Writing prompt #91: THE ART OF METAPHORS (REDUX)

Hi Everyone,

Some days, we’re surrounded by cliches whichever way we turn. If the language around us is flat and uninspired, a lingua franca of insipid pleasantness or political slogans, how can we combat it?

Personally, I’ve found that reading poetry (almost daily) is the most effective and pleasurable way to cultivate idiosyncratic expression and freshen up your language—on, and off, the page.

Here’s poet Jane Hirschfield’s description of metaphor:

“A metaphor is language that simultaneously creates and solves its own riddle; within that minute explosion of mind is both expansion and release.”

YOUR PROMPT: Select a few pages of your own work-in-progress and find 3-4 opportunities to insert original, surprising metaphors. Why? To enhance and complicate our seeing. To give pleasure via unexpected, surprising language. To delight in, and make meaning from, unlikely juxtapositions.

It’s playtime—have fun with this!

Abrazos,

Cristina