Random Writing Prompts

I've been promising myself that I will write more and more often. In an endevour to prep the creative part of my brain for this year's NaNoWriMo project, I took to looking for ideas for short stories or flash fiction to get out a couple of thousand words a day. I even created a profile on Twitter in order to get connected with more Like Minded people. This lead me to finding the profile for RocNaNo.

Let me tell you, Kurt, the man who manages the account is my biggest source for personal inspiration thus far this year! His simple, Random Writing Prompts (three random ideas to be melded into one story idea) have helped kindle the fire within me. I have been using them to not only pump out flash fiction, but to create my own Excel database to spit out ideas as well!

Here's what he provided me for instructions for my own spread sheet. Good luck translating it! I had to ask my resident tech geek for help!

=INDEX(story_items,RAND()*COUNTA(story_items)) pulls random items from the named range. Do this in 3 cells, & concatenate.

So now the goal is that on days when I have the spoons for writing, to do three pieces. One from Kurt's prompts, one from mine, and a visual writing prompt. Thus far, I have managed at least 2,000 words of fiction on these days (Twitter, discussions, emails and blogs don't count).

I have been sharing the posts via Twitter, and the writing groups on Facebook, but I realize that I'd like to share it a little more broadly than that. So here I am! You can look forward to a new series of posts entitled Random Writing Prompt or Visual Writing Prompt. They are in the category of flash fiction, for the moment, but many of them will likely take on a life of their own down the road.

You are encouraged to share them with your friends, to leave feedback, or even to try your hand an writing your own idea that spawns from the prompt! Kurt and I would both love to see what you come up with!

Stay tuned and good luck if you try it yourself!