Write about a childhood ritual when you were sick. If there were no childhood rituals when sick, what would you have liked to happen? How would you have wanted to be treated when sick as a child?
Or write about a time you were sick.
Or write about any ritual from your childhood.
You can write about what really happened, or make something up.
You can answer from your fictional character’s point of view.
Note from Marlene: Guest Blogger Susan Hagen encourages us to have fun. And shows us how we can heal through writing . . . one of my strong beliefs, also.
I hope you enjoy Susan’s post:
To celebrate our 62nd birthdays, my best friend and I recently spent the weekend in Disneyland. Despite creaky knees and stiff backs, we were ready to party like … well, like eight-year-olds.
We had great fun on the (not-too-wild) rides and enjoyed being playful and somewhat silly. But in that space of awareness about our childhoods, what arose in both of us were memories of disappointing birthdays of the past.
For me, it was 1963, the year I turned eight. My mother was supposed to bring chocolate cupcakes to my third-grade class at the end of the school day.
But a few days before my birthday, President John F. Kennedy was shot. Guess what day his funeral was? That’s right. My birthday. No school, no cupcakes, no party. I was too young to understand why everything shut down that day. All I knew was that my birthday was ruined, and I was devastated.
So at age 62, I made Disneyland my cupcake. I screamed like an eight-year-old on the roller coaster. I ate the ears off more than one Mickey Mouse confection. I even climbed aboard a few kiddie rides with my BFF, who found a way to heal her own birthday traumas, too.
When the weekend was over, we declared it all complete. We’d both had the best birthday EVER in the Happiest Place on Earth.
Sometimes it takes putting your story down on paper to see how you can heal things from the past. Writing helps us bring ourselves current. We write a story about some part of our lives, and then we see how we’ve grown—not only since that time, but maybe even because of it. Writing helps us illuminate the dark places. It helps us bloom into greater self-awareness and self-acceptance. And it helps us make sense of our lives: how we got to here from there.
Susan Hagen’s writing career began in the 1970s as a newspaper reporter in Northern California. She later served as editor of employee publications. She has since worked as a freelance writer for more than 100 corporations and nonprofit agencies across the country.
In 1994, Susan became a firefighter and emergency medical technician in rural Sonoma County, California, where half the members of her firehouse were women. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, she and her colleagues were acutely aware of the absence of women in media portrayals of rescue workers at Ground Zero.
Susan combined her knowledge of the fire service with her experience as a writer to conceive of the idea for the book, Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion, with co-author, Mary Carouba. She and Mary traveled to New York City to find and interview female first responders for their award-winning book, which was published by Penguin Putnam in 2002.
Since the publication of Women at Ground Zero, Susan has seen firsthand the power of sharing one’s story. Many of the women featured in her book believe that telling their stories was the first step in healing from the tragedy of 9/11. Susan draws on these experiences, along with those from her own life-changing journey, to help others give voice to the stories of their lives.
Note from Marlene: Women at Ground Zero is one of my favorite books. A fascinating story of remarkable courage . . . the courage that took Hagen and Carouba from their comfortable home in Northern California to New York City to learn more about the first responders for the attack on New York City. They interviewed 30 women whose stories are told in detail in this riveting book that reads like a novel.
Today’s Guest Blogger is Rachael Herron, one of my favorite writers. Read one of her books and you’ll know why. More on that later.
For now, you get to sneak a peek into how she gives priority to the problem, rather than to the answer.
Hi Writers,
I spent yesterday morning in the tub, thinking about writing. It wasn’t procrastination, I promise. It was actually the most delicious thing ever.
Usually, I get up and have coffee and do yoga and write in my journal, and then I jump into work. I work all morning on writing and revision, and I use my afternoons to answer email, record my podcasts, teach, and coach.
Yesterday, my “writing” took the form of thinking.
And I was cold.
So I got in the tub at ten in the morning.
I lit a candle to help me think, for something to stare at. I brought in with me a notepad and a pencil (I love the Aquanotes waterproof writing pad) but I turned to my phone instead, making voice memos in Evernote. I didn’t look at Twitter or Facebook, I just thought. I allowed myself to go down deep internet rabbit holes (when was the last orphanage in Venice closed? What’s a debilitating disease that requires care but doesn’t immediately kill?).
I paddled. I splashed.
It was, pretty much, heaven.
And it was part of the job.
I want right now to remind you of that. If you’re stuck in the middle of something, PLAY.
Write out all the frustrating questions you can’t figure out answers to and get in the bath with them. No bath? Go (alone!) to a hot tub place, bonus points if it’s outside and you can see the sky. Or go to the beach or lake, bundling up if it’s cold. Get your favorite splurge-y coffee drink and drive to the best view you can find. Tilt the seat back and just think.
