Top of the World

I'm listening to this song right now, Patty Griffin's "Top of the World." Its so sweet and I just want to put it on repeat here at work! Here's some of the lyrics, but go here to listen to it online:
Myspace Music Discography for Patty Griffin.
The album is "Impossible Dream." Select it from the discography list in the left section of the player.

For writing, read over the lyrics and imagine the scene. What song is being sung by the songbird? Why did she break the songbird's wings? What would you do? What kind of bird? What are others doing, wanting, singing?

"Top Of The World"

There's a whole lot of singing
That's never gonna be heard
Disappearing every day
Without so much as a word
Somehow

I think I broke the wings
Off that little songbird
And she's never gonna fly
To the top of the world now
To the top of the world

....

I wished I'd had known you
Wished I had shown you
All of the things I
Was on the side
But I'd pretend to be sleeping
When you'd come in in the morning
To whisper goodbye
Go work in the rain
I don't know why
Don't know why

Cause everyone's singing
We just wanna be heard
Disappearing every day
Without so much as a word
Somehow?

Gonna grab a hold
Of that little songbird
And take her for a ride
To the top of the world
Right now
To the top of the world

Prompts from a friend

More writing prompts sent to me by a writer-friend early in December.

From Naming the World:

1. Write about a secret from the perspective of someone with the below statement:
* I never told anyone.
* I did tell one person. God help me.
* I never told anyone, but I’ll tell you.

2. Try writing about something you do every day and take for granted.

3. Starter: "She didn’t want to go, but..."

4. Choose an object that interests you enough to suggest it could be someone’s centering symbol. Why does it carry a metaphysical force?

5. You found a feather on the ground on the way over. Start talking to a person you know about this feather.

6. Pick a character that you hate and find something you love about them.

7. What is your character's obsession?

8. Destroy something you love.

Sentence and Phrase Prompts from Marge Piercy's Hard Loving:

1. I was a rabbit with twigs for bones.

2. Sometimes an old buffalo man... stares from your face."

3. Succulent as a burst apricot

4. A phosphorescent smear

5. Peeling an orange

Lines of Poetry

Its been forever since I last updated the blog here, so here's a few writing prompts in the form of quotes and poetic lines:

"The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing." - Eric Berne, psychiatrist

"I dreamed a knife like a song you can't whistle." - Frank Stanford, "The Singing Knives"

"Which failure cannot cast down nor success make proud." - Robinson Jeffers, "Rock and Hawk"

"...at night he remembers freedom And flies in a dream, the dawns ruin it." - Robinson Jeffers, "Hurt Hawks"

"I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk." - Robinson Jeffers, "Hurt Hawks"

"We are safe to finish what we have to finish." - Robinson Jeffers, "The Bed By The Window"

"Be angry at the sun for setting." - Robinson Jeffers, "Be Angry at the Sun for Setting"

"Stark violence is still the sire of all the world's values." - Robinson Jeffers, "The Bloody Sire"

"Old violence is not too old to beget new values." - Robinson Jeffers, "The Bloody Sire"

"wore down on their wings" - Robinson Jeffers, "Their Beauty Has More Meaning"

Autumn prompt words

Go with the flow: Choose a prompting word or two from the following list and write about whatever comes to mind for 15-20 minutes without stopping.

Prompting Words List:

Season	pumpkins	fall	autumn	acorns	leaves
leaf	vibrant	red	yellow	orange	green
brown	branches	twigs	aroma	burning leaves	crunch leaves
gourds	pressing leaves	energy	beauty	woods	ghosts
feathers	corn	popcorn	arts and crafts	gifts	forest
apples	orchard	cranberry sauce	potatoes	cornbread	stuffing
green beans	apple pie	cooking	warm	harvest	cinnamon
abundance	thankful	cold	frost	snow	football
snowflakes	raking	leaf piles	campfires	hiking	nature

Lyric Prompts from Ryan Adams

Use these lyrics from songs by Ryan Adams as prompts!

"If I could I'd fold myself away like a card table." -- from "Oh My God, Whatever, Etc."

"But the light of the moon leads the way to the morning." -- from "Oh My God, Whatever, Etc."

"Its a little too late for goodbyes. Good morning. Open your eyes." -- from "Rip Off"

"Treasures that s he misses makes the man." -- from "Bartering Lines"

"You and I together, but only one of us is in love." -- from "Everybody Knows"

"Everything she says, oh, I've heard it all before." -- from "Two Hearts"

"Like a bad idea on a beautiful day." -- from "Two Hearts"

"Three words is all it takes to break your heart in two." -- from "Two Hearts"

"When they smile I get hypnotized and wanna go to bed." -- from "These Girls"

"I've been stranded on the doorstep." -- from "These Girls"

"We are only one push from the nest" - from "The Sun Also Sets"

"Sunset's just my lightbulb burning out." - from "Oh My Sweet Carolina"

"All the sweetest winds, they blow across the South." -- from "Oh My Sweet Carolina"

Bob Dylan Lyrics as Prompts

I've been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan lately and so I decided that this Wednesday's writing prompt will include single lines from various Bob Dylan songs. If there don't work for you, visit bobdylan.com and find a line or two that click with you.

