kafka's diary
2026, march 1
my current go-to prompt when i want to switch back into a poetic gaze on life after doing loads of adulting like taxes and stuff. the prompt is inspired by kafka’s famous diary entry: “im kino gewesen. geweint.”, in english: “been to the movies. cried.”
prompt: kafka’s diary | 9 minutes
think of situations from your recent life that felt beautiful, touching, fascinating, or funny to you.
turn these situations into very short sentences.
as short as franz kafka’s line: “im kino gewesen. geweint.”
in english: “been to the movies. cried.”
the pattern is:
been in / been at / been on / been inside …
write as many lines as come to you.
abstract and absurd combinations are welcome, for example:
been in my head. dreamed.
been in pain. waited.
variation: in my writing bootcamp, we applied this not to recent life, but to the stories we were working on.
distilling each scene or paragraph or chapter into two short sentences turned out to be a surprisingly sharp way to uncover the core of our stories.