Writing is easy. The challenge is figuring out what to write about. Actually, that is not quite true. For example, I know I’m not going to write about ancient history or current fashions. I know I am going to write about people, what they do, how they do it, why they do it or something else related to the social or people aspects of my reality. That’s what interests me, so it wouldn’t make much sense to write about anything else.

Within the boundaries of my interests, settling on one focus for writing can be tough. To help with that, I discovered an app for my iPhone. It’s called Prompts. Apparently, it is like a pump primer for writers. The idea is that the app will give me a writing prompt. Since I installed the app only a few minutes ago, how well it does at starting the writing juices flowing remains to be seen. For ninety-nine cents, I figure it’s worth a try.

The first thing I notice about the Prompts app is that it’s pretty simple. Click around for a couple of minutes and quickly conclude that it’s main thing really is its main thing. It gives me a short prompt to start the first sentence followed by an otherwise empty note area. The app can keep some statistics and provide reminders to write but the only thing to do is to pick up on the prompt and write something. I suspect I can get a new prompt every time I come back to the app but beyond that, there is nothing else to do or to get frustrated with. Now just how cool is that? …

Although I have never taken a creative writing class, I think Prompts is a lot like a creative writing class would be. I can imagine sitting down on the first day of the course and the professor walking up to the chalk board and writing “banana” in foot high letters. She then turns to the class and says, “You have the topic. I’ll expect a thousand words, typed and double spaced, on the topic for our next class.” She then walks out of the classroom, leaving us just sitting there, wondering what just happened.

I don’t know if my mythical professor is responsible for the Prompts app but am sure it is a definite possibility. The first prompt I got from the app was not “banana”, but the open-ended aspect of the prompt will be familiar to you if you were there the day the professor wrote on the chalk board and walked out.

“In my dreams I ….” No, that’s not quite right. The first prompt says, “In my dreams I,” followed by a blank note. The goal is to complete the note. Are you game? If so, finish the note. There is not a professor to require a thousand words by the next class, but at least finishing the sentence seems like a minimum expectation. Fair is fair. Since you are accepting the challenge, I will play too.

In my dreams I am typically an observer, not an actor. It is as if I am watching the movie. When I am a participant, I usually have a manager or coordinator role. It’s as if I am staging the scene for the other actors in the dream.

Most often, my dreams are quite innocuous and frankly boring. They are neither memorable nor especially interesting. If I recall them – and I seldom do – five minutes later, they are gone. Right now, I don’t remember any dream I have ever had. I have awareness of having dreamed but nothing specific comes to mind. I remember that I have had dreams that were very upsetting and likely qualified as nightmares but don’t remember them either. If you mention a dream prompt, I might recall dreaming about that once, but it’s unlikely that I could conjure up the memory without the prompt.

As you see, what I have to say about dreaming is as boring as the dreams I have. It would be more fun to just make something up, and I’m sure it would be more entertaining. I’m thinking that It would be much more interesting to write about day dreaming. I could write from actual memory. Even better, I could day dream as I write.