“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.
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.
Write about a person you were drawn to.
It could be a real person or a fictional character.
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. Relax into your writing. Your heart knows what to write about. Allow it.
Ianthe suggests thinking of the clothesline structure: Two strong posts at ends. One is for the solid introduction. The other post is for the solid end. Then play around with insides. Move your stories around as you desire.
Writing Prompt: Think about your childhood. Write about whatever your mind flashes on.
Prompt: This happened to me . . .
Examples of excellent memoirs:
To Have Not by Frances Lefkowitz
Why write your story? So you can move on.
Today’s post is inspired by Patricia Hampl’s book, “I Could Tell You Stories: Sojourn in the Land of Memory.”
Tell your story so you can move on.
“When a writer keeps things inside, it becomes a ball of tangled yarn. As each story is told, the ball becomes untangled. Writing from memory can help us to let go of those stories we tell over and over again. We may not even need to tell them again [after writing about them].”
Note from Marlene: I think writing from memory can also be a type of self-help . . . a vehicle for transporting oneself back in time and getting in touch with what really happened.
Patricia Hampl is an American memoirist, writer, lecturer, and educator. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis and is one of the founding members of the Loft Literary Center. Source: Wikipedia
How to write without adding trauma
Writing about difficult times in your life by guest blogger Nancy Julien Kopp.
Your inner critic.How do you handle or quiet your inner critic?
How do you tame your inner critic?
Give your inner critic a make-over.
No thinking! Just write.