Free write about each topic for as long as you want. Don’t worry about grammar or having your ideas fit together. You’re just brainstorming in sentences, rather than list form. When you’re all out of things to say about one topic, click to the next slide. You must write for the rest of the period. If you don’t get through all of them, that’s okay.

1. Write about something you didn’t get, or something you wanted to do, but couldn’t do.

2. Write about somebody’s hands or another single part of a whole.

3. At this moment, something is changing in your life. What is it? (Maybe it’s an actual circumstance, or maybe it’s just the way that you feel about things staying the same.)

4. Make a proclamation, a declaration. If you need a phrase to get your creativity going, try “I will…” or “I will not…”

5. What is the best advice you could give someone? (Maybe you learned this the hard way, or maybe somebody gave this advice to you.)

6. Write about the end of something.

7. Make a list of all the “titles” that apply to you (some of mine might be sister, teacher, aunt, friend, writer, U of I alum, neighbor, etc…). Then, pick one or more of these to write about. Maybe you pick the one you’re the best at. Maybe one of them seems unreal. Maybe you’ve been slacking at one of them lately.

8. Write about where you’re from. (I know; it’s vague on purpose.)

9. Take a look at the headlines page of CNN, The Daily Herald, or another similar site. How does it make you feel? Do any of them stand out to you? Why?