Generators
Generators are short prompts for finding new seeds, images, voices — bits and pieces that might fold into your writing. Most generators here are for inventing from scratch; some are marked “for ongoing process” and are specifically framed to help expand the radius of writing that you’ve already embarked on.
here's A Generator dialed up at random:

filter approach
Make a list of images or scenes or language ideas that you’ve imagined being part of what you’re making right now, but that haven’t yet shown up in actual writing. Choose one that is most compelling to you and enter into it—but enter with a filter: use attention to light and sound; use childhood feeling; use attention to infrastructure and politics; use attention to assonance or consonance, use swing time… or something else. Cut a deliberate path into this place in your mind waiting to be written. Perhaps this will generate material that goes straight into your writing; perhaps it will be an occasion for something new to arise—a new event or figure, a new favorite word, a new way of thinking about your approach.
here's the full generator archive:

Valley Fold (Generator)
A generative exercise for creating a compact event as a springboard for a story.



Image Wheel
A generator for scenes of linked images Scan your memory of the last 24 hours and find an image — as if seen from a
















parable of a minor figure
In your mind’s eye, bring up someone from your writing that figures only minimally in what you’ve written, someone who would be “background” if this

possible shapes
(for a process already in progress) Quickly sketch a diagrammatic representation of your writing so far, its elements, sections, directions. Use this quick sketch as

ceremony of transition
In her essay “The History of Scaffolding,” Lisa Robertson writes: We believe that the object of architecture is to give happiness. For us this would

following paragraph (generator)
Do the tuning version of this exercise, using the writing of another author. then repeat the exercise, but with a paragraph found randomly from your

new room with old images
(for a project in progress) Choose a set of images from a larger scatter of images, perhaps drawn from accumulated warmups left behind in your