Writing Prompt, July 17: On a Walk

Take a walk and look for animals. Sit outside and write about what you see.

Writing Prompt, July 15: In a Garden

Sit in a garden and write. What do you hear, smell, see? What's crawling on the earth? Observe the sunlight on the plants. Feel their leaves.

". . . I have salvaged dead wood from the grove of trees behind the flower bed, have made a crude bench from this. I sit there and I look at the cascade of Sweet Briar Rose, at the brush of lavender, and I try to imagine the Saffron crocus growing between them.

"I have cleared the tangle of trees above the flower bed so that now the sun moves over the garden. I can see where it falls, what it touches. There are blackbirds calling from the woods."

from The Lost Garden, by Helen Humphreys

Writing Prompt, July 14: Traveling

Write about a summer trip you took when you were a child. I am the bonneted baby on my grandmother's lap and don't remember waiting for this flight. I think I'll write about it anyway.

Writing prompt, July 13. A July birthday

Write about a July birthday--consider writing about somebody you don't know. Or maybe it's the birthday of one of your characters. Every July, there is a four-day gathering at Walden Pond to celebrate Thoreau's birthday. The Thoreau Society was founded in 1941, making it the oldest society devoted to an American author. It's also the largest. Thoreau wrote, "I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." (From the Writer's Almanac, July 12)

Writing Prompt, July 12:

Write about poison ivy, red ants, ticks, bed bugs, mosquitos, chiggers, or . . .

Writing Prompt, July 11: Is it safe . . .

Prompt: "Is it safe to go back in the water?"

Writing Prompt, July 10: A Favorite Book

Prompt: Write about a favorite summer read from childhood. What did you love about the book? Where did you read? In a hammock, on a porch, under the sheet at night with a flashlight?

Writing Prompt, July 9: Watermelon

Prompt: List everything you can think of about watermelon--words, phrases. Don't think. Just write.

Writing Prompt, July 8: Warm Weather Rock

Prompt: Think about a song that celebrates summer and write.

For me, first up is "Hot Town, Summer in the City," by the Lovin' Spoonful and that steamy July back in 1966.

Hot town, summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city . . .

Writing Prompt, July 7: Step Onto the Ferry

Prompt: Write about taking a summer ferry ride.

I love this opening from Step Onto the Ferry, and Summer Begins

The piece by Lili Wright appeared in the Sunday "Travel Section," when the New York Times still offered a back-page travel essay.

Without a doubt, ferries are my favorite way to travel. I would take a ferry to California if I could. I would take a ferry to France.

Sure, ferries are slow and heavy. They can be rusty and cranky and can grunt when you least expect it. They have dirty windows and plastic seats without cushions. Ferries are the frumpy, weak-coffee serving, wiener-roasting rec rooms of transport, but I prefer them to any other means.

A ferry trip feels like a clean beginning, an ending to whatever happened before. As you leave land behind, you also leave behind that worn-out, crusty you who had lost her sense of humor and possibly her grace. . .

Summer Prompt, July 6: Overheard

Prompt: Write an overheard dialogue between two people sitting out on a screened porch on a hot July night. Set this up by introducing the reader to who is eavesdropping and why? Where is the listening during this overheard conversation?

Writing Prompt, July 5 Summer heat

Prompt: Pick a line or a word or an idea from this poem and use it as your starting point.

A Warm Summer in San Francisco

Although I watched and waited for it every day,
somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached
the peak of ripeness. It wasn't at the solstice; that was only
the time of the longest light. It was sometime after that, when
the plants had absorbed all that sun, had taken it into themselves
for food and swelled to the height of fullness. It was in July,
in a dizzy blaze of heat and fog, when on some nights
it was too hot to sleep, and the restaurants set half their tables
on the sidewalks; outside the city, down the coast,
the Milky Way floated overhead, and shooting stars
fell from the sky over the ocean. One day the garden
was almost overwhelmed with fruition:
My sweet peas struggled out of the raised bed onto the mulch
of laurel leaves and bark and pods, their brilliantly colored
sunbonnets of rose and stippled pink, magenta and deep purple
pouring out a perfume that was almost oriental. Black-eyed Susans
stared from the flower borders, the orange cherry tomatoes
were sweet as candy, the fruit fattened in its swaths of silk,
hummingbirds spiraled by in pairs, the bees gave up
and decided to live in the lavender. At the market,
surrounded by black plums and rosy plums and sugar prunes
and white-fleshed peaches and nectarines, perfumey melons
and mangos, purple figs in green plastic baskets,
clusters of tiny Champagne grapes and piles of red-black cherries
and apricots freckled and streaked with rose, I felt tears
come into my eyes, absurdly, because I knew
that summer had peaked and was already passing
away. I felt very close then to understanding
the mystery; it seemed to me that I almost knew
what it meant to be alive, as if my life had swelled
to some high moment of response, as if I could
reach out and touch the season, as if I were inside
its body, surrounded by sweet pulp and juice,
shimmering veins and ripened skin.

