Many, many years ago—during my senior year of college, actually—I picked up a book of writing prompts from Barnes and Noble called The 3 A.M. Epiphany by Brian Kiteley. I used it exactly one time for my short fiction class, set it aside on my bookshelf, and never looked at it again.

Here I am, almost 16 years later, desperately trying to rekindle that kind of creative spirit in the face of a world on fire and the entire vocation of writing seemingly devalued.

It’s a lot to take in and think about.

What better way to deal with imposter syndrome than to launch a new, improbably expensive project? I’m not busy enough, so let’s add the equivalent of a 400-word blog post each week. 

So here’s what I’m going to do. For the next few months, I’m going to work my way through the prompts inside and follow them as closely as possible, posting the results with minimal edits. 

That’s not it, though. I’d like to take better photos (or any photos at all), so I’ll be adding thematically appropriate pictures, too. Hopefully this experiment sparks the creativity I’ve so desperately missed over the past few years.

If it means sharing short fiction that people enjoy and want to share with others, well, that’s a bonus.