Like many formerly teenage girls and queer kids of the 2010s, I grew up watching a lot of Sav Brown videos. Sav Brown is a writer and poet who’s made a career through her writing and her vlog-style videos talking about writing; in her earlier days, these two things coalesced into recordings of her slam poems, many of which helped her gain widespread notoriety (“Hi, I’m A Slut”).
In the years since, Brown has taken hiatuses to focus on her writing, returning every once in a while to do more existential vlogs. But one thing that she’s consistently had going for her followers since 2019 is “Escapril,” a monthlong series of writing prompts every April. Think Inktober for writers, or Nanowrimo for those who chronically struggle with writer’s block.
As you can see, the prompts are simple enough to get the cogs turning, and not so complex that you feel pigeonholed. Last year, one prompt was simply, “It’s getting dark, we should probably head back.” And though it might seem too verbose to make anything substantial out of, it jogged an old memory of a failed hike through the woods with a boy I once knew. The short story I pulled out of that remains one of my favorites I’ve written in recent memory.
Though I feel as though I’ve largely outgrown Sav’s “style” of writing and engaging with the internet, I’ve always taken note of, and admired, her writerly mind. Writing takes a very specific relationship to your craft, and Sav’s built her career out of fine-tuning that relationship. Therefore, these prompts feel very natural and malleable for whatever our own relationships to our crafts might be. Thus far, with the first two prompts, I’ve found it very easy to create some sort of material. “Eavesdrop” was especially fun to write with, considering all the AirBnBs in my area were full of Spring Breakers this past weekend.
Will you be taking part in Escapril? Any ideas jogged from these prompts? Feel free to share in the comments!
(featured image: Disney)
