A lot! Aside from the step-by-step guidance and audio recordings of the “Write” sections, you’ll find a Prompt Archive, with 3–5 examples of what other people have written to each prompt.

You’ll also be able to join a monthly 60-minute live online session with Allegra and James, in which you can ask questions, get advice, and if there’s time, we’ll all write to a prompt together.

Trying to write well is the enemy of writing well.

Mess is currency, not a liability.

Surprise yourself.

A pen you like, a notebook that doesn’t make you feel you have to write well in it, and a timer that goes up to 10 minutes. Most people use their phone. (In the online course, you won’t even need that, as we do the timing for you.)

There’s a hot-wire between the imagination and the page when you write by hand. You’re more creative, less critical. And if your handwriting is really that bad, you might want to transcribe what you wrote fairly soon afterward, while you can still remember it!

To read more about the benefits of writing by hand, click here.

You’ll be amazed! Many people say they write better in 10 minutes than they can in an hour, because with so little time, they’re not trying to write well. And trying to write well is the enemy of writing well—as well as the cause of writer’s block!

To read more about the benefits of a 10-minute timer, click here.

No—it’s relevant whether you’re writing fiction, creative nonfiction such as memoir, poetry, even screenplays. If you’re writing a how-to book, you might want to include segments of memoir that talk about how you gained your expertise or how this practice transformed your life. The Imaginative Storm will bring originality and energy to whatever you’re writing—even a business report and professional emails.

It’s also great for generating marketing copy. Instead of using artificial intelligence, how about using your own innate, biological, imaginative intelligence?

You might have some poems, but you probably won’t have a nearly-finished prose piece. What you will have are ideas, inspiration, enthusiasm, energy, and a large amount of powerful, surprising material.

We believe that the energy, originality, and surprise have to come first, before you worry about the rational-mind concerns of structure and editing. Check out the excellent books on story structure on our Resources page.

Not at all! If you start writing with the Imaginative Storm method, you will save yourself a lot of angst and heartache, because you’ll know that when you’re first putting words on the page, you don’t have to “get it right.”

Not at all! Many published writers have found a new, authentic voice by working with the Imaginative Storm method. If you feel stuck, want to freshen up your writing, or just want to try writing something unlike anything you’ve done before, Write What You Don’t Know is for you.

Absolutely. You’ll discover myriad new ways to have fun with your writing—and gain unexpected insights into your life and your world.

Of course. Contact us, and we’ll arrange a time to talk.

Our course is unique as it combines James’s background in the Poetry Slam and The Artist’s Way with Allegra’s background in literature (a First from Oxford in English) and publishing. It’s both free-form and rigorous. By the end, you’ll have a clear idea of how to construct a story, AND how to write it!