What’s Your Favorite Writing Prompt or Exercise?

While catching up on New Yorkers this weekend, I ran across a delightful piece by Rebecca Mead, “Earnest.” (Read it online.) It’s about Jeff Nunokawa, who writes one Facebook note per day. Mead writes:

Nunokawa typically takes a literary quotation—Edmund Spenser, James Merrill, Joni Mitchell—and elaborates upon it, sometimes for a line, sometimes for a paragraph or two. Nunokawa’s notes are meditations: half literary-critical, half confessional. He writes one a day. “I write as soon as I wake up, because that is when I am most alert and most anguished,” he said. “Each one takes between twenty minutes and four hours to write. It’s almost like a Lacanian session. [Read more.]

Which got me to thinking … Do you have a favorite writing prompt or exercise that you rely on for inspiration or guidance?

From now through Sunday (July 29), we’d like to hear about your favorite prompts/exercises in the comments. (Be sure to indicate the source of the prompt/exercise, if appropriate.) On Monday, we’ll randomly select one commenter to receive a free selection of journals from Miro, in a nifty canvas tote. We’ll also collect and post the best prompts from what’s shared.

Image: Balloon via Flickr and Haeckel Ascidiae via Wikimedia Commons