Writing Prompt, July 4:

Write about a struggle you've had--or are having--with dependency.

Writing Prompt, July 3: Summer Camp

Write about summer camp.

If you didn't go to camp, pretend you did and write about that. Or make up a story about somebody who did go.

I found a letter in my childhood keepsake box, "my treasures," addressed to my older sister Nancy and me, from our friend Dodie Pettit, about being at overnight camp:

Please excuse my writing because I am on my bed. This is rest hour. Carol -- I hope you can read script. . .Tonight the Iroquois are going to put on a tribe show. I don't know what it is because I'm a Mohegan and it's a secret.

Thursday our cabin (cabin 7) canoed to Trigger Island for a cookout. We went skinny dipping and tipped the canoes. . .



Dodie has drawn a tiny map in the letter. You might want to create a map of a camp or a camp trail and write about that.

Writing Prompt, July 2: A Summer Word

Pick a word that captures a feeling of summer. Write about it. Here's something I wrote in a prompt workshop. Some of you have heard it. My word: Dawdle

Dawdle:

I watch the two little bodies walking down the beach at the water’s edge where the sand is cooler. I can see their shoulders held back, proud of their solo mission, big girls off alone without an adult. As they blur and become dots in the mirage of summer heat, I gaze farther down the beach at their destination, the little gray shingle box of a store, its blue postage size flag rippling.

I imagine their joy at entering that odd little room with its saggy wooden floors, the screen door that slaps shut, and its short shelves holding only the necessities—a few tubes of toothpaste, the package of Oreos, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, paper towel. And at the far end, the magical Mary Poppinsish penny candy counter with glass jars of Mary Jane’s, Hershey Kisses, Reese’s cups, candy cigarettes, Tootsie Rolls and Airheads.

Before they left I reapplied sun screen to their freckled pink faces, insisted they wear long tee-shirts over their swim suits, tucked their salty hair behind their ears, and plopped their pastel baseball caps on their fair heads. Each girl clutched a quarter in her fist.

They will return, waving their little brown bags of melting chocolates and sticky wax papered treats.

My last words to them, these little girls aged eight and five, after promising a swim when they get back, the last words I say to them are, “Don’t dawdle.”

T-shirt Truth

I saw this T-shirt at a street fair in Cambridge, MA, last weekend--part of the first annual Dance For World Community Festival. The festival was organized by the Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre and is a project dedicated to expanding the role of dance in local communities. Along with all the tasty food, the festival featured lots of dance groups--from African dance to modern to ballet--and free classes in many dance forms.



I felt like I was stepping into the past, into an era when street theater ruled and community involvement in the arts mattered. I was also stepping into my own past, when I was a modern dancer rehearsing and performing in Cambridge and then New York.

Write about something that really mattered once and doesn't anymore.

Writing Alone, Well Almost

Sitting at my hotel room desk, writing, I look up--gloating just a bit--over the view, the quiet, and the privacy.

I could sit here in the buff, I'm thinking.

Blue bliss.

Oops. What are these guys doing? End of revery.

Wide Open Desktops

At home, I have an office. It's my very own space. My files spill from the black metal drawers; cardboard boxes and stacks of paper litter the desk and floor; books cram the shelves. I feel fortunate to have a nook I can call my own--cinderblock walls, pockmarked drop ceiling, buckling linoleum floor and all.

Truly, I'm grateful. It's just that I never write in there. In fact, I never go in there if I can help it. I write on my laptop, in a chair in the middle of everything--in my living room.

My office has become a time-out place, a "get me out of here, NOW" zone. The tiny room seems more like a hall, a breezeway--if only there were a breeze--between the children's former playroom, now morphed into a saggy-couched entertainment center, and my husband's office.

His office? My husband's mother gave him an apt nickname: kudzu. Last night, when I was trying to squeeze past the flight attendant who was pushing the dinner cart down the economy aisle, I said to myself, this experience reminds me of something. What? Ah, yes. Trying to get around in my husband's office.

Every day some of kudzu's stuff migrates into my space.


Here, in a hotel in Doha, Qatar, I have a curvy wooden desk holding only the books and the one manilla file I brought with me. Nobody passes through. Nothing piles up. All I hear is the hum of the airconditioning. I could get a lot of writing done here.

But I could at home too. In a tiny corner of his house, Paul Silvia wrote How to Write A Lot. The book features a workplace photo--desk, lamp, laptop, trash can. Period. Kind of like my photo above. His modest setup proves, he tells us in no uncertain terms, that we don't need retreats or fancy office digs in order to write, that complaining about our space, or lack of it, is just another excuse for not writing.

In my dreams I'm writing at a clear-surfaced home office desk--the room clean and quiet. Right now, awake, nothing trumps a hotel.

Seriously. We're cats.

This is our last post for a while. Yes, we've missed a few days but what do you expect? We're cats. Just try to train us.
Write about your attempts to tame or train something. And good luck.