Everyone knows what it is like to be stretched between two desires. Choose two of those desires which come up most often in your life and conflict with each other. What is it like to be torn between the two? Can be serious or silly, poetry or prose.

Watching children run through sprinklers, I was struck by nostalgia. Write a poem about your childhood or something sweetly nostalgic, but use a metaphor or simile that particularly relates to it. For example, the children I was watching said the water looked like "silver dolphins" (I'll add my example poem). No more than 60 words. Nostalgia can be sweet, but often short.

No plot twists, no language, no adult themes or jokes or phrases that would go over the head of a child. Write a story that a child might have imagined, and tell it as a child would tell it. Not to say that you should abandon all your writing skills, but that this story should be straightforward, simple, and good--with nothing to read in between the lines and with a resolution that would leave children rejoicing. In 1,500 words or less, be creative and uncomplicated. Take delight in everything that is good and beautiful, and if you end up fighting bad guys of any sort, make sure you win!

You can use a real book character if you want, or make one up, or write as you. Poetry, prose, anything you like.

It might be an abandoned looking swing-set in someone's yard, or it might be a lake near your location. Or it might simply be an emotion or thought that suddenly hits you as you look around. Write about it in whatever form you like.

In 35 words or less, tell me why you do what you do. What motivates you? What drives you to act the way you act, think the way you think, talk the way you talk?