Illustration by Ana Hinojosa.

Sometimes your creative intuition takes a hit: You feel drained, and you worry you will never create again. I tend to beat myself up when the ideas don’t come. Then I remember that I have to play, loosen up, and let my subconscious be my guide. That’s where my creativity comes from—and where I found it as a little kid!

To help myself connect with my inner voice, I like to go back to writing exercises I learned while I was studying creative writing. (I shared one of these with you a while ago, when my friend Jenny and I played “One Word.”) Today I am going to talk you through an exercise that comes from a teaching method called the Story Workshop, but it can also be a prompt for poetry and visual art too.

The topic of conversation is place. I will guide you through finding and exploring this place. Then you will describe or recreate the place you visited in whatever creative outlet you choose. Let’s go:

Send your place-based art or writing—along with your first name, last initial, age, and city/state—to [email protected] with the subject line “Creative Prompt” by Monday, February 20 at 6 PM ET. Show (or tell) us where you’ve been!

Last week, we asked you to create your holiday. Here’s what you celebrated…