Beating Writer’s Block with Writing Prompts

Some days are good, some days are bad but productive days… they are undeniably the most satisfying days.

I mean who does not love a day that’s been super productive; taking off the burden from your shoulders, grinding the whole day and knowing that you have created something worthy of existing. For me, productive days are the best days. If I go a day without writing, I feel stressed out and frustrated. And writer’s block is indeed a thing, my friends. And it sucks. So, how do I beat this writer’s block? It’s simple, I use prompts! 

The Internet is full of writing prompts, that are everywhere. Just enter your keywords on Google or Pinterest (like this) and tons of results, in a fraction of a second, appear before your eyes. Now, what kind of prompts should you look out for? I would say ‘any’, but still here are some examples. If you’re a fiction writer, go for the plot prompts. You can subscribe to Writers Write’s daily newsletter to have a daily fiction writing prompt and a lot more other useful stuff in your inbox every single day. Note that I’m not promoting this site or something, I am subscribed to the same and I think it would be useful for you as well. 

If you’re a poet, then go for word-prompts, picture prompts, or even a whole sentence or phrase prompt. You can pick up a book, open it randomly, choose a word from the first page you land on and get your creative cells working to frame a poem around that word. See, it’s easy! And if you share your writings on Instagram, why not make use of that ‘ask me a question’ feature on stories for something productive? You can post a story asking your readers to give you a word/topic to write on. Isn’t that sweet, writing something for the ones who’s been constantly supporting you?

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

The best thing about prompts is that they challenge you to think outside of your comfort zone. They make you write beyond your boundaries. If I hadn’t taken part in the February writing challenge in 2016 on Instagram, I’d have never started posting romance poems on social media. I used to be afraid of posting them thinking what would my family say since they all had been reading my words each day. So, yeah, prompts helped me step out of this zone and post courageously without thinking about what would people say. Some of my most loved posts are the ones that I wrote using writing prompts. Even as I read other poets' works on Instagram, I pick up any word that I find inspiring and write my own poem around that word. 

Writer’s block can only bother you if you allow it to. When it comes, fight it, challenge it, defeat it and get back on the track because nothing is more important than writing every single day. Do let me know what you guys do to overcome writer’s block. I shall soon share about how I became regular with writing every day and I will also be preparing letters to God prompts worksheet (I am working on them). Till then, keep writing and keep sharing your art with the world. Someone out there is in need of your words.

You may read my work on Instagram at @meetlife240