“I saw a white ladder all covered with water” - “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall”

“Spreading their wings 'neath the falling leaves.” - “Changing of the Guards”

“Were handing out the flowers that I'd given to you.” - “Changing of the Guards”

“But the next time I looked there was light in the room.” - “Day of the Locusts”

“I been lookin' at my shadow, I been watching the colors up above” - “Dirt Road Blues”

“it's hard labour and cold beans” - “Endless Highway”

“A place where there is no pain of birth.” - “Gonna Change My Way Of Thinking”

“Stand in one place till your feet begin to hurt.” - “Hard Times in New York Town”

“Highway 51 runs right by my baby's door” - “Highway 51”

“The next time you see me comin' you better run" - “Highway 61 Revisited”

All quotes above are from Bob Dylan songs.

Primer prompts

Sentences from old primer and grammar books... Use as prompts!

The river talked all night in the shoals.

My life is ghastly, the told the grass.

What kind of word?
Just a word.
Whatever. Hush.
Whisper it in my ear.

The cottonwoods went by like rows of bones.

There are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse.

Old whiskey bottles with their bleached labels lying on the wet tar of the rooftops.

I have been waiting for you for hours.

Does your brother dance well?

Why are you sitting here alone in the dark?

A little bit of common glass sometimes glitters like a diamond.

I see the man in the moon.

Mr. Jones bought a knife for his little boy.

Of all beasts he learned the language.

The two strangers were really Jupiter and Mercury.

A shaft of song, a winged prayer

Iris always wore a chain of raindrops for pearls, and a cloud for a robe.

The meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

I met a little cottage girl.

Writing and Small Images

Take any one or combination of the ideas below and insert them in your writing. There are no rules.

RADIO:
song on the radio, old transistor radio, broken radio, found radio, etc.

TEACUP/COFFEECUP:
chipped cup, cracked handle, saucer broken on the floor, found cup, something else in the cup other than tea or coffee, etc.

APRON:
pockets empty, pockets always have something in them, stained apron, crisp clean apron, ripped apron, etc.

CHAIR:
wooden chair with a loose bolt, chair with a worn seat cushion, chair with initials carved in the back slats, someone sitting in the chair, etc.

MAILBOX:
beaten mailbox, brick mailbox, empty mailbox, waiting by the mailbox, put in mailbox letters to nonexistent/lost/forgotten people, etc.

CHESS PIECE:
chess piece found under a couch or floor board, chess piece thrown at someone, chess piece carried in someone's pocket, chess piece given as a gift, etc.

Prompts from 1 Giant Leap

Most of these prompts are quotes from the film 1 Giant Leap. There are two quotes from a novel by Truman Capote I just finished reading, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Enjoy!

"This is what comes through to us." - from The Greek

"It's God making contact with itself." – Ram Dass (in reference to creation of art)

"While I thought I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." – Leonardo da Vinci

"When you can't find the rhyme to fit the beat, You can't find the answer to feel complete." - ?

"There will be time to put on the face to meet the faces that you meet." – T.S. Eliot

"Every man and woman has their place. They have their entrances and they have their exits." - ?

"I have to learn not to waste everything my forefathers earned in tears." - Maxi Jazz

"Last night I went to sleep as a child
Only to wake up this morning finding I was a man.
In my hand I discovered the tools and the rage of my father.
In my heart I found the love and fears of my mother...........
We are not walking with the ghosts of the dead...
We are alive... In the spirit of our passion"
- Michael FRANTI, from 1 Giant Leap (film)

"...for anger seemed, if anything, more unsafe than love: only those who know their own security can afford either." - Truman Capote

"...he is no rose dependent upon thorn or root." - Truman Capote

Truman Capote quotes

Use the quotes below to spur your writing into a direction by either finding an image or idea in the quotes to spur on your writing, or write about something the quote reminds you.
------------------------

"...for so few of us learn that love is tenderness, and tenderness is not, as a fair proportion suspect, pity; and still fewer know that happiness in love is not the absolute focusing of all emotion in another: one has always to love a good many things which the beloved must come only to symbolize; the true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes lilac openings, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all the seasons, memory, yes, it being earth and water of existence, memory."

p. 141-142, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Truman Capote

"...there was always between us something muted, hushed; still our silence was not of a secret kind, for in itself it communicated that wonderful peace those who understand each other very well sometimes achieve..."

p. 143, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Truman Capote

"...this was not a hotel; indeed, had never been: this was the place where folks came when they went off the face of the earth, when they died but were not dead."

p. 118, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Truman Capote

Writing prompts from a novel

Dear Laura,
I finished this book last night and saved some lines that I thought might be useful for prompts for a couple of sessions. See what you can salvage.
- Vicky H.

Where do we go when we die?
I don't know. Where are we now?

In the middle of life, he said, I drew the path of it upon a map and I studied it for a long time.

In any case it is difficult to stand outside of one's desires and see things of their own volition.

But then if we don't know ourselves in the waking world, what chance in dreams?

How comes she to own a world of night at all?

When you look at the world is there a point in time where the scene becomes the remembered?

For each event is revealed to us at the surrender of every alternative course.

I think you got a habit of making things a bit more complicated that they need to be. Why not just tell the story?

The stars which were belled above them against he eternal blackness of the world's nativity.

In any case this was a deep dream for the dreamer and in such dreams there is a language that is older than the spoken word at all.

He thought he saw in the world's science a great conspiracy.

