I hope you had a creative May and made progress toward your writing goals. I feel like I spent most of May driving back and forth to the hospital/rehab facility where my mom is recovering from a fractured pelvis. Even though it’s not a long drive, and she’s usually in good spirits and making good progress with her physiotherapy, I’m still exhausted when I get home. It’s just hard, as you know, to see someone you love struggling, sometimes in pain, and wanting to have them back home where they belong. Creativity is elusive at the best of times, but right now impossible. I’ve managed a couple of short, freelance projects, and I’m grateful for those because they’ve kept me writing.
Keeping on the creative track is hard, but I’ve found great satisfaction in doing one simple thing every day. I’m taking a book that I love and am writing out—yes, pen on paper—a small section of it every day. I was inspired to do this by Jennifer Manuel and her blog, How to Write Your Best Story Ever with One Epic Exercise. My copying helps me see how one writer uses words well. It’s like a mini writing workshop every day. It’s also calming, and I need that now, as “stress” is my middle name right now as we get my mom’s apartment ready for her return (including filling her many garden containers with flowers and tomato plants and lettuce plants, etc.—sooooo not my thing) and likely installing a stair lift so she can get up and down stairs to her apartment without stressing herself. Life is not dull.
I hope you enjoy June’s writing prompts and have a writerly month ahead.
1. Use one, some, or all of the words in one of these groups to inspire a story or poem.
- Pen, hope, clear, yesterday, erase, blue
- Goblet, table, feast, music, undercurrent, red
- Calendar, busy, time, renew, carry, up, yellow
2. Here are some opening sentences from which you might invent a story or two.
- Let the boy speak.
- Wish you were here.
- Haven’t you won that solitaire game yet?
- Was this how freedom felt?
- Helen looked up to face the crowded room.
- I’d read stories about people who’d run for their lives, but nothing had prepared me for this.
- Henry flicked the switch. Nothing. Again. Nothing.
- I had never been so tired.
- I don’t do edges well.
- Helen tried to not think about her wedding
3. Here are some titles that might make you think of a story or poem: This Is My Life, The Abandoned, The Beauty in Everything, The Lake, A Simple Life, The Castle on the Cliff, The Magic Forest, Dragons and Me, Dancing in the Street, Going Viral, Henry’s Letter, Runaway
4. Try these dialogue excerpts and write a scene or two.
- That was a pretty mean thing to say.
- It was true. And she had to hear it.
- She hates you now.
- I know, but that’s better than losing her.
- You were gone a long time.
- Too bad it was wasted.
- He wouldn’t listen?
- No.
- I saw Henry steal the–.
- Quiet!
- But—
- Everyone knows.
- What’s that?
- A letter.
- Who from?
- My grandmother.
- But ….
- I know. She died three years ago.