by Carolyn Miller, from Light, Moving. © Sixteen Rivers Press, 2009

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 16: Sorrows

"All sorrows can be borne if you tell a story about them."
Karen Blixen

Write about a summer sorrow.

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.

Shadows

Write about your shadow, or somebody else's.

Sharing a bed

Write about sleeping with somebody.

What do you expect?

Some of you are wondering why we don't post at the same time every day, why we miss some days. We are cats, that's why. Need I say more?
Write about what you expect.

Count on him

I can always count on him to make messes for me to get into.
Write about somebody you can count on.

Who is smarter?

This is our new cousin Mimi, who also likes books. We're afraid she's smarter than we are.
Write about a fear.

Where to sit

What? How to choose a chair? What are these people doing?
Write about picking a place to sit.

Time out

Write about time out or spending time in the corner.

Who are you, really?

Write about a time when you pretended to be someone/something you aren't.

(I've given this prompt before--not in this context--and some creatures can't come up with anything. I'm embarrassed to admit that it's easy for me. I even pretend to be a dog sometimes.)

A Chair of One's Own

Virginia Woolf writes about having a room of one's own for writing--I don't need a room of my own, as long as they have rooms and piles of papers I can lie on. What I do like is a chair of my own. And this is one of mine.

Write about a favorite chair, a favorite place to sit or stretch out.

Feeling stuck.

Write about a time when you felt stuck.

Where is it?

Write about looking for something ordinary that you can't find.

Feeling Framed

Write about a time you felt framed.

We're so glad

We're so glad we're cats and not pigs. Write an ode to what or who you are.

And here's a paean to the onion, which, by the way, we wouldn't dream of eating.

An Easter Centerpiece

She shoos me off tables and counters when people are over but, hey, I look good on the sideboard, better than the side dishes.

Write about an Easter dinner.

Saturday

Sorry we're late posting today. Too much cat TV. Back on it tomorrow--in the morning.

Write about a Saturday.

Taking the Sun

This is one of my favorite sunning spots. I don't go outdoors and would be too scared to relax in the real sun if I did. Here, I'm under a skylight and on my favorite rug.

Write about sunbathing.

Playing

Here's one of my favorite toys. The feathers tickle me and the furry part smells catnipy. I rub against it, toss and chase it, hide it under stuff, and nuzzle the feathers.

Write about what you like to play with and why. You may be a grown-up. I am too; I'm almost three and for a cat that's post-teen, but I still play. And I know you do too. If you get stuck, start with how you played as a child.

A far-away friend

This is our friend Leopard. Well, we don't have friends, except each other. But Leopard's owner visited last weekend--you know the woman Katryna whose bed we wouldn't share.

Write about somebody else's cat. Somebody else's bed.

On Top of the World

Today is a good day. I got the top tower perch. He remembered to feed us early so I didn't have to get loud and, I admit, nervous about breakfast. I chased the pet mouse and the laser beam for a few minutes. Exercise? Done. She changed the water in our bowl. I mean, I'm sitting on top of the world.
Write about what a good morning looks like, in your world.

Big Game Tonight

It's not tennis tonight. Basketball. NCAA championship game but that ball is too big for me.

My people are totally psyched. I could care less but I do like to sit on her tummy when she's stretched out on the couch--until she starts screaming at the screen.

Write about which sports you enjoy? Memories of sports. Me? I love bird TV out the low kitchen window and wrestling with Lucy.

