When I stall out, they kick me into gear. They help me avoid decision paralysis. No more sitting there, blank page, blank brain. Instead: one playful nudge. Just enough to move.

Prompts don’t box me in. They open doors. Even if I veer way off course, I end up somewhere interesting. Somewhere I wouldn’t have gone on my own.

They do something else, too: they let me play. No pressure to be brilliant. No inner critic whispering “this better be good.” It doesn’t have to be. It just has to be.

Sure, I’ve got prompt lists. I’ve let AI suggest a few. But the best ones? I find them out in the wild. A lyric. A random quote. A weird line I scribbled in my sketchbook months ago. Even something someone says over coffee.

And my ideation notebook? A gold mine. A brief look back at some of the ideas I came up with can spin into an entire new piece.

Prompts aren’t just fallback. They’re fuel.