Exercises from the Energheia Writing Course 2025

The following short story was created during Write or Wrong?, a two-day exploration of how human creativity and artificial intelligence can meaningfully collaborate in the writing process. Over the course of the workshop, students experimented with ChatGPT as a creative partner—using it to overcome writer’s block, generate ideas, refine style, and expand narrative possibilities.

This works reflect the spirit of the course: curiosity, play, and a willingness to treat AI not as a replacement for imagination but as a catalyst for it. What follows is a showcase of voices discovering new creative territory, one prompt at a time. 

Miguel Àngel Garrido (Teacher Energheia International Writing Course 2025)

There are moments in life when something slips away. A key falls out of your pocket at the cheese counter while you’re digging for your wallet. A dog gets lost in the park because it wasn’t on a leash and suddenly a squirrel appears. The last piece of cake in the office kitchen grows legs, a child’s shoe vanishes in the ball pit, a hoop earring slides out of an ear while dancing, spring fever bids farewell in autumn, SUVs disappear without a trace in big cities, glaciers and sugar cubes dissolve without even a goodbye, and willpower and courage suddenly can’t be found anymore—even though they were just waiting by the front door, next to the new hiking boots, playfully flapping their ears.

That was more or less how Erwin Hestermann felt when, on an ordinary Wednesday morning, he stepped out of his apartment and found he could no longer locate his motivation to work. It baffled him. He usually loved going to the office, and only minutes ago he had been upstairs at his kitchen table, stirring honey into his black tea and reviewing the numbers for the company presentation. Lovely numbers, big numbers, black numbers. A sure success! He had already been looking forward to the approving glance from his boss, the kudos on the company’s internal social network, the benevolent smile of the department secretary, the pats on the back from his colleagues

.

Yes, that moment was the one he had anticipated most. In his head he had counted at least four pats on the back: from Kai and Patrick, his teammates; from Michael, longtime friend and former mentor; and from Fabio, the recent hire whose charisma and energy infected everyone around him. That would even have been one pat more than after the last company sports tournament—when they had actually made it to the semifinals. Erwin hated to admit it, but he loved pats on the back! He thought it was an underrated gesture, and people should do it far more often. Not just at the office or during sports, but also after a well-cooked pearl barley risotto, a well-told anecdote, or a routine check-up at the dermatologist.

But even the thought of that didn’t bring his motivation back today. At first, he refused to believe it. He stepped back a few paces, paused, and then cautiously crossed the threshold again, this time with his left foot first. Nothing happened. His motivation remained missing.

Erwin thought. Was he sick? He felt his forehead, but his temperature seemed normal. No scratchy throat, no runny nose, no back pain, no stomach trouble. Was he depressed? Burned out? That had happened once before at the firm, a few years ago, maybe in Marketing—or was it Sales? He pondered. He didn’t feel drained, he wasn’t sad, he didn’t sense any emptiness, and he certainly wasn’t having suicidal thoughts. More and more it dawned on him: he simply didn’t feel like working anymore. Perhaps he should call in sick, or take a spontaneous day off—he could claim he’d forgotten his mother’s milestone birthday, or that he’d eaten spoiled fish for dinner. By tomorrow, surely, his motivation would return.

But even before he finished the thought, he realized that tomorrow, the day after, next week, next month, and throughout the coming winter, he would not have the motivation for his work. It was simply gone. After nearly twenty years on the job, he just plain didn’t feel like it anymore.

Overwhelmed by this realization, Erwin sat down on the curb. For those who don’t know him, this might not sound remarkable, but Erwin Hestermann never, truly never, sat on the ground. Not at home, and certainly not in public. But now he crouched there in his light suit trousers, tugging at his brown hair, unable to believe it.

He decided he needed help. Perhaps a doctor or a therapist could assist, but the thought occurred to him that if something was officially lost it should be reported to the police.

Erwin Hestermann sat in a plastic chair opposite a police officer who was chewing on the end of his pen. The officer’s name tag read R. Blum, and he had the kind of face that looked permanently unimpressed, as if every sunrise had been personally arranged to bother him.

“So,” Blum said, clicking open a fresh form on a clipboard. “You’re here to report a theft.”

“Not exactly a theft,” Erwin corrected him. “More of a disappearance.”

Blum raised an eyebrow. “What went missing?”

“My motivation,” Erwin said.

There was a pause. The pen stopped moving in Blum’s mouth. Then, with the same weary professionalism one might reserve for stolen bicycles, he asked, “Size?”

“Excuse me?”

“Size of the missing item. Small, medium, large?”

Erwin thought. “Well, it used to be large. Lately more… medium. Today: none.”

Blum nodded and ticked a box. “Color?”

“I never really looked at it properly. Sometimes it seemed golden, sometimes more like a grey fog. Depends on the season.”

Another tick. “Last known location?”

Erwin hesitated. “At my kitchen table. Between a spoonful of honey and a spreadsheet.”

“Uh-huh.” Blum scribbled. “Distinguishing marks?”

“It has floppy ears,” Erwin said before realizing how absurd that sounded. But it was true. He remembered clearly now—the little thing, playful, waiting by the front door next to his hiking boots.

Blum didn’t blink. “Any witnesses?”

“Not unless my toaster counts.”

The officer sighed, tore the form from the clipboard, and stamped it with a heavy red seal that read INTANGIBLE LOSS – CATEGORY 3. He slid it across the desk.