Meander in your mind. Wander around. If the answer stumps you, go in a different direction.
Give priority to the problem, and not to the answer. I felt that yesterday — I kept trying to latch on to the “right” answer until I realized there wasn’t one, not really. I can write a book about anything. Poking around and trying to grab the “correct” book idea wasn’t going to work, but letting myself play with the problem did work.
What you’re doing when you do this is priming your mind to keep working on it in the background, while you go to work or feed the kids or sleep at night. Your brain will keep working on this, the more you play with the ideas, and then one afternoon while you’re searching for the Tom’s of Maine that doesn’t suck (spearmint), the answer will drop into your mind. A flash of inspiration, yes, but it’s a flash that you set yourself up for.
Remember to play. Writing is hard work, yes. I spend a lot of time acknowledging that it’s often a painful thing to push yourself to do. So if it’s been awfully hard lately, or if you just haven’t been getting anything done, give yourself permission to play.
See what happens.
Onward! Rachael
Rachael’s Bio includes my favorites of her books.
Rachael Herron is the bestselling author of the novels The Ones Who Matter Most (named a 2016 Editor’s Pick by Library Journal), Splinters of Light and Pack Up the Moon (all from Penguin), the Darling Bay and the Cypress Hollow series, and the memoir, A Life in Stitches (Chronicle).
Rachael’s latest book, Fast-Draft Your Memoir: Write Your Life Story in 45 Hours, is about writing quickly while still creating a compelling narrative arc out of the story only YOU can tell.
She received her MFA in writing from Mills College, Oakland and she teaches writing in the extension programs at both UC Berkeley and Stanford. She’s proud to be a New Zealander as well as a US citizen, though her Kiwi accent only comes out when she’s very tired. She’s honored to be a member of the NaNoWriMo Writers Board. She is currently a Writer in Residence at Mills College.
Ready to explore? Today’s writing prompt invites you to look at your old stories in new ways. Perhaps you can rewrite your story.
Excerpt from October 2016 Reader’s Digest, “Down Off The Cross,” by Debra Jarvis, a chaplain and cancer survivor.
“Let’s say I meet you on a bus. We really hit it off, but I’ve got to exit soon, so you’re going to tell me three things about yourself that help me understand who you are, that get at your essence.”
Back to the article:
“Of those three things, is one of them surviving some kind of trauma, like being a cancer survivor, a war survivor, or an abuse survivor?”
Note from Marlene: Or perhaps you are currently experiencing a difficulty or a trauma.
Back to the article: “Many of us tend to identify ourselves by our wounds.
Claim your experience; don’t let it claim you.
The way to cope with trauma, loss, or any other life-changing experience is to find meaning. But here’s the thing: No one can tell us what that meaning is. We have to decide what it means. And that meaning can be quiet and private—we don’t need to start a foundation, write a book, or work on a documentary. Instead, perhaps we make one small decision about our lives that can bring about big change.
If you find yourself repeating your survivor story: Get down off your cross.
When you repeat your survivor story, you aren’t processing your feelings—you are feeding them.
Let your old story go so that a newer, truer story can be told about who you are.
Claim your trauma as an experience instead of taking it on as your identity.
It could mean the end of being trapped by your wounds and the start of defining yourself by who you are becoming.
We’re all on this bus together. What story are you going to tell?”
The Common is an award-winning print and digital literary journal published biannually, in the fall and spring. The Common includes short stories, essays, poems, and images that embody a strong sense of place. The Common Online publishes original content four times per week, including book reviews, interviews, personal essays, short dispatches, poetry, contributor podcasts and recordings, and multimedia features.
To deepen our individual and collective sense of place through bold, engaging literature and art.
To serve as a vibrant common space for the global exchange of ideas and experiences. To be an essential destination for creative work that embodies particular times and places, both real and imagined. To mentor and promote the next generation of writers, editors, and publishers.
Finding the extraordinary in the common has long been the mission of literature. Inspired by this mission and the role of the town common, a public gathering place for the display and exchange of ideas, The Common seeks to recapture an old idea. The Common publishes pieces of literature that embody particular times and places both real and imagined; from deserts to teeming ports; from Winnipeg to Beijing; from Earth to the Moon: literature and art powerful enough to reach from there to here. In short, we seek a modern sense of place.
In our hectic and sometimes alienating world, themes of place provoke us to reflect on our situations and both comfort and fascinate us. Sense of place is not provincial nor old fashioned. It is a characteristic of great literature from all ages around the world. It is, simply, the feeling of being transported, of “being there.”
Write about a time you had no worries . . .
a play-filled time . . .
a time you felt free to be you.
Does this scene look familiar? You know where it’s from if you’ve been to Maria’s Out West Garage in Petaluma, California.
Hi, Maria. 🙂
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Your favorite time of day.
