The beauty of the Daily Post isn’t the prompt, it’s the discipline. With a little imagination, you can turn the prompt itself into anything you like – today, for example, A little sneaky could go anywhere you fancied – but would you bother kicking your mind from well-loved highways to bumpy side roads without a prod, and without the carrot of ultimate destination to sustain it along the way?
Well yes you would, if like me, you write because that’s what you do – like breathing. But in the end, writing is about communication. You want to share your thoughts – your knowledge – your entertainment. No man is an island… There’s only so much you can shove in the bottom drawer or use as stuffing for your hard drive before that vague feeling of dissatisfaction creeps in: what’s the point of accumulating all this extra detritus for your heirs and assigns to dispose of after you’re dead?
Blogging per se is a way of communicating. The Daily Prompt is a way of making yourself exercise your creative brain and your ability to communicate on a regular basis, and everything needs exercise. It forces you to venture outside square. Has to be good.
Admittedly, I wouldn’t be here if my next novel hadn’t ground to a halt. Thirty thousand words in, and the cast is milling around doing nothing of note and threatening to be verbose about it. It’s tempting to walk away in a snit and leave them to it. And never write another word? That would be wilful self-mutilation.
