  Here are a couple of links therefore to other posts on this theme:

 

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/a-personal-motto/

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/2014/10/26/listening-a-good-deeds-post/

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/napowrimo-18-listen/

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

Writers’ Well – Stop/Start

Tags

animals, creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, insects, start, stop, stories, story, webs, writing, writing prompt

It began with a brainstorm of Stop and Start (one person wrote stop…(something) and then passed it on, for the other to write a start response) which I’d intended to leave as an exercise in itself…but the lists were so heartfelt, and the suggestion came to use it as inspiration for a story.

This is what I wrote. Please remember this was written in just ten minutes, and has not been edited. This felt like a huge topic for me and at the moment it’s a bit fragmented, as a piece of writing, but I wanted to share it exactly as I wrote it…thought I may play with it in future. This was inspired by:

Stop cruelty to animals, Start recognising the value and vulnerability of all life.

It was small things. Pulling the legs off daddy long legs, frying ants with a magnifying glass, treading on a spider that was rushing for the safety of a dark corner. She didn’t like it, but that was just what boys did. She raised her eyebrows, but didn’t intervene. They’d only tease her, call her wet, a sissy, after all – these were just insects – there were millions of them, and surely, they were too tiny to feel.

*****

“The grass is made so green by the nitrates,” he explained. “Farmers add them to bulk the grass up so their cattle will produce higher milk yields.”

He continued, “but that grass is too tough for grasshoppers. They decrease in number, and the birds go hungry.”

*****

She took photos, that early morning, of the spider webs lining the hedgerows that had caught the morning dew and were sparkling like nets full of diamonds. She’d cupped a small spider in her hands once, felt it tickle her palms as she took it to the window, more scared now of squishing it than of this mini eight legged beast itself.

*****

The little things. Ants will sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole, build bridges of their own bodies for others to walk safely over.

*****

The web of cruelty was out of her hands, distanced from her supermarket cheddar wrapped in cling film and far from the green fields where grasshoppers no longer fed and birds went hungry. But she didn’t pull the legs off daddy long legs, or fry ants, or tread on spiders.

 

 I found a couple of links you may be interested in reading as a follow up.

https://www.princeton.edu/news/2015/11/30/ants-build-living-bridges-their-bodies-speak-volumes-about-group-intelligence

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/17/where-have-insects-gone-climate-change-population-decline

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/18/warning-of-ecological-armageddon-after-dramatic-plunge-in-insect-numbers

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

 

Writers’ Well – Six word stories

Tags

creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, play, six word stories, stories, technology, writing, writing prompt

 

The six word story was made famous by Ernest Hemingway, and I decided we’d use the idea as one of our playful prompts last Friday.

 

First, I gave the group Ernest’s example, along with a few others I’d found during a brief internet search (see Guardian article link below).

 

I then placed a pile of small blank pieces of paper in the centre, turned my three minute timer, and invited people to write as many six word stories as they wished, within that time, and place them in the centre to form a circle.

 

We read them aloud in awe…

 

 

Then, I asked each writer to choose just one, which they would then explore and expand into a longer story, written in just ten minutes.

 

 

Here are a few examples, made easier for you to read:

• I’m waiting. He’s coming. I think.
• Hundreds of people saw him fall.
• Two drinks. Two chairs. One empty.
• Why me? Why now? Burn it.
• “I’m over here.” “Who said that?”
• My favourite dress. Too big now

 

The results were stunning. As I have often found to be the case, offering a very simple, playful prompt can be the most direct route to genuinely profound and moving pieces of writing.

As it is, I only have my own to share,  but the variety and vitality of the imaginative responses was breathtaking.

Written in just ten minutes, unedited, inspired by the six word story;

 

“Will it grow?” “No!” It grew.

 

“What are you doing?

“Planting.”

“Planting what?” He pushed her aside, “I don’t see anything?”

“That’s because it’s in the earth. Now we wait.”

“It won’t grow! No!”