Yet it is the narrative that is the life of the dream while the events themselves are often interchangeable. The events of the waking world are forced upon us and the narrative is the unguessed axis along which they must be strung.

But in dreams we stand in the great democracy of the possible and there we are right pilgrims indeed.

Every man's death is a standing in for every other. There is no way to abate that fear of it except to love that man that stands for us.

The dust of the few cars hung in the dry air long after the cars were gone.

It was just this big whispering sound all over. Geese by the thousands... They blacked out the moon.

I wouldn't have the crazy bitch on the place, he said.

He gathered her black hair in his hand and spread it across his chest like a blessing.

Writing inspirations and quotes

1. Write about a time when the power went out? Did you use candles? Did you need them?

2. Where does a smile come from? Write about the person from your past or present who made or makes you smile the most.

3. What place do you think of when you think of total darkness? Write about that place.

4. "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." - Sri Chimnoy Ghose

5. "A choice, right now, between fear and love." - Bill Hicks

6. "The eyes of love, instead see all of us as one." - Bill Hicks

More quotes for writing

Quotes for writing...

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." - Albert Camus

"In summer, the song sings itself." - William Carlos Williams

"A life without love is like a year without summer." - Swedish Proverb

Tom Waits Quotes

Quotes from a Tom Waits interview...

1. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.

2. We are monkeys with money and guns.

3. Real beauty: oil stains left by cars in a parking lot.

4. False teeth in pawnshop windows

5. A homeless man with an operatic voice singing the word "bacteria" from an empty dumpster in Chinatown

6. It was a train station of music with all the sounds milling around...

7. "Fire is the sun unwinding itself from the wood." - Bucky Fuller

8. A man you'd want in the boat with you at the end of the world

9. Headlights hit by a shotgun

10. Bacon frying

11. Piano lessons coming from an apartment window

12. He is a giant among men

Writing prompts

"The old man kept talking bout his life and his times.
He fell asleep with his head against the window.
He said an honest man's pillow is his peace of mind."
- "Minutes to Memories" by John Mellencamp

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes."
- Oscar Wilde

Write a Fable

1. Write a fable.
Fable: a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim. A fable's purpose is to impart a lesson or value, or to give sage advice. Fables also provide opportunities to laugh at human folly, when they supply examples of behaviors to be avoided rather than emulated.

A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech and other powers of humankind.

Or use one of these fable quotes to spur on your writing...

2. "I am sure the grapes are sour." Aesop, The Fox and the Grapes

3. "It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds." Aesop, The Jay and the Peacock

4. "Do not count your chickens before they are hatched." Aesop, The Milkmaid and Her Pail

Insert this into your writing

1. A character thinks about a fear. This could be something practical, like the upcoming results of a medical test, or something vague and indefinite... Write their thoughts, or describe their thoughts through their actions.

2. Write a nonfiction or fiction scene that has a lot of people in it-- a crowd or a group. It could be a party, a church dinner, a class, a bar. Describe the scene using the people as part of the setting: colorful clothes, or a mass of unfamiliar faces, etc. Don't forget the sounds and smells as well as the visual details.

3. Put a knife in your piece of writing. If it is fiction, have someone set a table or find a hunting knife in the barn, etc. If you are writing memoir, consider your own experience with knives: scaling fish? polishing the silver? spreading peanut butter?

Robert Penn Warren writing prompts

Writing prompts!

"infinite motion of sky"

"And tomorrow would rise and do all the old things to do"

"To lay ear to earth for what voices beneath might say"

"Into the blind and antiseptic anger of air"

"And in the forgetting to make it all more true?"

All above lines are from Robert Penn Warren poems in the collection, Now and Then.

Artist Statement prompt

Here's Brandon Smith's artist statement. I thought it'd make an interesting writing prompt. :)

"Often staring, large and distorted, the cow within my work occupies the role of artist, the hero and subjugated victim... They become metaphors for the human condition in its dichotomy of frailty and power." - Brandon Smith, quoted from his artist statement, 2007

Various writing prompts

1. Write a natural prayer. You may use any definition of natural, any form of prayer, whether that be overtly religious or spiritual without any religious attachments.

2. Look for a sign to be the starting place -and the title - of a poem or story. Examples: roadside sign, store sign, advertisement in a newspaper, magazine or on TV, etc.

3. "Peace" by C.K. Williams looks at a kind of peace, but the word holds different meanings for each of us at different times. In times of war, the absence of war is likely to be the first definition to come to mind. When "we fight for hours", as in his poem, I would guess that tranquility, quiet and harmony in our relations would better fit the bill. We also use the word at times to ask for silence or calm or as a greeting or farewell. What does the word mean to you right now in your life? Is it a place, state of mind, something you long for or have found? Do your thoughts turn political? Use this abstract noun as your starting point and, following Williams' lead, avoid the obvious definitions.

4. Look specifically at how we let someone go from this world. What is it that we say or do that allows us to let go?

5. Tercets are any three lines of poetry, whether as a stanza or as a poem, rhymed or unrhymed, metered or unmetered. The form has Italian roots. Dante's The Divine Comedy is a common example. It uses three line stanzas with every first and third line ending with a rhyme. (This is known as "enclosed" as the rhyming lines enclose an unrhymed line - the scheme being aba. Get really classical and use iambic pentameter and you have a sicilian tercet. Fancier still - interlock enclosed tercets by having the middle line rhyming with the first and third lines of the following stanza so that the pattern is aba bcb cdc ded ...)

