Wordle for writers

I love writing prompts. I love reading them, I love scouring the depths of the internet for them, I love compiling lists of them, and I love making them up. I truly believe that I find creative writing prompts to be extremely helpful and inspiring.

Beliefs and facts don’t always overlap in the Venn Diagram of Reality, however. The fact is, I will spend hours upon hours of my dedicated “writing time” trying to determine what prompt I want to try out. I’ll read through every springboard to a story I’ve collected, looking for the one that “feels” right. It is an excellent strategy for always just being about to write and never actually writing.

I have a plethora of other ways to avoid and procrastinate doing the one thing that I really want to do (organizing files, checking out submission calls, creating Pinterest boards, sifting through the 8 billion templates for outlining a novel in hopes I’ll discover the perfect one that makes it easy to finally sit down and write the novel, and complaining I have no time to write), so I decided it was time to streamline the my prompt-picking process.

Enter Wordle. (Add “binging archives of NYT word games like some people binge Netflix” to my list of procrastination activities.) For months, each time I completed a Wordle, I thought to myself “It would be fun to use these randomized words as a writing prompt!” and then promptly began another Wordle puzzle. But in the last two weeks, I really went for it.

Well, first I screenshot a bunch of my Wordle puzzles in the archive. I tried not to be picky, tried to avoid seeking ‘good’ ones that had more interesting words, and I mostly succeeded. Then I edited all the images, cropping them, renaming files, organizing them in my writing file system. Of course, each puzzle would need a corresponding word document, and it would be nice to have those set up in advance, so I did that, too.

But then— I really went for it! And it was fun!

Here’s the one I tried first:

And the accompanying writing:

Mrs. Smith stood in front of her bedroom dresser, peering approvingly at herself in the ornate mirror above it. She admired the golden luster and the sleekness her hair had taken on in the Afterlife. After spending seven sweaty decades as a bottle-blond (a secret she’d taken to her grave) battling frizz in the heat and humidity of the South, it seemed righteous that she be delivered from the evils of untamable hair in the sweet hereafter. Mrs. Smith yearned to dip her hand into the stash of Bobby pins still sitting in their delicate porcelain bowl atop her jewelry box. She practically itched to pick up her silver handled hairbrush, knowing the bristles would glide through her tresses effortlessly, smooth as silk; a sensory experience she’d never encountered when she still had senses. In the past two months, Mrs. Smith had tried countless times to pick up her brush, not to mention made attempts to grab a flaming frying pan, open doors, slam doors, smack a spider on the wall, roll a pencil off the kitchen table, and yank her daughter’s hair.

Emily Smith was was the sixth and last child born, the only girl and the only to live long enough to graduate high school.

After the first try, I realized I had to set some parameters for myself if I wanted Wordle to be my go-to prompt for daily writing exercises. Free-writing can be hell sometimes, because my current writing habits check every box on the don’t do this list (editing in the first draft, over-researching, perfectionism, etc.) In writing and most areas of life, I find a need a container to function within, otherwise I spill out everywhere. This is the criteria I decided on for Wordle Writing:

• Pick a random solved puzzle (not today’s)

• Set a timer for five minutes.

• Write something using the words. A sentence, 3 sentences, a poem, paragraphs— it doesn’t need to be complete.

• Reset timer for another 10 if you’re on a roll, or if not, move on to the rest of the day knowing you accomplished writing something.

I’m finding this helps me create my own archive of snippets and images that I can go back to and build up.

Yesterday, the exercise gave me a full piece of prose, a little flash fable:

And the as yet Untitled fable:

She married the moon on a Monday. A courthouse affair, a legality— nothing so romantic as her first wedding. Years ago, when she’d married the sea, her bride had undulated with joy— crashed violently on the shore in ecstasy. Thirty-nine vessels of varying origins were capsized by their union, not to mention a lone rider upon his surfboard trying to capitalize on the towering waves that manifested in the presence of their love. Upon meeting, she had been mystified, dumbfounded and awestruck by the sea’s hypnotic rhythym. Observing from the beach, she had marveled at the small death brought by every ebb tide. She had been humbled by the miracle of resurrection raised in each flood tide. She had yearned to join with the source of that cyclic power and for twenty-eight days, she had.

The potency of their passion began to wane almost immediately. The sea held depths she hadn’t expected; murky places filled with blind, colorless creatures and sunken ships with more bones than treasure still locked in their rusted hulls. The sea was superficial. It knew nothing of the vibrant, thriving life that thrummed under its turbulent surface and it wasn’t interested in finding out. The sea was moody. She could see that the sea took pleasure in its own perilousness, that it enjoyed the display of fear it could invoke by concealing what lay under its fathoms. The sea wasn’t serene; it was apathetic. It wasn’t passionate; it was merciless. The sea had never been to therapy.

She began to realize the sea was a sham. The sea’s identity was always shifting. The sea didn’t even know who it was. All that great, glorious water was just a puppet on a string. She had thought she was marrying a body of water with vision; a prolific creative genius upon whom she could meet the horizon. It had taken twenty-eight days, but finally she had seen the truth. The sea was nothing without the graceful illumination and skillful orchestration of its conductor: the moon.

I was so pumped up from having completed a piece that I immediately found a brand new way to procrastinate writing— creating instagram images to share it!