 

She looked up at him , a stretch from her bent knees. The question was almost out, before she caught it. Just wait. Gardeners know all about patience.

 

He stamped his foot on the loosened earth, where the bulbs had just been nestled in. She stood, shocked.

“Stop it Shane!”

“It won’t grow. Nothing grows. Everything’s dead, dead, dead.”

He ran. She let him. She poured water over the footprint.

***

He had the photo in his cell. Bright yellow daffodils. He was allowed to receive post now, and she wrote to him often.

“It’s not a prison. It’s earth. You’ve been planted. Don’t be scared to grow.”

Her words journeyed him through the seasons he could barely see, let alone smell or touch. Seasons turned into years.

“The air tastes different,” he said, the day he was released.

 

 

This is an interesting article with other examples of six word stories, written by some contemporary authors, some of which I shared with the group as inspiration:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/mar/24/fiction.originalwriting

 

I’d love to read your own six word stories in the comments, if you’d like to have a go…

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

Writers’ Well – Sensible/Sensitive

Tags

creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, poem, sensible, sensitive, writing, writing prompt, writing workshop

 

“Too much sensible really isn’t good for one.”

I wrote this phrase in another recent piece of writing, so maybe that’s where the inspiration for this prompt came from. It is also a nod to my background as an English Language teacher, and the concept of false friends. Sensible in English is one thing, but the same word in French, pronounced sensible…means something entirely different – sensitive!

So, we began by writing sensible is… and then completing that with whatever word or phrase came, passing sheets of paper around the circle, until we’d collected some ideas. For example:

…thinking before you leap

…not putting your head in a lion’s mouth

…always carry an umbrella, just in case

etc etc

 

 

Then we turned the page, and began sensitive is…, and the circle became quieter and more earnest, while writing things like:

…what it must feel like when a bee lands on a flower and tickles its way to the pollen

…allowing joy and grief – all of it

…really being able to listen deeply

etc etc

 

 

The invitation was then to take that inspiration in whatever direction you wished, and write a poem in ten minutes! This is what I wrote:

 

 

Comfortable shoes

eight hours a night

eating less cake 

when my jeans get too tight

putting my wellies on

when the rain falls

answering the phone

when my mother calls

paying my bills

and being on time

live life like this

and you’ll see how the time

ticks by with the monotony

of my grandfather’s clock

on a shelf out of reach

so it doesn’t get knocked

or damaged in any way

but it’s clockwork

so when I don’t wind it up…

 

I don’t know the time

so I look at the sky

and pretend I can feel

each moment fly by

I linger to chat

to a snail on the path

tell it “don’t be so slow!

The bikes go pretty fast!”

 

I’ve forgotten my water

so I follow a sign

I’ve seen for a cafe

but I never had time

 

now I have a black coffee

though I know I won’t sleep

and it’s hard to keep

in the laughter that creeps

into cells that have known

my routine for so long

they’re confused and excited –

what on earth has gone wrong?!

 

the heartbeat, the smiling

the caffeine, the song

I do hope she won’t

keep this up for too long!

 

I pay and I leave

with a bounce in my step

now where’s that next promise to me

I’ve not kept…

 

I had a lot of fun writing that, and thoroughly enjoyed all the other poems that came out of that gathering of thoughts and ideas. Such variety! Care to try this yourself? You’re welcome to share or link in the comments below.

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

 

 

Patience – Writers’ Well

Tags

creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, patience, stories, writing, writing prompt, writing workshop, zorba the greek

Image credit: https://kimsmithdesigns.com/tag/monarch-butterfly-emerging-from-chrysalis/

I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the back of a tree just as a butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened; the butterfly started slowly crawling out, and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath, in vain.

