Two unlikely characters meet, date, and eventually part ways. Write their story without using the words “part ways,” “meet,” or “Zoloft.”
Tell the story of a woman who is given two forks with her Seamless order but only needs one now.
One character no longer loves another character. Compose a diatribe about how fucked up that is.
Read in between the lines of the antagonist’s story, then write that story while spending every major national holiday alone.
Find an old photo of a horse, or check your phone to see if your ex reached out. Write one million words about either.
Think up a series of questions that already have answers and keep asking them. If you do this in short, uneven lines that don’t reach the length of the page, then you can call it “poetry.” You’re normal now!
Play with tense by constructing a new future on an alternative timeline: this time you’re happy; your ex is not. That’s enough work for today.
Take the words “engulfment,” “lifetime,” and “heyy,” and organize them into a 15-word story in the Messages app; submit for rejection.
Rehearse plot twists, like have one soulless character text another character back for fuck’s sake.
Many phrases have multiple interpretations. As one example, “I no longer have sexual feelings for you” has at least 26 interpretations. What are they?
Remember a trip you took, specifically when there was pale moonlight, bedroom eyes, all that crap. Throw in an apocalypse. Who caused it? Why? Why did he do it? Why now?! How could he do this to me I mean you I mean the character?
Fabricate some dialogue in which one person oozes neediness and the other person could seemingly give a shit — despite how there is written and verbal evidence as early as last month where they said they would MARRY YOU, so apparently words don’t matter and nothing matters and the future is for dead people. Anyway, yeah, do a fictional exchange that does that. Whatever.
Photographs invite an infinitude of responses. Look at your ex’s Instagram “just for a sec.” What the fuck do you think his latest image is telling you?
Imagine two characters who didn’t get a moment in the rain together, and then describe in detail how one might contact cognitive behavioral therapists in the area to see what insurance they accept.
Call to mind a memory you can’t let go of. Then, I don’t know, experiment with genre by letting the hair on your body grow all the way out.
Scribble to your Congressperson about love from the first-person point of view of death.
Write flash fiction that begins with the sentence “Every silver lining has a cloud” and ends in castration.
Pen a self-portrait in which the protagonist gains somewhere in the ballpark of 5 to 25 pounds from breakfast wine.
They say “time heals all wounds.” Write a personal essay about all wounds and spend a lot of time on it.
They also say “comedy is tragedy plus time.” Journal about how goddamn useless that is.
Throw something.
You craft a piece of such truth and beauty and wit and gravitas that when your ex reads it, she recognizes instantly how deeply she fucked up. On slips of folded paper, draft versions of your acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay (based on the bestselling autofiction) after masturbating to the thought of your genius.
Give one character a tragic flaw that another character accepts on a Sunday evening in winter while crying onto the paper to give it that “wet effect.”
Rewrite history. All of it, honestly, just rewrite it all.
A resilient woman watches Netflix alone; describe what happens next.