The words “I don’t remember” are like an incantation, an invitation for another trove of “what you don’t know” to flow through your writing hand onto the page.

See if you feel differently writing in a small notebook or a large one, on a blank sheet or lined page or graph paper. Try different pens, different colors. Green ink might release your inner hippie. Purple ink might release your inner psychic!

You might get a wild idea like this—a dating website offering nonhuman matches—and dismiss it as ridiculous. Diana just went with it and created this fabulous offering out of thin air.

Could it become a fantasy story? Could it be the fantasy of a person in a “real-life” story? Imaginative gifts like these hold myriad possibilities.

When you allow your imagination to play with a prompt, rather than trying to understand rationally what the image is or “figure out” what you ought to write, the possibilities are infinite. Playful or somber, personal or communal, sensory or philosophical.

Sometimes it’s just one detail of a prompt that sends you on a far-flung imaginative excursion.

Writing to prompts in this way is practice, like yoga or piano practice, but it can also generate raw material for your “real” writing. What a wealth of unforgettable detail to choose from, if you were writing an office scene in a novel or short story!

A few concrete details anchor the most bizarre imaginative flights to the reality we all share. (Wait till you see the full-length painting!)

Sometimes the most captivating writing surprises takes both the writer and the reader by surprise.

Writing from the Imaginative Storm is mining your imagination for gems. You’re digging in a rich lode—the gems are there, but they don’t always emerge perfectly clean and polished.

He’s let his imagination roam, from the image to the events of his day to a bruise on his hand, and trusted that sensibility and music would create threads to join these disparate images and moments and ideas.

About 25 years ago, I was staying with friends in Ireland for a week, and another houseguest was Quentin Tarantino. One night at dinner, someone asked Quentin how he writes, and he said something like this, demonstrating with the available props: “You get your characters talking . . .”

Put two images together: your imagination will create a connection. Put a musings and a memory together: your imagination will create a connection.

Think of it like a yoga practice: you stretch the fibers of your imagination, and you stretch the willingness of your rational mind to let whatever jumps out, jump out. . . .

Have you ever felt like you were the hostage of your rational mind? It doesn’t like what it doesn’t know. It wants to explain everything, categorize and judge, force the richness of possibility into linear sense . . .

Paradoxical as it sounds, working with words taken from other writers is a great way to find and recognize your own voice.

When you approach your writing using the Imaginative Storm method, you don’t worry about writing well. It helps you get out of your head and write from your heart.

Comparing a person to an animal is a terrific way to generate vivid description of a character—and it often produces unexpected insight as well.

To create a memorable scene, you don’t need to know everything about what’s happening or why it’s happening. Mystery makes a scene memorable. Most of the time we don’t know exactly why things happen . . .

To build life into a scene, look beyond the story you’re telling. In 10 minutes, Arlene Cydna Shapiro generated this wonderfully atmospheric scene from the perspective of a seagull . . .

When you notice details, you add warmth to your writing and to your life. You cultivate gratitude . . .