The Write Brain Workbook: 366 Exercises to Liberate your Writing by Bonnie Neubauer is a fun book. I don’t usually go absolutely nuts about writing prompts, but that is really what this book is. Every page has a new exercise, made up of a combination of pictures, graphic elements, and writing ideas that can be done in any one of several different ways depending on your mood, or if you change the wording in the prompt just slightly, or who you read it with . . . I found my kids flipping through it one day, and we looked at a few of the pages together, reading the exercises and looking at the pictures, and each of us had a completely different idea of what we thought we would write about each page. Fun! Even after writing a few pages bases on one of the prompts, I was able to come back to the same one from a different angle and come up with something different, and that is what is so great about this book. Each page has a “take the next step” that gives you a different twist, or an idea that can be used over and over for an endless number of original ideas. For example on day 133, it has “List 6 different snapshots from your life that took place in May. Use these to prompt further writing.” You could change May to any month, and combining different snippets of memories can give you a lot to write about. This is the kind of book you will find that you want your own copy, because the library only lets you check it out so many times in a row!