Five May Prompts

1. Write about a first time, ie, first time on a swing, on a bus, visit to a city, swimming in a creek, etc.

2. Write about a last time, ie, last time you talked with someone, last time went hiking, etc.

3. Write about something you don't recall about yourself but others retell the story about you.

4. "How _____ Behaves." Insert a word or phrase in the blank & write about it.
(example: song title by Feist, "How My Heart Behaves")

5.
"What rises high
springs from deep."
- Harry Brown, "To Tell the Truth"

Six writing prompts

Six writing prompts to use to get started.

1. When I turned the corner I came face to face with . . .

2. Think back to the first place you remember living as a child. Pick a room in the house, any room, and describe it in detail.

3. Write about something you've lost.

4. Pick a day that didn't end the way you wanted to and rewrite the ending.

5. What happened? (reference photo below)


6. What's his story? (reference photo below)

more prompts

1. Someone wakes up in a strange place. The person observes the place in some detail, then begins to piece together how this happened...

2. Looking down from far above, I see half snow, half grass.

3. I looked out over my city. I had been watching this city for a long time. I decided it was time.

4. “Hear thou from thy dwellingplace…” - 2 Chronicles, 6:21

5. “brown as a the mouths of rivers” - from movie, Angels in America

6. “the world is full of broken wings” - Marvin Bell, “Why,” Georgia Review, Spring 2007

Fairytale prompt

Which fairytale or childhood story has your life most resembled?
Have you met your prince charming, the big bad wolf, the evil step-mother, the Wicked Witch of the West? Are you a warrior, a princess, the Queen of Hearts? Did you become a graceful swan? Will you live happily ever after?

Four Writing Prompts

Writing Prompts: Use one or several to prompt your writing for a few minutes.

1. Describe yourself when you were a child of 8.

2. "I wish I could see..."

3. Setting: In a busy kitchen

4. Your character is on the roof and acting "strange"

Quote writing prompts

“The problem, if you love it, is as beautiful as the sunset.” - Krishnamurti

“Where would the gardener be if there were no weeds?” – Chuang Tzu

“Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

“For aren't you and I gods? Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Release life's rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming. Laughter. Running.” – Vladimir Nabokov

“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” – Charles Dickens

“If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then his it a third time – a tremendous whack.” – Winston Churchill

“Forget my sins upon the wind, My hobo soul will rise.” – Gillian Welch, “I’m Not Afraid to Die.”

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter.

Starters and quotes

Writing prompts!

1. Someone wakes up in a strange place. The person observes the place in some detail, then begins to piece together how this happened...

2. Looking down from far above, I see half snow, half grass.

3. I looked out over my city. I had been watching this city for a long time. I decided it was time.

4. "Hear thou from thy dwellingplace..." - 2 Chronicles, 6:21

5. "brown as the mouths of rivers" - from the movie, Angels in America

6. "the world is full of broken wings" - from "Why" by Marvin Bell, published in Georgia Review, Spring 2007

Some more writing prompts

First Lines or phrases:

The night was sultry.

They found me. I don't know how but they found me.

Disappearing became second nature…

While not the intended effect, the outcome was surprisingly satisfying.

Roy owned the only drive-thru funeral business in Maine.

Nick had considered himself a lucky guy, until now.

They had nothing to say to each other.

I’d walk a mile…

Anger suffers as grief withdraws.

“They want to make buttons out of my bones.” - Gregory Corso

OR use five random words: Stop, Slide, Brick, Bag, Roar

Pantoum exercise

The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same: this can be done by shifting punctuation, punning, or simply recontextualizing.

The pantoum is derived from the pantun, a Malay verse form - specifically from the pantun berkait, a series of interwoven quatrains. An English translation of such a pantun berkait appeared in William Marsden's A Dictionary and Grammar of the Malayan Language in 1812. Victor Hugo published an unrhymed French version by Ernest Fouinet of this poem in the notes to Les Orientales (1829) and subsequent French poets began to make their own attempts at composing original "pantoums". [2] Leconte de Lisle published five pantoums in his Poèmes tragiques (1884). Baudelaire's famous poem "Harmonie du soir" is usually cited as an example of the form, but it is irregular and the first stanza rhymes abba rather than the expected abab. American poets such as John Ashbery, Marilyn Hacker, Donald Justice, Carolyn Kizer, and David Trinidad have done work in this form.

Harmonie du soir

Voici venir les temps où vibrant sur sa tige
Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!

Chaque fleur s'évapore ainsi qu'un encensoir;
Le violon frémit comme un coeur qu'on afflige;
Valse mélancolique et langoureux vertige!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir.

Le violon frémit comme un coeur qu'on afflige,
Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir!
Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir;
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige.

Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vaste et noir,
Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!
Le soleil s'est noyé dans son sang qui se fige...
Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!

— Charles Baudelaire

And the translation....

Evening Harmony

The season is at hand when swaying on its stem
Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
Sounds and perfumes turn in the evening air;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!

Every flower exhales perfume like a censer;
The violin quivers like a tormented heart;
Melancholy waltz and languid vertigo!
The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar.