Palm Sunday Musing

I see the path ahead but I can't get there. Maybe that's a good thing.
What's on your path?

Houseguest

We annoyed the houseguest, Katryna, by not sleeping on her bed last night. What can we say? We aren't reliable. Are you? Is she?
Write about a houseguest.

Hydration Nation

I may be fat but at least I hydrate.

My long legs

I know comparisons are odious but what happened to me? Look at my slender body and glorious long legs. Now, I make Tina look small. Sigh. The vet said I needed to lose 15 percent of my body weight. Thanks, pal. I thought you said you loved cats.
Write about something mean somebody said to you--about your body.

Don't Leave Home Without Us

Every day this month I'm going to post about cats--which means I'll be tackling some pretty deep subjects.


My cats (that's Lucy in front, Tina behind) always sniff around and settle into my suitcase when I get it out to pack. Do they want to go with me? Are they trying to say: "Don't go?"

What, if anything, do you know about how your cats feel? Your dogs? Your pet hermit crabs?

How do you feel about packing a suitcase? About leaving?

Three Things About Yesterday

At yoga, my smart teacher Christina said, "Tension masks sensation."

She was talking about tension within the body, of course. I thought about writing too. If we're tense we can't relax into writing from our senses--from those places deep within us, the well, from where we experience the world. We're shut off if we're uptight. I believe that trust and a sense of safety are essential for a good writing workshop--and a good yoga class and a good life.

Last night, Natalie Goldberg read at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham, North Carolina. She opened by saying something like, Wow this is my first time in the South and THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE--as if she were stunned that people in the South not only 1) know how to read but 2) know how to come out to a reading. She was kidding, sort of. But all night she kept up this provincialism, which was annoying and distracting especially because she had so much great stuff to say, like: Memoir is a study of the movement of the mind. We don't remember chronologically. We smell a lilac and remember sitting over a bowl of cabbage soup 20 years ago.

She said: "Sit down, pick up a pen, and kick ass." Amen, sister.

Here are two photos from the Mining for Gold Writing Workshop I taught over the weekend, through the Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South. These people sat down, picked up their pens and, well, did it.

They kicked ass.

Dialogues with the truth

At a workshop tonight we wrote dialogues with an aspect of self--or I said before starting--"you might want to have a conversation with a book project or something you're working on or with a body part that's bothering you."

I told them about a dialogue I'd had with my tongue.

Me, to my tongue: Why do you get swollen and sore and make me talk as though I'm drunk, slurring my words because I can't fit you in my mouth.

Tongue: You stay up too late, don't get enough rest. That plus eating too much salt makes me swell. Knock it off and I'll behave.

Me: Well OK.

Two women, sitting beside each other on a couch and banging on laptops, both wanted to read their dialogues. Both were with writing projects. One of them went something like this: "Why do you NOT put me on your schedule, give me any attention? "

Writer: Because other things come up and I'm not on a deadline with you.

Project: Yeah but you don't have forever. You might die before finishing me, like Peter did. What makes you think you have all this time?

Writer: Yikes. True. What do you want from me?

Project: Your time and attention.

Somebody else read about a real life character who was begging for a voice--to have her story told in a memoir.

If we give these inner voices the chance, they come out loud and clear for what they need.

All we have to do is take the time to ask, and listen.

Scout's Pace

Nothing like travel to break up routines. I so admire those people who write and exercise no matter where they are--or how disoriented or bad the hangover. I try, in hotels, to use the gym. But I forget my headphones and can't bear the boredom or I go, but only for one day of a five-day trip. I brought my running shoes with me this time and after a full day's work yesterday, I went out for a scout's pace. (I'm not in a hotel.)

I learned about the Scout's pace from my husband. And then, cleaning out one of my parents' bookcases, I found my father's Boy Scout Handbook. In the index, sure enough: Scout's Pace. It's a way to cover a lot of ground fast without getting exhausted--you walk then run then walk again, and so on. Always counting. I did about a mile yesterday. It's a better workout than walking and not as crushing as running.

But as for the daily hour of writing on MY book? I've missed two days. I don't report to my edit job until 9 AM and only have to walk downstairs to the office. There's hot coffee for me by 7AM. I may be immersed in somebody else's book right now, and sleeping in a strange bed in a distant state, but, really, there are no excuses.

