Writing Prompts

Well I have been in novel revision hysteria lately, so I took this morning to escape the pages of red ink and grammatical errors and do writing prompts instead. I often forget how wonderfully insightful writing prompts truly are. You escape from your typical subject and genre and simply write. Whether it be in reaction to a quote or a character or a plate broken on the floor, any image can conjure a whole novel of life that exists in your mind. Sometimes as I "novel" write, I get bogged down by the obstacles of audience, and publishing, and commercial value. But just writing, writing at random feels so good that I am instantly reminded why I must be a writer. Whether I am a financial success or I simply cling to a stack of unpublished manuscripts and tattered journals, I really do not care (well I care a little), but the true reality is that few things bring me joy and fulfillment the way that writing does. And I am so happy and thankful for that. Because although many of our childhood fantasies about being whom-ever and whatever we want to be often vanish in the night, doing what you love does not go away. Perhaps the eternal optimism that it will be a career gets tarnished, but the actually doing it, never does.