The violin quivers like a tormented heart,
A tender heart, that hates the vast, black void!
The sky is sad and beautiful like an immense altar;
The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...

A tender heart that hates the vast, black void
Gathers up every shred of the luminous past!
The sun has drowned in his blood which congeals...
Your memory in me glitters like a monstrance!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

Akhmatova couplets

Take this poem, "Twenty-first. Night. Monday", by Anna Akhmatova and divide it into couplets as I have done below. Only use one couplet as a prompt and give the others to other writers (or save them for later) and use it as a prompt. This will allow you to focus only on the lines in the couplet, thus taking away the entire meaning of the original poem.

Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.

Some good-for-nothing -- who knows why --
made up the tale that love exists on earth.

People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:

they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.

But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down...

I found this out by accident
and now it seems I'm sick all the time.

Lies, Half-truths, and Truths

Writing Prompt Project

With a group:

A. Give each person three slips of paper. Each person should write on the slips of paper the following:
1. one lie
2. one half-truth
3. one truth

B. Mix all the folded slips of paper in a bowl and let people pull three from the bowl. If you pull your own, place it back in the bowl. Writers should use one or all three of the statements (or the ideas the statement inspire) in their writing.

For one person:

A. Create the bowl of statements by following the instructions above but write six for each of the lies, half-truths, and truths. You may want to do this on one day and then use the prompts at a later date when you have forgotten all the statements you wrote for the bowl.

B. Pull three and use them as writing prompts for your writing this day.

OR use the below lies, half-truths, and truths written by me and my friends Michael, Vicky, Normandi, Alana, Rhea, and Carol as prompts:
I am part dog.
Once, I found tulips that had ears.
I have squirrel blood in my veins.
Wine is the bane of her existence.
She was born with a banjo in her hands.
Two glasses of wine, a bar, and a long evening being sick.
I spent millions of dollars.
I held a hummingbird in my hands.
I once lived in a chicken house.
I'm rolling in dough!
I'm a meat and potatoes kind of girl/guy.
My glasses slide down my nose.
My softball coach began to stalk me.
My father was born dead but his grandmother brought him back to life.
I knew he was at the door before he knocked, so I crept out the back door.
My greatest dream is to join the circus.
I love working with kids, but I don't want any of my own.
I have a great family.

Water prompt

Recall something that happened many years ago near a body of water.

Recall as much as possible about the incident from the very beginning.

Let the memory play through from beginning to end as if it is a film, and then try to write down all the specific details: what things looked like, what scents were in the air, how things felt when touched, etc. You might have to recall the memory several times before getting all the details written down.

Then consider how this incident impacted you, either at that moment or over time or now as you recall it.

Paraphrased from: Kowit, Steve. In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet’s Portable Workshop. Gardiner, Maine: Tilbury House, 1995.

Animals and Language

Below are names of animals in English and various other languages. I purposefully did not state what language the other translations are in so that you can interpret how they came to be and what the symbols represent to you. Write about the animals or language, etc.
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Fish: vissen, poissons, Fische, pesci, peixes, pescados, рыбы, ψάρια

Bird: vogel, oiseau, Vogel, uccello, pássaro, pájaro, птица, πουλί

Snake: slang, serpent, Schlange, serpente, serpente, serpiente, змейка, φίδι

Horse: paard, cheval, Pferd, cavallo, cavalo, caballo, лошадь, άλογο

Tiger: tijger, tigre, Tiger, tigre, tigre, tigre, тигр, τίγρη

Monkey: aap, singe, Affe, scimmia, macaco, mono, обезьяна, πίθηκος

Two quotes and two starters

Writing prompts

1. Write about a day in the life of a dollar bill.

2. Write an alternate ending / history of a significant moment in your life. Think about what could have been if one key moment had been different.

3. "It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time." - Sir Winston Churchill

4. "The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases." - Carl Jung

Love themed prompts

Quotes to inspire creative writing... These quotes were used in February 2008's Free Will Astrology's website. Use ones that inspire you to write. Very Valentine-themed.
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Sir Francis Bacon: "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

Elizabeth Barret Browning: "Earth's crammed with heaven."

"The air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy. The merest whisper of your name awakes in me a shuddering sixth sense. I am longing for a kiss that makes time stand still." (The preceding testimony is a blend of words from Edgar Allan Poe, Pamela Moore, and John Keats.)

Henri Nouwen: "Your body needs to be held and to hold, to be touched and to touch. None of these needs is to be despised, denied, or repressed. But you have to keep searching for your body's deeper need, the need for genuine love. Every time you are able to go beyond the body's superficial desires for love, you are bringing your body home and moving toward integration and unity."

George Bernard Shaw: "You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you."

Tom Robbins: "We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."

"truths in their wild state" (philosopher Gilles Deleuze's phrase)

Richard Moss: "The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention."

Paul Tillich: "The first duty of love is to listen."

Scholar Suzanne Juhasz says that Emily Dickinson's eroticism "inflects and charges" most of her poems. "Erotic desire -- sensuous, nuanced, flagrant, extreme, outlandish, and profound -- is her way of interacting with the world."

