Sam Sax has a wonderful collection of poetry out called Pig, which examines the word from many different angles and aspects. You should definitely either buy it or request it from your library.

In his brilliant "Anti-Zionist Abcderian," he writes nowhere on Earth belongs to us.

Use that phrase as a ghost line and see where your writing takes you.

For the last few months, Valerie Loveland has been hosting "Magical Workshops" where people bring poems to read, multiple people share them, and then the whole group mines those poems for prompts. Many. Many. Many of the prompts for 2024 will come from these workshops.

For this one, Valerie noted that her selfies, and photographs that other people took of her seemed to show completely different people. 

What differences do you notice between the photos others take of you and the ones you take of yourself?

When I was six, I got in trouble for the first time at school. The bus driver had reported that I, a first grader, was bullying a kindergarten pupil. But I’d actually been being tormented by a second grader and when I finally snapped, and yelled at him to leave me alone, he’d cried and cried and cried because nobody had ever seen me stick up for myself.

When my parents found out, I explained what had happened, and then spent hours trying to figure out how to prove my innocence until my parents were no longer angry that I was in trouble, they were just frustrated that I couldn't let it go.

What stupid, irrelevant thing do you feel like you should be able to get over but you just can't? Or what do you think you're totally justified in being angry about that your friends or family think you should just let go?

Working in retail, I was frequently asked a ton of boring small talk questions. What did I think of the weather? How was it hanging? Was I having a good day? Did I like my job?

Usually in my head, but sometimes out loud, I would answer these questions in the most bizarre way possible.

I don't want to influence you with any of my answers. For today's prompt, be as creative as possible in answering these dull personal quizzes. Be contrarian, be surreal, be a walrus in a frayed denim hat. Just don't be boring unless you're So Boring that it circles around to interesting again.

What thing in life did you consider yourself "settling for" that ended up being something positive and important in your life.

You lose points for using this prompt to write about a significant other but get bonus points if it's about adopting an ugly or inconvenient/medically expensive pet.

I've written a bunch of prompts asking you to dig into your favorite hobbies, your passions, the parts of your job that you love. I enjoy people's poetry about joy and contentedness more than I enjoy the tragic and depressing. Though, let's be real, very few of us started writing poetry because everything in life was going great at the time.

But. sometimes, there's a joy in being imperfect in something. 

I'm competitive, and while I don't need to be The Best at what I do, I like at least being in the discussion. Somethings I'm innately good at.

My partner decided to combat anxiety with amigurumi, and not only picked it up instantly but was instantly stretching the boundaries of the art by creating mash up characters, making plushes of peoples' fursonas, and making realistic plushes of family pets. 

He's also frustratingly good at word and board games. And if your board game includes wordplay, well...you better hope it's a cooperative game because you're not going to beat him in a competition.

Except at Risk. I can kick his ass at Risk.

For this prompt, identify something you aren't skilled at, and focus on something you're terrible at but don't care about. Like, who would even want to be talented at hot dog eating? Bask in how little you care about this deficit of character. Let the world know that you don't care who knows that you can't tie shoelaces well, or that even stick figure drawing is too complex for you. Convince them how utterly unimportant that skill is, and how cool you are for being bad at it.

Now go back and do this again for three or four more sets of skills. Because when it comes to being proudly bad at something, multitasking is sexy.