It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

• A passage from Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis

 

This week’s prompt is inspired by the above, a beautiful passage and a powerful reminder of the importance of being patient; and the potential consequences when we are not. I actually didn’t have the quote to hand last Friday, so I paraphrased, and then gave each writer two small pieces of paper. On each I asked them to write an example of a generic situation in life when patience is important. Those pieces of paper were folded and then placed in the centre of our circle. Each person then picked one, and used what they found written there as inspiration for a story, to be written in 10 minutes.

I highlighted two possible directions they could take it in – either demonstrating how patience pays off in that situation, or the consequences of impatience.

In all honesty my response was by no means the best example, but that’s what I have so I’ll share it. Personally, I found all the stories incredibly moving, with some tender and knowing laughter too. Patience has such profound power, and I am certainly guilty of regularly lacking it. I’m learning – but slowly. Guess I’d better be patient with myself 🙂

So, this is what I wrote:

She leaned against the gate and watched. The sun was up, but not yet high, and the dew had not yet lifted itself from the grass that glistened, silver and expectant.

“Give up!” her brother had said.

“Stop wasting your time” her mother insisted. “Lord knows there’s precious little to waste young lady, and I…”

Sam hadn’t heard the rest. She’d managed to look as if she’d been listening, but her mind had drifted elsewhere; to this gate, this field.

She watched as the filly tossed her head, still not coming within twenty feet of her, let alone deigning to be touched. It occurred to her, as she lifted her own head to watch something fly over high above, shielding her eyes to try and identify it, that her father was the only one who’d not weighed in with an opinion on this. How had she not noticed before? He’d neither encouraged nor discouraged, just kept out of it. Watching. Waiting.

She smiled. He was waiting and watching her. She was waiting and watching –

“Here girl,” she tried again, calling gently and holding out her hand, knowing nothing would happen, just enjoying their little game. She calmly took in everything about the filly; her not yet full tail, the way her chestnut colouring darkened on its way down her legs, the angle of her head, the shape of her ears. 

“Nothing to see here.” The phrase came from nowhere. “It’s rude to stare.” Her mother’s voice continued in her mind. “I didn’t bring you up to stare young lady.”

Sam turned away until her shoulder faced the filly, and breathed gently, deeply. She was looking towards the river but didn’t see it. Every ounce of her was listening out, feeling through the ground – was the filly moving? Coming closer? She hardly dared look.

She saw her dad walking towards her and heard the filly snort and canter away in the opposite direction. She rushed towards her father to tell him what she thought she might’ve discovered.

 

What situations recently have called upon all your reserves of patience?

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

When you’re real… – Writers’ Well

Tags

bambi, creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, disney, flowers, margery williams, poem, poetry, real, the velveteen rabbit, writing prompt, writing workshop

The prompt I’d like to share this week began with me reading a very beautiful passage from a book called The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. Here is the quote, which you may well have come across, as it’s become very popular…

**********

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’

‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit. 

‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.’ 

‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’ 

‘It doesn’t happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” 

**********

We then each took a blank sheet of paper, writing at the top “When you’re real…” and completing it with our own thought below; passing the paper on to the right, and receiving another to the left, adding another thought until our own paper came back.

Taking this creative gathering as inspiration, we then each wrote a poem in ten minutes. This is what I wrote, inspired by someone who’d written, “When you’re real…you know how a flower feels“. Enjoy 🙂

 

I’m not a flower

“I’m not a flower”
was a line from Bambi
and it always made me giggle
because the character
wanted to be really
at least
that’s what I heard

bees that roll around
in a huge pink poppy
dressing in pollen
make me giggle
daisies still curled up
sleeping through daybreak
because the sun’s not yet reached them
make me giggle too

kindness makes me roll
inwardly like that bee
dressing myself in joy

hiding under the duvet
on a day off I dare the curtains
to let in the sun before I’m ready
to wake

Do flowers know
they could be picked at any time
Could anything be so fearless

as to let its beauty radiate
so brightly the world
is desperate to claim it for a vase
yet still it holds nothing back
of its colour or scent

I think I need to study
with the dandelions
and the child I saw at the end
of his father’s arm
leaning down
to blow the clock off it

I’m not a flower –
yet

 

Here is the moment, in image, from the Disney movie. Turns out Thumper actually said ‘That’s not a flower!’ and the skunk didn’t actually say ‘I’m not a flower,’ but was still quite happy to be called one!

