July 6, 2025 Writing Prompts for the Week

July 06, 2025

Happy Sunday! There’s a lot I need to get done this week but, somehow, I just cant bring myself to dig into it. Maybe you can relate?

Between an extra hot end to last month/start to this one and the ingrained, elementary-school-old suspicion that summers were made for deep laziness…productivity is a problem.

So this week, I’m going to prioritize carefully: Only the “absolute must dos” and the “this will be a pleasure” make the list. And chief among those, a few prompts…

This Week’s Prompts*

  1. He was lucky: He had a high draft number and he wasn't ashamed to tell people about it.

  2. "An old clunker like this is only worth about 75 bucks."

  3. One waddling ball of fluff after another followed the path down to the pond.

  4. Blistering heat and stale cigarette smoke: Summer had finally set in.

  5. Write a scene in which a package of cold cuts leads to an exceptional fight.

  6. "I'm over it; just over it," she avowed, demonstrably and predictably not over it.

  7. First period was Earth Science, fourth was Geometry, and somewhere in between I lost Leo.

*How to Use These Prompts: The italicized prompts let you create your writing entirely from scratch; the non-italicized prompts are intended as your first line and jumping off point. But, at the same time, there are no rules. Write on!

Book(s) We’re Reading This Week

Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
Beginning in the 1960s, David Win navigates growing up, if not on the outside of society, often adjacent to where he’d like to be. A gay young man of mixed race raced by a working class single mother, Win’s eyes are simultaneously opened to how many possibilities there are for him, as well as how many will never be available. It’s a Booker Prize winner and you just know I’m a sucker for those; so far, so good on this particular one.

Grab it on Bookshop.org (and support local bookstores!)
Grab it on Amazon

❝

If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

Toni Morrison

🌳 What’s it like to go on a writing retreat in the English countryside? Well, I don’t know (yet?) but here’s a write up from someone who does.

🎧 Oh man, do I love a good podcast. New, free information every single day? Heck yeah! And here’s one I’ve just discovered: Creative Pep Talk, on which the host Andy J. Pizza (Yes, really! How delightful is that name?!) explores all things creativity.

🏯 How much do you know about Kawase Hasui, one of Japan’s most celebrated artists, most famed for his wood block prints? And how much do you know about his ability to render serene sunsets through his use of both color and shadow? What’s that? Not enough? Here: let me (well, mostly the internet) help.

Top (Published) First Line of the Week

Isabel found a broken piece of ceramic under the roots of a dead gourd.

From The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

Grab it on Bookshop.org (and support local bookstores!)
Grab it on Amazon

P.S.

Looking for a way to write for a living—and still get paid well? Check out this training about copywriting. If it was good enough for F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, and Joseph Heller, it might just be good enough for you, too.

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