Today’s prompt is inspired by a talk Ianthe Brautigan gave on March 5, 2001. Memoir is a journey. Just because it’s your life, don’t think you know the end. A beeper could go off and change everything. Life is like a box of chocolates . . . you don’t know what you got until you bite into it. Sometimes your life makes sense after you write and digest your findings. Ianthe suggests writing a memoir in an unusual way, not “this happened and then that happened.” To start: Write excerpts from your past. Write your stories. Don’t worry about where they will go. Tell your story as if sitting around a campfire. If you need inspiration: Make a collage from magazine articles/photos about what you want to write about. Look at these when you need a nudge to write. Once you start writing, let go of how you should write….
Tag: Ianthe Brautigan
Watershed moment . . . Prompt #57
This prompt is inspired by Ianthe Brautigan from her Writers Forum workshop. Draw a circle with radiating arms, ending in circles (see below). In the center circle, write a note about a watershed moment where nothing was the same after that: A pivotal moment. Write details on the radiating circles. Include as many circles as you want for details. Write into the questions . . . how did this moment shape me? How did this affect the rest of my life? Use this prompt to spark a freewrite. When you are finished with freewriting on this prompt, if you keep a journal, use that for details to flesh out the story.