“Take this downstairs to Lost & Found. Sublevel B. They’ll know what to do.”

“Sublevel B?” Erwin repeated. He hadn’t even known the station had a basement.

Blum leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Hestermann, people lose things every day. Wallets. Dogs. Motivation. You’re not the first. You won’t be the last.”

The elevator creaked and juddered, descending much longer than seemed possible for a police station basement. When the doors finally slid open, Erwin stepped into a wide hall with flickering neon lights and a smell like damp cardboard.

A counter stretched across the room. Behind it stood a woman in a fluorescent vest, sorting objects into labeled cubbies: Patience (Unclaimed), Inspiration (Partial), Common Sense (Do Not Touch). Each cubby was stacked with strange shapes: cloudy jars that hummed faintly, paper bags tied with string, even a shoebox that kept rattling as if something inside wanted out.

Erwin cleared his throat. “Hello. I was told to come here. I’ve lost… my motivation.”

The woman barely looked up. “Join the line.”

Only then did he notice the row of chairs along the wall. A few other people sat waiting, each holding a numbered ticket.

Closest to him was a middle-aged man in a suit, tapping his foot furiously. “Can you believe this?” the man muttered. “I’ve been waiting forty-five minutes. And I have no patience. Literally. Misplaced it yesterday. And now they make me wait? The irony is unbearable.”

Next to him, a woman with wild hair and tired eyes gave Erwin a wan smile. “At least you can still complain. My sense of humor slipped away last summer. I used to laugh at everything. Now…” She gestured limply at a vending machine that read ‘Exact Change Only’. “Not even mildly amusing.”

On the far end sat a teenager in a hoodie, slouched so low he was practically horizontal. “Lost my ambition,” he mumbled when Erwin looked his way. “Used to want to be an astronaut. Or at least a barista. Now? Meh.” He stared at the ceiling tiles. “It’s probably in there somewhere.”

Erwin’s chest warmed. “Maybe… maybe we shouldn’t just wait here. Maybe we should try to find our lost items ourselves.”

The teenager shrugged. The woman raised an eyebrow.

“I mean,” Erwin went on, “what if we put up posters? Missing: Motivation. Missing: Patience. Missing: Humor. Missing: Ambition. People might notice. They might even turn up.”

The woman actually chuckled—a short, rusty sound, like an old engine starting. “Posters. I like that. Very… grassroots.”

The teenager sighed. “Fine. But only if we can print them in color.”

And just like that, a strange little alliance began to form, three people united by their absent intangibles and the faint, ridiculous hope that someone out there might find them.

The city became their playground. Posters appeared on lampposts, bus stops, and café bulletin boards:

“Lost: Motivation – Reward if Found”

“Humor Missing – Last Seen in Café de Lune”

“Ambition Misplaced – Please Return Immediately”

Calls and sightings came in. A baker claimed ambition was stuck to a rolling pin. A cab driver said humor rode in the back seat and never paid. And a schoolkid, clutching a backpack, pointed at one of the posters and declared, “Patience? That’s living in my goldfish tank. Feeding it flakes every morning. You can’t have it. It’s mine.”

The absurdity was endless, but gradually, little fragments returned to each of them. The woman laughed at a joke she didn’t even understand. The teenager set his alarm for the first time in months. And Erwin, through the camaraderie of searching and failing, felt sparks of his old motivation return—not the same as before, but alive.

Then, one Thursday afternoon, Erwin saw it.

A flicker of movement by the old post office, a small, floppy-eared shape nosing at a crumpled sandwich wrapper. His motivation.

He chased it through the square, past fountains and flower stalls, through a street where cars were honking furiously, his lungs burning, his heart, racing. Finally, in a quiet alley, the creature slowed down; and looked at him with mischievous golden eyes.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

For a moment, it seemed it might come to him. But then Erwin saw clearly: this was not his old life anymore. The creature belonged to a version of him that thrived on shoulder pats and spreadsheets — and that Erwin no longer existed.

“Go on,” he said softly.

The creature hopped once, almost a bow, and darted down the alley, disappearing into the city’s brightness.

Erwin stood for a long moment, expecting emptiness or despair. Instead, he felt a surprising lightness, as if a weight he hadn’t noticed had lifted from his shoulders. His hands slipped into his pockets, and for the first time in years, he smiled—not the small, polite smile he offered colleagues at the office, but a quiet, genuine one that came from somewhere deep inside.

He didn’t turn back toward the office, didn’t retrace the path to his apartment. He didn’t need to. The city stretched before him, full of unknown streets and possibilities. Somewhere out there, his motivation might continue its playful wanderings, and that was okay. Perhaps it would return someday, in a new form. Perhaps it would not.

What mattered was that Erwin had learned something important: he didn’t need to chase it to be whole. He could walk forward, open to whatever the day, the week, or the city might bring him next.

He thought of the woman who had laughed again, the teenager who had set his alarm, the man who had found patience in small, unexpected moments, and even the schoolkid with the goldfish tank. Perhaps life was less about holding onto everything and more about finding joy in what could be discovered along the way; and so Erwin Hestermann walked on, smiling faintly to himself, the city alive around him, and for the first time in a very long while, he felt ready to meet whatever came next.

And for now, that was enough.

Nina Kipke