Greetings, writers—
Today’s prompt is a reheated one from 2021, which I shared with my students long before this Substack existed.
Although most Good Ideas readers wouldn’t know this if I didn’t mention it, and those who would know probably wouldn’t care, as we have established, I am a scrupulously honest person (except for that ONE THING I WON’T ADMIT TO), and I’m not going to pass off leftovers as a brand-new dish. (Full disclosure, I did sort of do this once, but I offered some new stuff AND felt guilty about it, so no more of that.)
Why the half-eaten casserole, though? Well, I’m behind on my paying work, for one thing (including a script that needs to be turned in before a potential Writers Guild strike on Monday), not to mention the novel I’m supposed to be writing for my own ambition and delight.
For another, this is a lovely poem, and there are five good prompts at the end of it, if I do say so myself, and even if you did a couple of them 18 months ago, I’ll bet you didn’t do them all.
Your prompts:
—Write a scene in which your character steals something, preferably something that isn’t particularly valuable.
—Write a dialogue-heavy scene in which someone says, “No, I am lying.” What happens after that admission?
—End a scene with the line “But what I want does not appear.”
—What “ridiculous fictions” does your character’s mind “gnaw on”?
—Write your character’s “prayer for what is gone.”
BONUS ACTIVITY, which is 100% new: Scroll through your phone notes and/or paper scraps and find something beautiful or comic or baffling. I found these:
—Someone smearing a dead opossum across the porch
—“She’s going to drink all the wine and put her shoes up on the couch and there’s nothing we can do about it except talk about her behind her back”
—Ferrets above a garage the landlord is a teenager
—the happiness of ants
???? is what I have to say about those. Finding stuff like this is like a meeting a stranger, except it’s yourself.
Happy writing—
Emily
P.S. Has anyone else read Jean Rhys? I read Voyage in the Dark a couple of months ago…
P.P.S. It’s possible that a space has opened up in my novel-writing workshop at Literary Arts next weekend. Please reach out if you’re interested.
Wide Sargasso Sea...