Tomorrow morning: 7:30 AM. I'll be at it.

The Daily Grind

At a meeting with a friend this morning, I mentioned the book I've been working on.

"Which book?" she asked.

"You know," I said, "the one about the mothers and writing."

"Oh, that," she said, "I thought you finished it last summer."

"No, I finished a draft that week in August when I went away to write."

"You were so excited about finishing. I thought it was, like, done."

My friend is not a writer.

"Well, you see, I put the book away when I came home," I said, "and got all caught up in my work schedule and I didn't look at it until I made this new commitment to work on it every day for an hour."

"Oh," she said, looking distinctly blank, unimpressed.

"Right," I said. And thought: go ahead, rub it in.

She had just been talking about how productive she's been lately--refinancing, applying for a new job, doing her taxes.

We sat in silence for a few moments.

"So, what else is going on?" she asked.

"Nothing much." I shrugged.

I didn't say that I spend so much of my time working with other people on their writing that I don't get to my own. I'm done with that excuse.

And I wasn't about to confess to her that I am a binge writer, a sprinter, a deadline-driven writer, that to write every day is, for me, a monumental achievement. She wouldn't understand. I mean she finished her taxes already and it's not even the middle of March.

Ash Wednesday Musing

I am not religious but I met yesterday with a woman who decided that for Lent this year--instead of giving up something like chocolate or trashy novels--she was going to write every day. Rather than give up something, deprivation, she was going to add something, enhance her life. Forget the hair shirt, go for the comfy cotton.

Things I've Been Silent About

Things I’ve Been Silent About: this is a prompt I’ve given in three recent workshops and it's also the title of a new memoir by Azar Nafisi

One thing I’ve been silent about is that I’m not doing my own writing. I have been silent about this. I am so busy advising others: “Get to the desk, don’t wait for the muse. Put writing on your calendar and show up, like Woody Allen says: eighty percent of living or working or doing anything is showing up.”

But not showing up? I’m good at that. Ways to avoid writing: edit other people’s writing, plan workshops, think about other people’s ideas and email them—“hey you might want to consider . . .” This is a good unselfish use of creative energy.

Right?

Right, definitely. But wrong too, well, sort of.

Here’s part of the list of things I’ve been silent about that I wrote during a workshop I gave last Saturday:

--the truth about the weight issue.
--screen porch musings, too private to say more than that about (for now).
--D.’s death
--my own writing, lack of it.

So I made that list on Saturday. By Monday morning I had a writing schedule. 7:30 – 8:30 AM, Monday – Friday. To revise that book. And bingo. I’m doing it. Not a big deal.

Bill and I meet here in the living room, set the timer for an hour and go. It doesn’t matter if I’ve been up since 5 or just gotten back to sleep at 6:30. The alarm, if I’m not up already, sounds at 7. Make a pot of coffee, wash my face, take my daily pill, print out the next two chapters, and sit down to revise them.

Breaking the silence can make things happen.

I mean what kind of writing coach won’t get to her own writing? Sure I freewrite tons and love it; then there are columns and the Toyota writing and other assignments but where is the work on those three books?

Other times when I’ve tried to get regular about my writing—I’ll say something like, write two hours on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 9:30 – 11:30 AM. Those times never work. It’s too late in the morning. Not regular enough. I’m already into emails and edits for others by then.
I have to write first thing but not at 6 when I’ve gone to bed at 1 AM. 7:30 works.

This morning I had a client call set for 8:30 AM. Fine. Bill and I started a few minutes early so that at 8:25 I was through with my writing—at 8:30 I was ready for my client’s call. Not only ready but ecstatic because I had already done a hunk my own work. (To see what Bill has written on this writing schedule, check out his blog post.

Walter Mosley said in an article that he wrote three hours every morning seven days a week 52 weeks a year. That is just depressing. Of course he writes in a genre and, he says, needs to write a book a year. It’s his livelihood—the books and the film sales, etc. that go along with it. Genre writing is easier, more predictable. You don’t have to create a whole universe with each book, a brand. Still he shows up, every morning.

My livelihood comes from my work as a teacher and a coach. I couldn’t live comfortably on what I make as a writer. And I’m fine with that. Been there, done that--with corporate and magazine writing.

I don’t want to write full time now. I love working with other people’s creative writing. I just want to finish those three books. And I can do it, for now, at an hour a day, five days a week (maybe seven—we’ll see). And maybe some extra time on weekend afternoons, unscheduled.

Note to self: I never would have gotten here if I hadn’t WRITTEN THIS DOWN AS ONE OF MY “THINGS I’VE BEEN SILENT ABOUT” ITEMS.

Writing, even a list, is mysterious and magical.

Writing in Real Time, February 2, 2009

Some of my clients arrive with writing they want to read aloud and discuss; with others we work on edited print-outs.

Some show up sheepish. "I didn't get that rewrite done," or "I told myself I'd get to the desk but somehow couldn't this week."

Some show up wanting to write here. I give them a prompt and say, "Go." They write, then read aloud. We pick a gem or a gnarly section or an "I'm not sure about that . . ." and I say, "Go again."

Writers practice their craft, right here in the swivel chair across from mine. I love the energy in the room when they're writing. They work on dialogue, character portraits, point of view, scene, narrative arc and structure--and other stuff. There are "ah ha" moments and "Yikes, really?" moments.

Writing doesn't happen without writing, somebody said--I think William Carols Williams, a doctor who practiced medicine all day and wrote poetry in his spare time.

Ah, that hush: a writer writing, sitting in the morning sun in the swivel chair.

Nerd in High School, January 31, 2009

from Long Quiet Highway: Waking Up in America, by Natalie Goldberg

"You know, I was a nerd in high school," I said. I paused. "Do they use the word 'nerd' now?"

They nodded.

"I didn't know I'd be a writer. I was just bored."

Then I told them about Mr. Clemente, my high school English teacher. One day he switched off the lights above our heads and told us to listen to the rain. My high school had big windows, I told them, and I felt what a blessing it was as I stood in front of this windowless modern classroom. "That's all we had to do--listen to the rain. There wasn't a test or a quiz on rain, on listening, or on cloudy afternoons."

I told the kids in Taos High School that day to trust in what they loved, that you don't know where it will lead you. "The important thing is to love something, even if it's skateboarding or car mechanics or whistling. Let yourself love it completely."

Prompts: Write about loving something completely, or about a day in high school. Or both!

A Headline Prompt, January 30, 2009

I clip headlines from newspapers, fold them into little squares, and deposit them in my "prompts" bowl. Looking for a prompt? Pick a headline.

Here's one from today's New York Times, "Weekend Arts"

Prompt: Gaze East and Dream

Verbs, glorious verbs, January 29, 2009

Prompt: Read this opening paragraph (it's one of my favorites) and write a paragraph in which you employ lively verbs. Notice how Pollan's verbs and prose anthropomorphizes the lawn?


No lawn is an island, at least in America. Starting at my front stoop this scruffy green carpet tumbles down a hill and leaps across a one-lane road into my neighbor’s yard. From there it skips over some wooded patches and stone walls before finding its way across a dozen other unfenced properties that lead down into the Housatonic Valley, there to begin its march south toward the metropolitan area. Once below Danbury, the lawn—now purged of weeds and meticulously coiffed—races up and down the suburban lanes, heedless of property lines. It then heads west, crossing the New York border; moving now at a more stately pace, it strolls beneath the maples of Larchmont, unfurls across a dozen golf courses, and wraps itself around the pale blue pools of Scarsdale before pressing on toward the Hudson. New Jersey next is covered, an emerald postage stamp laid down front and back of ten thousand split-levels, before the broadening green river divides in two. One tributary pushes south, striding across the receptive hills of Virginia and Kentucky but refusing to pause until it has colonized the thin, sandy soils of Florida. The other branch dilates and spreads west, easily overtaking the Midwest’s vast grid before running up against the inhospitable western states. But neither obdurate soil nor climate will impeded the lawn’s march to the Pacific: it vaults the Rockies and, abetted by a monumental irrigation network, proceeds to green great stretches of western desert.

The opening paragraph of the essay “Why Mow,” from Second Nature: a gardener’s education, by Michael Pollan (1991)

How They Flow, January 28, 2009

Prompt:

Mozart said, "When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer — say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep — it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them."

