Imagination
Prompt Generator  Posted
Oct-16-2005
The First e-Book I Never Wrote
Here's a great example of one of my creative ideas that
failed at first, but then succeeded through an innovative
twist. It's
about
writing prompts.
First, some background. When I was in
high
school (many years ago),
I remember an
English-related
class I took that required us students to spend the first
10 minutes of the class "journaling" in a notebook. We
were prompted by a topic sentence the teacher wrote on the
blackboard
ahead of time, and were given liberty to take the
subject into any direction we wanted to. Several times during
the semester
our
journals
were collected and read by our teacher (and commented on),
so there was no way out of participating in these ongoing writing
exercises.
Actually, the journaling
requirement was my favorite part about that class. I appreciated
the fact that we didn't have to come up with our own writing
topics
— we
simply
followed
our
teacher's lead. This journal work helped
me to recognize my enjoyment for
expressing
myself
through writing. How I wish I kept my
journals from those days!
Writing prompts are a great way to get people going. That's
why teachers use them. So much of a great idea in fact, that
authors
and
artists
have capitalized on
the
idea
and have
written writing prompt books. Writing-related Web sites also
get a piece of the action and publish their own lists of prompting
topics. Enter "writing prompts" into a search engine
and see what comes up.
My Creative Idea
From its beginning, the Creativity Portal (CP) has featured
an extensive section on the instructional aspects
of writing. From creative writing to publishing and everything
in between,
the
section
has always strived to assist people along the way — no
matter where they are in their writing life. Including
writing
prompts in that section was a given.
In
2003, I wanted to invent a different way to present prompts
to the writing public. I wanted to help people to overcome
their writing blocks and have some unexpected fun
along the way.
My first
impulse was
to design
a printable prompt tool, and so I toyed with the idea
of a writing prompt e-book.
I was intent on the
project
and
spent
a couple of weeks developing a prototype. Without revealing
the whole plan, my idea included creating a journal-like
book without
lines and
space
for writing
and/or
art. It would have reflected the unique Dunmirè touch,
but after soliciting feedback for my idea from readers,
it was clear that a book
with a bunch of empty pages wasn't the way to go —
especially
if I expected to promote it as a product. So I put the idea
on hold. The Innovative
Twist
It didn't take long for me
to decide to use pieces of my grand idea in a different
way on the
CP.
With the aid of Web-technology, I created the Imagination
Prompt Generator instead — a cool dynamic
generator that served up one writing prompt at a time upon
request — free to the user.
Online generators (of all kinds) have been around for a
long time and still remain popular. I know that I enjoy their
unpredictable randomness, and it's
fun
to anticipate
what
will come out
of them. A writing prompt generator for journal writing or
blogs is a good way to create focus on one idea at a time.
If one prompt doesn't resonate with a writer, a new one
will be generated by the simple click of a button.
The success of the Imagination Prompt Generator has echoed
across the Internet over the last two years. It's been hyperlinked
from educational and writing sites, and
was recently featured as a Blogger Buzz
site (September 2005) for blogging prompts. Since its 15-minutes
of fame on Blogger, it's continued to be referenced in
writing-related articles and
blogs all over the world.
So my e-book idea didn't fly, but the concept was still
useful. This is the epitome of a creative life. Out of ten
ideas,
maybe one is good. And that one may still need some modification
or an innovative twist to make it happen.
The lesson here
is that unless an idea is manifested in the first place,
it doesn't have a chance to become anything. That can be
equally applicable to painting on a canvas, writing
on a page, or composing on a piano. You simply
have to start somewhere, and then you'll see where you need
to go.
Rarely is something made perfect the first time around.
(© 2005 Chris Dunmire) •
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