Andrew Varnon: "Be my ruckus, my perfect non-sequitur. Be my circuit-breaker, my lengthening shadows at dusk, my nest of pine needles, my second-story window. Be my if-you-stare-long-enough-you'll-see. Be my subatomic particle. Be my backbeat, my key of C minor, my surly apostle, my scandalous reparté, my maximum payload. Be my simmering, seething, flickering, radiating, shimmering, and undulating."

"The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them," wrote novelist Margaret Atwood. "There ought to be as many for love."

"delirium of solutions" (William Carlos Williams' phrase)

Leo Tolstoy: "Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love."

Charles Caleb Colton: "If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours."

"One should always be in love," said Oscar Wilde.

South African poet Shabbir Banoobhai: "Love is a mystery. And the reason why it is a mystery and should remain a mystery is that knowledge of it would give us mastery over it -- would enable us to manipulate it -- and love, truth, God, cannot be manipulated. Hence the Prophet exclaimed, 'My Lord, increase my bewilderment in Thee.'"

Teilhard de Chardin: "Some day after we have mastered the winds, the waves and gravity," said de Chardin, "we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for a second time in the history of the world, humans will have discovered fire."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but looking outward together in the same direction."

Marge Piercy in her poem "The Real Hearth": "Let's heat up the night to a boil. Let's cook every drop of liquid out of our flesh till we sizzle, not a drop of come left. We are pots on too high a flame. Our insides char and flake dark like sinister snow idling down. We breathe out smoke. We die out and sleep covers us in ashes. We lie without dreaming, empty as clean grates. Yet we wake rebuilt, clattering and hungry as waterfalls leaping off, rushing into the day, roaring our bright intentions. It is the old riddle in the Yiddish song, what can burn and not burn up, a passion that gives birth to itself every day."

Thoreau: "There is no remedy for love but to love more"

Pascal: "If you do not love too much, you do not love enough."

W. Somerset Maugham: "We are not the same person this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person."

Iris Murdoch: "People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is unlike the original."

Ursula K. Le Guin: "Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new."

Andre Maurois: "A successful marriage is an edifice that must be rebuilt every day."

Ezra Pound: "What thou lovest well remains,/ the rest is dross/ What thou lov'st well shall not be reft of thee/ What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage. . .

Pablo Neruda, "Love Sonnet XI": "I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps . . . [I] hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond . . . I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes. And I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight, hunting for you, for your hot heart, like a puma in the barrens . . . ."

Turkish proverb: "To prepare for love, learn to run through snow, leaving no footprints."

Italian proverb: "Love rules without rules."

Sark: "Love imperfectly. Be a love idiot. Let yourself forget any love ideal."


Carl Sandburg: "Love asks you beautiful, unanswerable questions."

Franz Rosenzweig: "Love brings to life whatever is dead around us."

Rainer Maria Rilke: "Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."

Erma Freesman: "Love is the only game where two can play and both win."

Pablo Neruda: "Love is like a well in the wilderness where time watches over the wandering lightning."

Marnie Reed Crowell: "To keep a fire burning brightly," she says, "Keep the two logs together, near enough to keep each other warm and far enough apart -- about a finger's breadth -- for breathing room. Good fire, good marriage, same rule."

February Quotes for writing

"We don't see things as they are; We see things as we are." ~ Anais Nin

“I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me.” ~Anais Nin

"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh." ~ W.H. Auden

"There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment."
~ Wislawa Szymborska

"I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons." ~ Adrienne Rich

"Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things."
~ Ray Bradbury

"Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book shown to him by heart, and his friends can only read the title." ~ Virginia Woolf

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life." ~ Virginia Woolf

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit." ~ e.e. cummings

"There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy and a tragedy." ~ Mark Twain

"The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom." ~ bell hooks

“We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.” ~ Alexander Pope

“I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to live the width of it as well.” ~ Diane Ackerman

“I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”
~ Augusten Burroughs

"Earth's crammed with heaven." ~ Elizabeth Barret Browning

"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."
~ Louisa May Alcott

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
~ Sir Francis Bacon

"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."
~ Tom Robbins

"truths in their wild state" ~ Gilles Deleuze

"The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention."
~ Richard Moss

"delirium of solutions" ~ William Carlos Williams

"Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love." ~ Leo Tolstoy

"We are not the same person this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person."
~ W. Somerset Maugham

"Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."
~ Gilda Radner

“chords ran together like tears on a cheek” ~ anonymous

"Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"Do I dare
Disturb the universe"
~ T.S. Eliot

Grammar book prompts

Use any one or more of these sentences to prompt your writing...

There are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse.

How all things start.

Old whiskey bottles with their bleached labels lying on the wet rooftop.

The river talked all night in the shoals.

My life is ghastly, he told the grass.

The cottonwoods went by like rows of bone.

I have been waiting for you for hours.

Does your brother dance well?

Why are you sitting here alone in the dark?

A little bit of common glass sometimes glitters like a diamond.

I see the man in the moon.

Mr. Jones bought a knife for his little boy.

Buy a paper from this boy.

Of all beasts he learned the language.

The two strangers were really Jupiter and Mercury.

A shaft of song, a winged prayer.

Iris always wore a chain of raindrops for pearls, and a cloud for a robe.

Thor didn't weave this verdant roof.

The meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that do often lie deep for tears.

I met a little cottage girl...

What kind of word?
Just a word.
Whatever. Hush.
Whisper it in my ear.

- Borrowed from old grammar texts and primers. Contributed by Vicky H.

