We can’t celebrate today like we have on other years — with picnics, coastline cleanups, mass actions. So on this surreal 2020 Earth Day, we wanted to invite you to honor our planet — our beautiful, hurting home — not just with creativity, but with your wholehearted imagination. 

Here are some writing prompts meant to get your planet-loving juices flowing. We hope you pick one and get your hands dirty with it. We hope you take some time to nurture the seeds of all that could be, now that that vision is becoming clearer by the day.

*And if you write something you love — please submit it to Daily Dose! We love to include thoughtful contributors in our rotation!

Susan DeFreitas, fiction writer, poet, and Daily Dose blogger

Creative writing prompt:

My prompt is based on a poem I have on Daily Dose called “Endless Summer.” 

Many of us think of summer as a season of ease, of peace and plenty; but it seems that in the future, summer will be the season of hardship.

My invitation for all of you is to write a poem or a piece of flash fiction that imagines summer from a future point of view, or from the perspective of somebody growing up in this time, looking back at when summers started getting longer, hotter, and drier.

Florencia Manóvil, filmmaker & Daily Dose contributor

Scene/monologue/creative writing prompt:

Create a character that is based on you, but who has a deeper commitment to changing the way humans relate to the environment.

Then choose one:

A – Write a scene in which this character struggles to deal with a situation that is undeniably problematic from an environmental perspective.

B- Create a monologue for this character at the end of a long day.

Maureen Fan, journalist

Non-fiction writing prompt:

1. Find an anecdote in daily life, that you’ve personally witnessed or experienced, that illustrates a change in the way local citizens respond to the environment.
2. Write down a brief description of this anecdote, with real names, ages, neighborhoods and contact information, if they are agreeable/amenable, and provide concrete examples of change (in bullet points!).
3. List follow-up questions or locations or people that a reporter could turn to next.
4. If you’re feeling inspired: Submit!
   Local and online publications encourage tips from readers on their websites.

 

About the video:
Cherie Hill (iriedance.com) is a creative artist who researches dance, transcendence, and how the body is a vessel for metaphysical presence. Her IrieDance works experiment with non-conventional spaces and developing movement in correlation to the environment. Dance, trance, women and the African Diaspora are continued research topics intertwined with the black feminist standpoint theory. A firm believer that dance will play a key part in leading society to personal/communal/and spiritual transformation, Cherie produces projects that are conscious, analytical, and meditational.

Cherie came up with a prompt for dancers of all stripes:

Find a spot that has an element of nature and recreate the shapes of the element with your body. You can do it in one part of your body, your whole body, the upper half, or maybe the lower half.

You can also think about the texture of the elements and incorporate all these things into the improvised dance.

What would your prompt be for your medium of choice? Are you planning on getting creative/ into a generative space today?