How is it I've never seen this site before: http://bookshelfporn.com/archive ... write about someone's bookshelf, real or imagined...

Check out these photos of people reading in public. A couple of days this week, read different books in public. See how many people talk to you. Write about those conversations.

In the spring the much celebrated (and deservedly so) Gary Shteyngart will be coming to Boca to read at the MELUS conference hosted by FAU. His book trailer for his current bestselling novel, Super Sad True Love Story, is one of the best I've seen. You'll notice the cameo by James Franco...and if you've read any of Franco's stories or followed his recent artistry, you'll notice he likes to play with the idea of himself as a character. So watch Shteyngart's trailer and then write something with James Franco in it.

So I'm a big fan of "So You Think You Can Dance" (the good dancing, not the sad bad dancers) and my favorite dancer this season is former Miami City Ballet soloist (locals should definitely seek out this troupe's performances) Alex Wong. Apparently during downtime for rehearsals and backstage during performances, he and his friends make videos of cheesy choreography that they come up with just for fun:

Dancers gone Haywire

On your downtime, write something playful, just for fun.

My good friend Oliver de la Paz has a chapbook of poems in the latest Black Warrior Review and one of the things that "groups" the poems is the tone created by certain romantic words--susurrus, sepulchre, lupine, wisteria, trellis, sulfur, orchid, spindrift and my favorite ox-eye daisy. I haven't seen him do it but I suspect he collects words like that..

Keep a list of words. Or more than one list even.

Happily, The Books have a new album coming out in July: http://pitchfork.com/forkcast/14244-beautiful-people/

Write something with reverb.

A lot of writers of my acquaintance have a childhood love of dollhouses and dioramas (I still remember my diorama for an eighth grade book report on In Cold Blood ... yes, it was of the Clutters' house on the night they got murdered--and my report was a first person account of the murders by one of the killers which I delivered in some kind of drawl.) Anyway...I've mentioned Elsa Mora's blogs before--she now has a doll one--which very much led me to want to make doll versions of all my stories. Make some kind of visual representation of what you're writing.