Free-write prompts

Use one of these phrases as a jump start or let it inspire/remind you of something to write about.

Empty in the room of silent faces

Listening to his methodical hum

Silence was warm

There never was a fire

Splinter unrelenting

Pillow corner crushed in his fist

Silence and stillness

Afternoon afterglow

As if she were an extension of him

Sour whirlwind

Misattributed Quotations

Think on the variations of this quote below and write on how some of the concepts inspire or interest you.
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One of the most enduring misattributions of a work to Emerson is that of an inspirational prose passage called "Success" that appears, most often assigned to Emerson if to anyone, on many Web pages. It goes:

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest citizens and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give of one’s self; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived—this is to have succeeded.

As Joel Myerson demonstrates in "Emerson's 'Success'—Actually, it is not," Emerson Society Papers, 11, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 1, 8, this is not a work by Emerson.

In her 17 November 1990 column, "Dear Abby" (Abigail Van Buren) answered a reader’s question "How would you define success?" with the quote from "my favorite American poet, essayist and philosopher" printed above. However, on 1 February 1992, a chastened Abby printed a letter from Arthur Stanley Harvey, who wrote that the quotation was based on something his grandmother, Bessie Anderson Stanley, had written in 1904, and that had been appropriated for many years by greeting card companies, including Hallmark, which had "erroneously credited Robert Louis Stevenson as the author." Abby then apologized, and printed what she described as the original from the 1904 Brown Book Magazine:

He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has enjoyed the trust of pure women, the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.

But more research shows another source. In the September 1904, Joe Mitchell Chapple, publisher of the Boston National Magazine, announced he would give $10,000 for "Heart Throbs," which he defined as "those things that make us all kin; those things that endure—the classics of our own lives." The people who sent in the ten best contributions would receive a pile of silver dollars, "one silver dollar placed flat upon the other," as "will measure your exact height"; other major winners would receive twenty-five, ten, or five dollars; and five hundred lucky people (out of a total of 840 winners) would receive a dollar each. The results from this contest were published in a book, appropriately titled Heart Throbs, but it contained nothing by Stanley. Due to the success of this book, a second volume of Heart Throbs was published in 1911, "Contributed by the People," according to the title page. Unlike the first volume, this one contained "the voluntary contribution of thousands," including, on the very first page, "What is Success?" by "Bessie A. Stanley." Significantly, Emerson’s "Good-Bye" is also included (p. 7-8). The proximity of Stanley’s work to Emerson’s suggests that someone might have made the initial misattribution by copying Stanley’s work, then returning to seek the author and mistakenly using Emerson’s name from three leaves later; Stanley’s name appears on the third line of a verso page, Emerson’s on the fifth of a verso page, making such an eyeskip possible.

Some Prompts

Writing prompts for the day...

1. Do you have any aunts or uncles who never had any children? Tell about the impact they had on your life.

2. Who were you named after and what do you know about that person?

3. Introduce any pets you may have had or wished to have.

4. Introduce your siblings. Name the most endearing quality about each.

Wise Words for Writing Prompts

You will see the world in a new way.

Your co-workers take pleasure in your great sense of creativity.

Measure your life by counting the precious moments

The one you love is closer than you think.

Running in circles gets your shoes worn down on one side.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Luck is the residue of design.

Wise are they who do not believe they are wise.

Sometimes a stranger can bring great meaning to your life.

Quote prompts

Quotes as writing prompts below...

Take your mind out every now and then and dance on it. It is getting all caked up.
Mark Twain

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
David Lloyd George

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

To get where you want to go you can't only do what you like.
Peter Abrahams

I hasten to laugh at everything for fear of being obliged to weep at it.
Pierre de Beaumarchais

Three Quotes for Prompts

"To tell the truth,
I'd believe in anything
If you'd just turn me loose."
- Langston Hughes, "Ku Klux" from The Panther and the Lash

"Love the art in yourselves, not yourselves in the art."
- Stanislavsky, My Life in the Art

"There never was a war that was not inward..."
- Marianne Moore, "In Distrust of Merits."

Changing Places prompt

Every place has things that change — sometimes as the result of economics, sometimes because different people are involved, and sometimes for no clear reason that you know about. Think of a change to a place that you know well. Perhaps the local grocery store you grew up with as Smith and Bros. Grocery was bought out by a regional chain like Food Lion or Winn Dixie. Maybe the First National Bank of Smithburg suddenly becomes NationsBank. Perhaps the change was more personal -- an older sibling moves out of the house and your family changes the room to a guest room or an office. Think of a specific change and narrate the events that occurred. Readers should know the details of the change, and they should know how you feel about the changes that occurred.

quotes for writing

More quotes for writing prompts...

"Any authentic creation is a gift to the future." - Albert Camus

"True self is the part of us that does not change when circumstances do." - Mason Cooley

"Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true." - Demosthenes

"No matter where I run, I meet myself there." - Dorothy Fields

September Prompts

Between the ages of 5 and 10, what was your favorite activity?
Describe it in as much detail as possible. You can write from your point-of-view or from the point-of-view of someone else watching you in this activity.

There is a saying in the martial arts to describe the proper mind framed needed to become a master. "Mind like Water." This is a state of mind that writers must strive for as well. Write about that feeling. Have you ever experienced it? If so, how did it feel? What images does the phrase "Mind like water" bring to mind?

