(Daily writing prompts are posted Monday through Friday at 7am on Facebook. This is the weekly roundup with a few excerpts from my personal journal. The goal is to write for at least 10 minutes without stopping, regardless of what ends up on the paper. Feel free to share writing in the comment section. Write on!)
A little inspiration to start out:
“Write when you are in despair or euphoria, write it all! Write especially during the sometimes boring middle parts. Write about how pathetic or brave you feel, or how you just saw your unguarded face in the reflection of the TV screen and saw for just an instant…your grandmother’s face.” –Sark, Juicy Pens Thirsty Paper
Prompt 6: Anne Lamotte wrote in Bird by Bird that “good writing is about telling the truth.”Write down one true thing. And then another. And then keep going.
From my journal:
“I’ve been finding a lot of crow feathers in my path. They aren’t as black as I thought they would be. Some are more blue than black, “midnight” if I had to come up with a word. If crows weren’t such funny little creatures I would think the feathers were an ominous omen. “
Prompt 7: Pick one word from the list and write to wherever it takes you:
MELAMINE
HAIR NET
CLAM
ASHES
From my journal:
“The muskrats used to take the freshwater clams to their burrows in the styrofoam. Cracked open for their meat the discarded clams would litter the beach. I thought resembled shiny vinyl records or the blacks of saddleshoes. Some were lockets held together by a tiny ligament. I would try and nest tinier shells within the larger ones until they fell apart.”
Prompt 8: Grab a nearby newspaper, magazine or book. Write down a list of 20 interesting words you find. Pick one from the list to be today’s prompt.
From my journal:
“Ohhh…lots of good words here: storytelling, adirondack, traditional, sidekick, summer slide, unmask, librarian, dust, drought, Rothko, siphon, divining rod. DROUGHT. I read recently that the amount of water on the earth never changes which means that water is added in some places and subtracted in others. Subtraction is where the earth begins to tighten and contract and the shapes in the dried mud begin to resemble a geometry lesson.”
Prompt 9: What is the earliest memory you have?
From my journal:
“I remember when my brother was born in Massachusetts, the drive to the hospital where the road seemed to go on forever. We were only in Boston for a few months in a rental house. I got one of those big vanity Barbie heads at a neighbor’s garage sale but it didn’t come with any of the makeup or brushes. When we returned to our house at the lake it seemed to big and vacant, like it had been sitting empty forever.”
Prompt 10: Where love lives.
From my journal:
“In open hearts. In open hands. In open minds. In open days. In houses with open doors. In pitter patter. In trails of ink….”
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