Cigar Box/Binder

(c) 2010 James Ciletti On my desk is a cigar box. Inside: word and picture treasures. Several times a week I take the cigar box to the dining room table and flip through the numerous magazines and mail order catalogues, and newspapers. I cut out words and phrases, even pictures that show a story. Anything that gives my mind or feelings a "buzz." These go into the cigar box. About once a week I glue one item at a time on individual sheets of paper. And then they go into a three ring binder, entitled, Power Prompts. WHY? I'll tell you in a minute. First, here are some of the sheets in my Power Prompts binder: "When heartburn turns to hope." Great line/theme for a song. "Verbatim" A small picture of a man in the foreground, his back to me and he is facing a woman in the bg and she has an extended hand to him and her mouth is open. (what's the story here?) "My artificial tears." Wow! a line for a theme of public faces/private lives. "Creation myths." "Start taking creative risks" "The boldest." These are, essentially, prompts for writing, each at the top of their own page. For an instant writing assignment when I give a workshop, I can hand these sheets out at random to participants and ask them to respond to the prompt and write free-style. The pages also are good for "morning pages" or "evening pages." Actually, for prompting a writing spurt at any time of day. Sometimes, in workshops, where I have a large stack of magazines, art mags, sport mags, etc etc, I have students cut out their own words and paste up a "found" poem with words and phrases along a theme they pick. Sometimes, with art catalogues, I cut out many pictures and lay them out and have students pick the picture they want to write a story to. I tell them to pick a picture that has "heat" for them. Thus, they start out with their writing geiger counter buzzing. Cigar box? Any contaner will do. Start cutting and pasteing