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

Confession – Writers’ Well

Tags

confession, creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, story, writing, writing prompt, writing workshop

Here’s another writing prompt to dip your pen into, taken from last week’s session. Quite simply we each had three small pieces of paper, and on each one we wrote a ‘confession’ – real or imagined – that we or an imagined character might make. The three pieces of paper were then folded up, and we each picked one. We then used that confession as the basis for writing a story in ten minutes. This is what I wrote:

The sounds of the sirens still rang in her ears as she looked down, safe from her bedroom window, at the black mess in the garden where the shed used to be. She watched her father shake hands with the firemen as her mother leaned on this shoulder in a picture of utter defeat.

It was only a shed, came the thought rushing angrily to the rescue of her guilty mind. Her father, stubbornly optimistic to a fault at times, had insisted it could have been far worse. He’d even praised her for raising the alarm in time, noticing the smoke beginning to rise from the old dry leaves, left from winter and dried to a crisp by a brisk spring and the beginning of summer.

“Claire! Lunch!” Dad called .  She didn’t feel hungry, and tears fell onto the window sill. 

Fast feet coming up the stairs, not as heavy as her Dad’s. No knock, just an univited entrance.

“You idiot! I’m telling Dad”

She was so shocked she didn’t have time to remove the look of guilt from her face.

“I’m not an idiot,” came her eventual retort. 

“Mum’s crying.”

“It’s just a shed.”

A look of disgust, and a slammed door as her brother left her room.

“Can I come in?”

Dad. She rushed at the door to open it, and into his arms before he’d even crossed the threshold.

“I’m sorry Dad, I didn’t mean…I just, I was playing with the magnifying glass – I didn’t – I forgot – …why’s Mum so upset?”

“You started it?”

“Not on purpose.”

Her father pulled back from the hug with a sternness she’d not encountered before. She could see him trying to contain something too big for her to understand, and it scared her.

“Dad?”

“Claire,” he paused to take a breath. “That fire could’ve…”

She tried to hug him again, because she couldn’t bear the look on his face. For a moment, he didn’t respond. Then he hugged her tighter than she’d ever felt before, and lifted her in his arms to carry her down to lunch. 

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/

Look up at the stars – Writers’ Well

Tags

courage, creative collaboration, creative writing, creativity, stars, stephen hawking, writing, writing prompt

Once again I’d like to share with you one of the prompts used in last week’s session, though I find myself wishing I could share more. Not more prompts necessarily, but more of the magic that is generated in those 90 minutes, which race by at a rate of knots, and last week left me catching my breath at the courage and beauty and wisdom I’d witnessed in what was written and shared.

So, I’d like to share our warm up, a piece of writing completed in just three minutes. Last week, the topic was to simply respond in any way you wished to the following quote from the beloved and now sadly missed Stephen Hawking;

‘Remember to look up at the stars.’

This is what I wrote:

Sometimes it’s important to leave the curtains open, the window open, your eyes open, even if you should be sleeping, you should be conserving energy, you should be sensible and not walk in the garden with a coat over your nightie and look up because you might catch your death. But you might catch life, winking at you or even shooting you a dream and being so glad to find you there, awake, looking up, ready to catch.

 

What’s up there beyond the furthest star you can see? How old is the star still shining its light at you despite being long gone? Look up. Look up and get ready to catch. The sky won’t fall in.

 

Have a wonderful week all, and remember to lift your head, tilt it up to the sky, and dream…

 

If you enjoyed this prompt, then you can find more here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/upcoming-writing-workshops-and-some-prompts-for-you-to-play-with/

and here:

https://wordsthatserve.wordpress.com/writing-prompts-the-elements/