You have just been notified that you have won a prize on the level of a gold medal at the Olympics, or a Grammy, or an Academy Award, or a Pulitzer Prize.
Write about a special skill you have and how you won an award for that.
Let your imagination soar. What have you won a prize for?
What is your reaction?
Write your acceptance speech.
“A time comes when silence is betrayal.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Write about a time you were betrayed. Or a time you betrayed someone.
You could start with: I felt betrayed . . .
Or write about a time you were silent and now wish you had spoken up.
Or write about a time you could no longer remain silent.
You could start with: I want to tell you about what happened . . .
Write about a lie someone told you, or a lie you told.
White lies, bald-faced lies, untruths, falsehoods, fabrications, whoppers . . . whatever you call ‘em, you have experienced ‘em . . . Now write about ‘em.
Prompt: Write about a time you felt different.
If you have time . . . write, using this prompt now. Or, think about a time you felt different. Pause. Take some time to remember,
“Diversity goes deep and is often handled on intellectual and political levels.” —Pat Schneider, Writing Alone and With Others.
Prompt: Generate a list of categories that make us different from one another.
Some ideas: Age – Gender – Socioeconomics – Background – Personality – Married or not – Have children or not – Parents alive or not – Lived/grew up with parents in the home – Vegetarian – Athletic – Bookworm – Seeker – Spiritual – Religious – Have tattoos – Have piercings – Hearing impaired – Race – Tall or short
Prompt: Choose a diversity and write a dialogue between two or three people.
Prompt: Write about someone being hurt as a result of being different.
Possibilities:
Write about a time you were hurt because of being different.
Write about a time you witnessed someone being hurt because of being different: Write in the first person, as you were the person being hurt. Stay in the voice of the person who was being hurt.
Write about witnessing someone being hurt and no one helped, including yourself. A time you saw someone being harassed or treated rudely or meanly and you did mothing.
“I saw this and I did nothing.”
Prompt: Write about a time you felt different.
Today’s prompt: Pretend.
With this type of prompt, you can also write about the opposite . . .
Let’s not pretend.
Use these words in your freewrite:
Instinct, illustration, melt, eighteenth, obligation, plunge, immune.
Write about a path you took, or a path you didn’t take.
Write about a choice you made.
What do you look like to someone who doesn’t know you?
Do you react, and then act differently because of some input you received from someone?
How important is it to you how others see you?
Write from your well of deep thinking or respond how your fictional character would respond.
What is your dream of safety?
Inspired by “Leap Before You Look” by W. H. Auden
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savior-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
Photo by Kent W. Sorensen