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Writing and Healing Prompts

The writing and healing prompts gathered here have been developed and gathered over the past 10 years or so, and are now numbered—beginning with the earliest prompts posted in 2006.

In addition, I’ve started in 2016 posting twice daily writing prompts at Twitter. These prompts are different than the numbered ones below, and you can read more about them and see the prompts here.

Please feel free to share any of the writing prompts as you wish—

1. Designing a Healing Retreat

2. Freewriting

3. The Body as a Healing Place

4. The Easiest Writing and Healing Exercise Ever

5. A Shopping Spree

6. Discovering Needs and Desires

7. Has Writing Ever Changed Your Life?

8. Buy a Box

9. The Mystery of Language

10. Conjuring New Images and Metaphors for Healing

11. A Scavenger Hunt

12. Falling Apart

13. Lifelines

14. Considering a Package

15. Listing What Remains

16. A Walk on a Strange Street

17. Steps for Making a Written Collage

18. The Things We Carry

19. The Good Part in Other People’s Stories

20. Finding a Benefit in Adversity

21. Meanwhile

22. Once Upon a Time

23. What If the Moon’s a Balloon?

24. Deciding Who to Bring on the Train

25. A Memo at Your Breakfast Plate

26. Figuring Out the Shape of the Story

27. What Am I Here For? (part one) //    What Am I Here For? (part two)

28. Consulting with the Wizard of Oz

29. A Title for Your Quest

30. Choosing Chapter Titles

31. Locating a Turning Point

32. Keeping a Process Journal: A Long-Term Solution to Writer’s Block

33. Imagining Refuge

34. The Next Step

35. My Favorite Piece of Writing Advice from Natalie Goldberg

36. A Letter for Breaking Through Resistance

37. A Conversation with a Companion

38. I’ve Always Meant to Tell You: A Different Kind of Mother’s Day Greeting

39. Changing the Plot

40. A Clean Copy

41. Reading to Discover What You Most Want to Write

42. Imagining the Future

43. Rest Hour

44. What Audience Do You Imagine When You’re Writing?

45. Drawing a Map

46. Opening the Door

47. Choose a Word

48. Locating a Potential for Change

49. What Really Counts in This Life?

50. Listening in the Silence

51. Ira Progoff’s Stepping Stones

52. Stepping Stones in 3 dimensions

53. Words as Snowshoes

54. Become a Lake

55. Gratitude as Antidote

56. What if Appearances Are Deceptive?

57. Instructions by Neil Gaiman: The Writing Prompts

58. Writing about Rain