Write about how and when your ideas come to you.

Mirror, January 27, 2009

Prompt: Mirror, mirror on the wall . . .

A Dog's Life, January 26, 2009

Prompt: Write from his point of view.
(His name is Ringo.)

What's Inside? January 25, 2009

Prompt: Write about the uses of a big box.

That Day, January 24, 2009

Prompt: Write about a Saturday morning.

The Power of Hands, January 23, 2009

Prompt: Write about work your hands do and check out this poem, On the Assembly Line.

Write A What? January 22, 2009

Prompt: Write a letter, a real letter, to somebody and mail it. How do you feel, knowing who your audience is? Start up a letter-writing correspondence as a form of writing practice.

(I'm going to write to my mother, who's in the nursing facility at her retirement community at the moment, suffering from a hairline hip fracture. I call her often but never, anymore, write. A letter a week; that's my plan.)

Lost Consolation, January 21, 2009

Prompt:
I have lost the consolation of faith
though not the ambition to worship.
Forrest Gander, poet

A Big Day, January 20, 2009

Prompt: Write about how you're spending Inauguration Day and any thoughts you have about past inaugurations.

Everyone is . . . January 19, 2009

Prompt: Everyone is Afraid of Something.
What scares you?

Mothers and Daughters and, January 18, 2009

Prompt: Write about mothers and daughters or fathers and sons. We're all at least one of these.

In the Bleak Mid-Winter, January 17, 2009

Prompt: In the bleak mid-winter

In the bleak mid-winter
frosty winds made moan
earth stood hard as iron
water like a stone . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRobryliBLQ

Not Quite, January 16, 2009

Prompt: Almost

An unusual friendship, January 15, 2009

Prompt: Write about an unusual friendship.

Oh, and watch this clip first.

First lines of novels and stories, January 14, 2009

Prompt: I had been sick for a long time.

(This is the first sentence of Oracle Night: A Novel by Paul Auster. First lines often make great prompts. Anybody want to send one? And this is a novel about a writer and writing.

The Company You Keep, January 13, 2009

Prompt: Write about being in the company of women.

A Question, January 12, 2009

Prompt: What's hidden . . . and where?

Too Early, January 11, 2009

Prompt: Write about a time when you had to rise early or arrived early. What does early mean to you?

This prompt is dedicated to Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac, who was born on this day in 1887, in Burlington, Iowa. Leopold dropped dead of a heart attack fighting a neighbor's grass fire. This essay collection was published posthumously by his children and is still considered an important book within the conservation movement.

Too Early

Getting up too early is a vice habitual in horned owls, stars, geese, and freight trains. Some hunters acquire it from geese, and some coffee pots from hunters. It is strange that of all the multitude of creatures who must rise in the morning at some time, only these few should have discovered the most pleasant and least useful time for doing it.

from A Sand County Almanac, page 59

To Waiting, January 10, 2009

Prompt: Write about waiting. You might want to use a line or two from the following poem to get you started.

To Waiting

You spend so much of your time
expecting to become
someone else
always someone
who will be different
someone to whom a moment
whatever moment it may be
at last has come
and who has been
met and transformed
into no longer being you
and so has forgotten you

meanwhile in your life
you hardly notice
the world around you
lights changing
sirens dying along the buildings
your eyes intent
on a sight you do not see yet
not yet there
as long as you
are only yourself

with whom as you
recall you were
never happy
to be left alone for long


W. S. Merwin
Present Company
Copper Canyon Press

Point of View Exercise, January 9, 2009

Prompt: Write--from your point of view--about an experience involving you and at least one other person. Now write the same experience from the point of view of someone else in the story.

Pretending to Be, January 8, 2009

Prompt: Write about a time you felt one way and acted another. OR (and this is kind of the same prompt but might offer some additional possibilities) write about a time you pretended to be someone or something you aren't.

And, as a writer, what are your goals for the year? Check out this blog to respond--and to learn how valuable actually writing, not just thinking about, your goals can be. (You don't have to be a fiction writer to do this. We nonfiction writers have goals too!)

By the way, this morning's Writer's Almanac featured this poem about trees. I have loved all the tree pieces--and others--that you've been sending. Don't hesitate to post comments on what you like in each other's work. And those of you who are shy about posting, and are emailing your prompt writings to me, try being brave and sharing them here. Can't hurt, can it?

