Friday writing prompt
Your weekend assignment
First, a big thank you to everyone who read and responded to this week’s essay. I’m a little floored by the response and my nervous system hasn’t totally recovered yet, but for now, I just want to express my gratitude for your support, and for every tender, honest, deeply personal comment about your own lives. I love this community so much.
As a thank you to everyone who has become a paid subscriber this week (which is so very needed and appreciated during this time), I am offering a writing prompt for paid subscribers below. It’s inspired by this week’s essay, but it’s also on a subject I think about a lot—namely, the complexity of writing into shame, and why we do it in the first place. I hope you’ll use the prompt this weekend and post a paragraph of what you come up with and/or just share a bit about how the writing went.
My plan is to continue sharing prompts like these weekly. It’s something that has been requested by our Writing Group and other readers as well. These prompts will be accessible to all paid subscribers, as a little treat for what they/you make possible. They are for those of you who consider yourself writers, but also for anyone who finds writing helpful or nurturing or creatively fulfilling in any capacity. In the near future, I will be inviting guest authors to contribute to our prompt archive as well.
If you’ve taken a writing class with me before, you know the drill: take what feels generative for you, toss out the rest. These prompts are offered to get you going, whether you feel stuck on a current project, want to explore writing in new directions, or just want to write this weekend and don’t know how to begin. There is no right or wrong way to do this.
Please keep these prompts within our community. They have been acquired over many years of teaching, and I use them in my classes. I offer them as a thank you to paid subscribers for the ongoing support.
News:
Don’t forget to join us for a literary salon with Glynnis MacNicol, author of I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, this Monday Sept 23 at 11am PT on Zoom. We will talk about pleasure, midlife, and Paris. There will be time for questions. If you don’t yet know Glynnis’ work, start here. This event is free to paid subscribers and will be recorded if you can’t attend live. Event link will be emailed out the morning of the event.
At the bottom of this post under the paywall, paid subscribers will also find a discount code for my upcoming seminar on the the writing process, which you can register for here. This event will also be recorded if you can’t attend live.
Listen to me talk about why having boundaries in motherhood is actually good on Sophie Brock’s podcast The Good Enough Mother. Sophie is so smart and thoughtful and her voice is so soothing, it’s like ASMR. We recorded this a couple of months ago, and we got emotional. I loved this conversation.
Prompt #4. Writing into silence
In the essay I published earlier this week, I mention that I am trying to be honest. One thing I have been troubled by about heterosexual marriage is the culture of shame and secrecy. I understand why people protect themselves, especially women. I understand that not everyone wants to discuss the details of their intimate lives publicly. I also know that inequality feeds on silence.
Among the writers I know who are women, too, there is an understanding about what happens when you tell the truth about your life. You should expect harassment. You put your family at risk. These sorts of conversations always give me pause. I understand the very real concerns we have for those we love when we write. And I don’t actually think all great art requires that we radically expose ourselves. Writing our worst shame down is also never enough to create great writing—we also have to be concerned with the art of the thing.
But I cannot help but think about how many stories would never have been told if writers had been as preoccupied with sparing and protecting everyone they know as we seem to be today. How much of our lives are off limits in our work, and what does that mean for literary history and the wider culture?
Your prompt this weekend: