Spark plugs or fuel?

For the past three years I've been throwing out prompts as the sparks for writing, just assuming that was the only way to use them. I stumbled across a 15 minute fiction site (now defunct) that sent out weekly words as prompts but they suggested coming up with a scene first and then using the word as fuel. Odd how the obvious can be not so obvious :-)

Which works better depends on your needs at the moment. :-) But if you've been finding your ideas limited by a writing prompt, try coming up with the scene first and see where the prompt takes it. Maybe take a previous scene and see where it takes you.

In fact it's what you need to do for National Novel Writing Month if you want to incorporate the prompts into your novel. If you haven't heard about NaNoWriMo, it's coming up November 1st and I'll be posting more about it this Saturday :-)