“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” — Theodore Roosevelt, from a speech given in Syracuse, New York (September 7, 1903) From Real Simple magazine, September 2014 Note from Marlene: Your writing, your work matters. Just write!
Tag: writing freely
Broad Street hopes to create engaging platforms. . .
Broad Street is a nonprofit magazine featuring great true stories told in many different ways. At Broad Street, we hope to create an engaging platform where writing, poetry, and artwork can come together in one space to be enjoyed both by longtime fans of creative nonfiction and by those who are new to this exciting form. We are always looking for more talent to feature in the magazine, so if you have an interesting piece of writing or art please feel free to submit through Tell it Slant.
Challenging situation. . . Prompt #118
Sometimes you don’t know how you will act when faced with a difficult or a life threatening situation . . . until you are in the throes of it. Write about a time you were in a challenging situation. Use sensory detail. OR: Write about one of your fears. . . from a fictional character’s point of view. . . write about “the worst thing that can happen” . . . then, have your hero or heroine conquer the problem. Ready? Set? Okay. . . think about one of your fears that just won’t go away. Bring your character to life with those fearful thoughts and emotions. Now write. Just write! This is similar to Prompt #47. . . only this time, have your character kick butt.
An epiphany . . . Prompt #117
* “An epiphany is a sudden realization of a significant event. At that special moment, a life meaning becomes clear to you —an insight into your personality, a discovery of something you value or believe in, an acute sense of where you are in life. Here’s an Epiphany Tale one elder told to her family: I must have been around seven or eight. It was summer, and we were visiting my aunt Clara up at Crystal Lake. I was alone, lying on my back by the banks of the lake, looking up at the sky, and I had my harmonica in my mouth. I was just breathing through it, in and out, not playing a melody, simply breathing. And suddenly, I was overcome with this wonderful feeling of connection to everything in the world. I’d say now it was a spiritual feeling. I listened to the sound my breathing made…
Seeing red. Prompt #116
Today’s writing prompt: Seeing red. Photo credits: Red door – Colby Drake Children and backpacks – Kent Sorensen Holiday table – Laura Plunk Davis Coffee – Laura Plunk Davis Holiday scene – Jane Person Red car – Marlene Cullen
Art connects us.
“It’s a very deep experience for so many people to read ‘Wild’ and feel what they feel, because of course they’re not feeling it about my life, but about their own. And that’s what art does. It reminds us that we are more alike than different and that our common humanity connects us really profoundly.” — Cheryl Strayed, author of “Wild.”
We write for a variety of reasons . . .
We write for a variety of reasons: ~ To tell a story, or what happened as we remember it ~ To create a fictional story ~ To tell a fiction story, based on truth ~ To journal what happened and our feelings about what happened ~ To write non-fiction: share our knowledge or to tell what happened All of this involves what we learned, what changed us, what impressed us. It doesn’t matter why you are writing. It is important that you write. No matter the motivation for your writing . . . Just Write!
Pressure. Prompt #115
Today’s prompt: Pressure.
” . . . it’s not the most gifted. . .” — Norman Mailer
“In writing, as in so many pursuits, it’s not the most gifted but the most determined who succeed.” — Norman Mailer
Shame. Prompt #114
Shame. . . For this prompt, you can write about “shame” as a topic in general. Or: Write on something you are feeling shameful about. You can fictionalize your personal situation to write about a difficult subject. Or: You can write about shame as character development . . . a character feature to be overcome. Photo by Jane Person