Unfortunate Location

In the front yard there are three big white pines, older
than anything in the neighborhood except the stones.
Magnificent trees that toss their heads in the wind
like the spirited black horses of a troika. It's hard to
know what to do, tall dark trees on the south side of
the house, an unfortunate location, blocking the
winter sun. Dark and damp. Moss grows on the roof,
the porch timbers rot and surely the roots have
reached the old bluestone foundation. At night, in
the wind, a tree could stumble and fall killing us in
our beds. The needles fall year after year making an
acid soil where no grass grows. We rake the fallen
debris, nothing to be done, we stand around with
sticks in our hands. Wonderful trees.

by Louis Jenkins
All Tangled Up with the Living
Nineties Press, 1991

Going Back to Sleep, January 7, 2009

A Barred Owl

The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear,
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

--Richard Wilbur

Prompt: Write about going back to sleep.
(I often suggest that people take a line from a poem or
an image and use that as a starting point for writing.)

A Simple, Homely Occurrence, January 6, 2009

Prompt: Today is Epiphany, the 12th day of Christmas. Write about a childhood epiphany.

One definition of epiphany:
a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

Familiar Trees, January 5, 2009

. . . There's a cypress on that block, two honey locusts and an oak. I love those trees like my own brothers.

From the poem, "Illustrated Guide to Familiar American Trees" by Charlie Smith

Prompt: Write about trees or a particular tree.

Returning Home, January 4, 2009

Prompt: Write about returning home after a rough weekend.

Forward and back, January 3, 2009

The name January comes from the Roman god Janus, the god of doorways and gates, who had a face in front and one behind; he could see forward and backward at the same time.


Prompt: Write a letter to 2008 and one to 2009.

Or imagine that you, or a character you're writing about, is approaching a doorway . . . or a gate.

Prompt: January 2, 2009

Write about something that happens
on this park bench.

A Prompt a Day

Hi All:

I'm posting a writing prompt every day this month. Have fun and send your writing as a comment if you'd like. I'll use poems, photos, video, quotes, and excerpts as prompts. Set a timer for 15 minutes and write! Write whatever comes to mind--first thought, as Allen Ginsberg said. Maybe a word jumps out at you; if nothing strikes you, write about having nothing to say and see where that takes you.

Here's the first one, for January 1, 2009.

In Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin quotes Alexis de Tocqueville, the astute Frenchman who visited the United States in 1831 and wrote extensively about his American visit: Tocqueville wrote (and this is the prompt):

"Every American is eaten up with longing to rise."

Holiday Lists

On the update I just sent out with a holiday greeting plus my workshop and retreat listings for 2009, I also included a few prompts. Here they are:

Below are a couple of ways to get you writing over the holidays. Let's take a minute - yes, a minute will do - to make lists, to engage in some reflective writing.

Prompt 1
Make a list of your family of origin's holiday traditions. (Maybe you'd like to invite others from your family to join you in this exercise.) Now make a list of your traditions today. Hmm, contrast and compare. What have you kept? Pitched?

Prompt 2
Now that you're warmed up, take one item from the list and write about it for ten minutes.

When I first wrote the copy for the update I took myself through the prompts. I did a list of holiday things that were unacceptable in my house growing up. First on the list was tinsel. Then came lights on the house, followed by any outdoor decorations. And the list went on from there, including buying new Advent calendars (we recycled ours every year), and ended with celebrating Christmas on December 25. My family celebrated on January 6, Epiphany. I picked that item to write about in detail--how my friends would ask me what I got for Christmas the first school day after the holidays, and I would have to say, "We haven't celebrated yet." And I would turn as red as Santa's hat, etc.

I asked my older daughter, Olivia, who is home for Christmas to listen to what I wrote before sending it out.

"Mom," she said, when I finished reading, "that is so Debbie Downer. Why don't you just give the prompts without writing your own responses. Nobody wants to hear all that right now."

She's right. I'm going to redo the exercise and find some good stuff to mention--stretch for fresh material, bust out of personal myths and familiar old stories.

Right now, I'm going to go celebrate--add some more tinsel to the tree.