Use this image to inspire a story, poem or personal essay.

I’ve been tidying my office in preparation for my treadmill desk, which arrives on Thursday. More on that later! So, I’m listening to Joni Mitchell for the first time in ages. And there’s this lovely line:

Sunlight pouring in like butterscotch…

It made me think that for today’s prompt I want you to take something very ordinary and try to find a new way to describe it. Describe sunlight. Describe the feeling of waking. Describe the way your morning goes but use original language. It’s harder than it seems. Cliches pop into our heads (pop, pop, pop) and our job as writers is to let them explode and then to dig in the rubble to find our own shiny new descriptions hidden beneath… or something like that!

Once you’ve done the exercise above, use the Joni Mitchell line to begin a poem. Now, back to tidying my office…

Use this image to work on describing a place, this place. Imagine yourself walking down these stairs – what do you feel, hear, see? What does the air taste like? What can you smell? Write at least 500 words and then cut those phrases which are cliched. It’s hard to describe a place without resorting to cliches, which is why cutting out the overused lines afterward is a great way to refine your writing.