2: Getting Started with The Storm in Your Brain

Wall Storm

Many writers prefer to let ideas simmer before the words form on the page, which is why placing them in plain sight for frequent perusal is a great idea. Whichever method you choose to generate writing topics, consider posting them somewhere in your home or workspace that allows you to look at them often and add notes. A large piece of paper stuck to an office or bedroom wall will suffice. Otherwise, if you’re a sticky-note fan, use them to generate ideas.

One-Word Prompts

Simplicity may be the best method to get your creative wheels turning. One great place to look for simple prompts is the MOTH story hour. MOTH is a podcast and radio program as well as a nationwide storytelling opportunity. Their rules for telling a story are that it must be true, and it must be about you. You could even visit a live Story Slam event and tell your story. Each event has a one or two-word theme, and from that theme you may find inspiration. Some Story Slam themes in Madison during 2024 were Hot Mess, Elbow Grease, Strange Encounters, Silver Linings, and Yes, Chef! Consider the number of directions you may take with any of these themes, from seeing an ex-spouse at the grocery store to burning a hot dog beyond recognition at the campfire.

Writer and professor Lee Zacharias suggests working from a limited list of one-word prompts. She describes her early writing ambitions surrounding the huge and tragic aspects of her life. Eventually, says Zacharias, she learned that “some of the most exciting nonfiction comes out of material that didn’t seem important, out of the over-looked detail” (Ellis 45). She came up with a list of generic words and challenged her students to choose one word that “evokes a vivid and specific image” for the writer. “Dance,” for instance, may remind one writer of dancing in the kitchen while making dinner during the dark winter months of Wisconsin. It’s me…I’m that writer. Another writer may think about their senior prom date, who ended up choosing a career as a stripper in Vegas. That writer is also me. The fun of it is that one word can lead you down a bunch of different narrative paths that you would not otherwise have considered. A few of Zacharias’ (roughly 120) one- word prompts are…

Window

Fish

Box

Key

Spider

Pocket

Author Kathleen Spivak offers a similar strategy in the same text, the Creative Nonfiction-inspired version of Now Write! Edited by Sherry Ellis. Spivak, however, suggests finding a hard copy of a dictionary, closing your eyes, and pointing to a page. Use the word you find as a starting point, and start writing. Even if you don’t end up with that starting word as the central focus of your essay, it still gets your wheels turning (21).

As a lover of all words, I’m especially excited by this method. The struggle, however, is that physical copies of dictionaries are hard to find in this tech era. I tried the same strategy using a literature anthology instead, which I found on my trusty, dusty office bookshelf. Here’s what happened:

1. 
   
   I chose a hefty textbook that would fall open easily.
2. 
   
   I closed my eyes, opened to a page, and pointed to a line of a poem by Victor Hernandez Cruz. The word is “stepping.”

Using Spivak’s advice to “Let your mind wander outward from that word center” (21), I talked through some word association and came up with a few directions I might go:

1. As a kid, I was obsessed with riding cardboard boxes down our basement stairs.
2. As an adult, I have developed a habit of falling UP flights of stairs on my campus. I asked our director of campus safety whether he has seen me on camera doing this, and he said they’re compiling a greatest hits compilation of my many trips on various staircases.
3. My favorite hike in Wisconsin is the East Bluff hike of Devil’s Lake that begins with a monstrous set of granite steps.

My literal grasp of the word led to at least three solid leads into personal essays. Although it departed from Spivak’s original process, this one is pretty fun and totally worth a try. Of course, if the word you land on is “the,” look for the closest noun or verb and go with it.

If you prefer a mind-mapping strategy, this goes perfectly with the One Word prompts. Here’s an example, constructed by writer and student Sydney Heise:

Brain Dump

A favorite brainstorming method, especially in getting started as a creative nonfiction writer, is to create a one-stop topical repository you can access any time you’re looking for a new direction. Here’s a simple, favorite strategy to get started. Give yourself adequate time for this activity and keep the results in a safe and easily accessible location so you can add to them often. This is simply a listing extravaganza.

• Character-based
  • First: Make a list of at least five PEOPLE that you know really, really well. A parent, a childhood best friend, a coach, etc.
  • Next: Make a list of at least five people that you would like to know more about: Elvis Presley, Eliza Hamilton, Your maternal great-grandmother, and so on.
• Location Centered
  • First: Make a list of five PLACES you can easily describe, places you have spent significant time. Your car, the public library, a local diner, etc.
  • Next: You guessed it—list at least five places you would like to know. Mt. Rainier, The Louvre, the local Humane Society’s cat room, etc.
• Time Spent
  • First: List as many HOBBIES or activities you can on which you consider yourself some type of expert: crochet, fly fishing, Minecraft, etc.
  • Next: List pastimes you would like to learn more about. Playing mandolin, milking a cow, collecting Pokémon cards, etc.

Now you have a list of about thirty potential essay topics. Add to the list, cross items off as the mood strikes, and refer back to it for every new project. Some topics will require information gathering. Some will come straight from your heart and your excavated memories.

Resources: PW.org

One beloved resource for Creative Nonfiction prompts is pw.org, the website for Poets and Writers Magazine. Each week, a free and beautifully composed prompt is added to the site. Here’s a screenshot example from June of 2024:

In addition to seeing the current week’s prompt, you can scroll through the archives and see several past options to get you started. These prompts are charming in their specificity, and they work well for writers who prefer a lot of structure to help them get started. These prompts also tend to teach you something new each week about some other aspect of writing or some fun fact in general. Here’s a link to all the creative nonfiction prompts from Poets and Writers.

The best brainstorming strategy is couched in writing advice from Stephen King in his book entitled, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft:

“You have to read widely, constantly refining (and redefining) your own work as you do so. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write…not only will you keep up with what others are doing, but you'll keep yourself inspired and open yourself up to new ways to tell your own stories.”