Shantyquarian Submission Form - Northern Spark Edition
The following prompts are meant to engage you in contributing to a collaborative text. We will take your responses and assemble them into one unique text. Depending on the gathered responses, this text may be a narrative, an essay, a poem or a song.

We will set this text in wood and metal type and hand-print it on an old fashioned letterpress at Northern Spark, a city-wide, overnight arts festival in Minneapolis, MN on June 9th, 2012.

HOW TO USE THIS FORM

• Answer one or as many questions as you wish. Don't be a completist!
• We are presenting you with a variety of prompts to engage you in writing. Respond to what feels natural. Don't force it!
• This form is long so that we can present you with a variety of prompts. Respond only to the prompts that engage you. Take as little or as much time as you wish.
• Submit this form multiple times. Come back and answer the same prompts or try something new.

HAVE FUN • REPEAT
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Basic
Simple prompts to generate intriguing texts.
Questions: Write a question, or several questions. Be specific, vague, profound, practical, or absurd.
Examples: What are the primary causes of inflation? Why is blue? Who would do such a thing?
Answers: Write an answer, or several answers. At random! Same principal as the questions above.
Examples: Because it fits. She couldn’t foresee the consequences of her actions. A motor made of howling leaves. Well why wouldn’t I?
Hypotheticals: Write a hypothetical statement beginning with ‘if’ or ‘when’. Anything goes!
Examples: When a dog meets a dog. If the clock stops. When my coworkers fall in love. If the United Nations fails to pass this resolution.
Conditionals: Write a sentence in the conditional or future tense. Whatever comes to mind!
Examples: The taxi driver will pay. Then I will get the good grade. We will all understand it completely. Whatever will be will be.  Stuff.
Exquisite corpse: Select a text—a favorite book or magazine, or an online article. Select a sentence, by choice or at random. Write an original follow-up sentence or sentences in the space below.
Do not include the original sentence.
Opposites: Select a text—a favorite book or magazine, or an online article. Select a sentence, by choice or at random. Write a sentence that is opposite, word by word or phrase by phrase, according to any idea of the opposite.
Do not include the original sentence.
Thought of the day: You give answers to unexpected questions.
Be gnomic. Be sincere. Be Jack Handy. You’re the oracle. You decide.
Cut-up/Assemblage/Text Dump: Cut and paste, rearrange, or just drop some random, found, or intentional text into the field below, be it yours or another’s. We’ll chop it up and assemble it into something new.
Please consider limiting your text to no more than a couple paragraphs. If, for example, you try to dump the entire text of The Bible or The Communist Manifesto into this field, it will get cut off, and we’ll probably just delete it.
Open Ended
More complex prompts with intriguing solutions. Have fun!
One into Another: Select two unrelated objects. Describe the second object using only properties of the first.
Example:  (an orange described using only properties of a can of beer): Cold and biting, it causes my mouth to pucker. It is useful for parlor games. When I break it open, my mouth waters in anticipation. Common in the summer and a welcome relief in the winter.
Directions for use: Using the style and format of directions for use, apply them to items that do not require such instructions.
Example: The passage of time should be handled with care. Do not attempt to block or impede the passage of time. This could result in disappointment and arrested development. Unwrap the passage of time before use, over and over again, without end.
Dream Objects: Select an object from your dream that has qualities not usually associated with an analogous object in real life.
Write about it. Describe it. React to it.
Irrational Characteristics of Objects: Create a generic set of unusual questions that could be asked about objects.
Select an object.  Answer those questions.
Objective Perception: Right now! Draw your attention away from the computer or mobile device and identify what is most strikingly impinging upon your senses.
Describe it. React to it.
Personal symbols: Select an object or idea. Give it personal symbolic qualities, or qualities not traditionally associated with that object or idea.
Build your own symbology.
New Proverbs/Superstitions/Myths: Create your own.
Go wild. Be simple or complex. Have fun.
Automatic Writing: blank out. Adopt a receptive state of mind, and just start writing.
We don’t care if it’s nonsense or if it's banal. We’ll figure out how to use it.
Simulation: Choose a historical figure, celebrity, or youtube sensation that you adore or abhor, and write a speech, an inner dialogue, or a few song lyrics.
Write as this person. Is it an argument? A letter to the editor? A recipe? A song?  What would they choose as a song title?
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