Write about a time when you acted a certain way because of fear. What were the consequences?

Four random writing prompts

1. Do you have any aunts or uncles who never had any children? Tell about the impact they had on your life.

2. Who were you named after and what do you know about that person?

3. Introduce any pets you may have had or wished to have.

4. Introduce your siblings. Name the most endearing quality about each.

Prompts

1. "Poetry is language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree." - Ezra Pound.
What did Pound mean by using the word "charged"?

2. List 10 things you think of when you hear the words "bedroom" or "tombstone." Pick the most interesting one and write about it.

3. Write and include these words: oven, lines, oregano, florescent, light, and hum (or rum)

4. "Each corner of the world holds miracles." - Harriet Arnow

5. "Delicious to watch." - Harriet Arnow

6. "distance of opposites" - Charles Wright

7. "which fear is our consolation" - Charles Wright

8. "climb into light" - from Richard Hague's "Finished with the Poetry of Coal"

World Without Tears prompts

Pick one to inspire you and write.

If we lived in a world without tears:

How would bruises find the face to lie upon

How would scars find skin to etch themselves into

How would broken find the bones

How would heartbeats know when to stop

How would blood know which body to flow outside of

How would bullets find the guns

How would misery know which back door to walk through

How would trouble know which mind to live inside of

How would sorrow find a home?

Lyrics taken from a Lucinda Williams song, "World Without Tears."

August prompts

Quotes for writing prompts...

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." - Ernest Hemingway

"What a lot we lost when we stopped writing letters. You can't reread a phone call." - Liz Carpenter

"Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer." - Susan Sontag

"For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity." - George Orwell

and...

"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun." - Pablo Picasso

"when there is no more
story that will be our
story when there is no
forest that will be our forest"
- W. S. Merwin

quotes for writing

You must kill all your darlings.
William Faulkner

You must fly your 35 missions again.
Richard Hugo, “In Your War Dream”

She does not desire her children,
Or any more children.
Ezra Pound, “Clara”

I like doing it if one gets into it; it is something quite different.
- W.H. Auden, New York Quarterly Craft Interview, Number 1

Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader.
Vladimir Nabokov

Is it possible that the whole history of the world has been misunderstood?
- Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

To tell you the truth,
I’d believe in anything
If you’d just turn me loose.
Langston Hughes, “Ku Klux” from The Panther and the Lash

Oh no, no that’s only in America, Europe would never have such things.
W.H. Auden

Love the art in yourselves, not yourselves in the art.
Stanislavsky, My Life in the Art

There never was a war that was not inward….
Marianne Moore, “In Distrust of Merits”

Painting Inspiration

part 1: Consider a painting filled with many characters engaged in a central action, like Bruegel's "Peasant Wedding." Think about the focal point and perspective of the work of art, the effect of the setting, colors, shapes, textures, the story that the painting is telling, the relationship of the characters and what affections and tensions are developing.

part 2: Take the voice of one of the characters [if you want] and invent that character's past, his/her feelings at the present, and
possibilities for the future." [I also mention that you as the writer can describe the effect viewing such a painting might have on yourself or a character.]

Quoted from:
"The Peasant Wedding (For a Group), Mary Swander." /The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach./ Edited by Robin Behn & Chase Twichell. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Happy Trigger prompt

Think of something that uplifts your spirit and write about it.

When you're walking at night and spy fireflies, does your bad mood seem to disappear momentarily? When you hear a train whistle does it make you wax nostalgic and feel suddenly happy, maybe even youthful? Does the feel of old rocky walls make you feel excited? Does freshly cut grass or the cold first snow awaken you? It could be all or any of your senses that has what I call a "happy trigger."

Write about it in detail. You may want to recall a specific moment and describe it in detail:
How did it uplift your spirits?
How did you feel afterwards?
How long did this feeling stay with you?
Do you go out to seek these encounters or wait for them to happen?
Have you ever told about these happy triggers to anyone else?

Prompts for a Friend

1. Reach beyond dictionary definitions and write about the growth of a poet, yourself or another poet you admire, and the stages they came to be the poet they are today. If writing about yourself, see if you can foresee the poet you imagine you will become.

2. A journal is found under an old desk in an old house. The entire journal is full of writing in a foreign language unknown to you. After flipping through it for a date, you find a photograph. Describe your impressions, thoughts, conjured feelings.

3. "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Albert Einstein
What sources? And in what way do you hide them in creative endeavors?

4. If there are not Great Truths recognized and agreed upon by all people, there are some Great Truths each of us recognizes or values. What are yours? How have they aided or halted your actions?

5. Think of one of the times when you first appreciated silence. Maybe it was late at night after the neighbors have all gone to sleep. Maybe it was during a test. Maybe it was on a busy street during business hours and yet you sensed silence. Describe in detail the kind of silence you recall, your thoughts, observations...

6. Reverse senses. Choose an experience to write about, one your recall or one you imagine. Instead of describing the taste of something with adjectives used to describe taste, use adjectives reserved for one of the other senses. Choose any of the 5 senses you want to be substituted.
Examples: The juice was jagged when I bit the lemon. The trumpet blast filled the air with a bitter odor.

7. Listen to a song, preferably one without lyrics, and contemplate the images it draws up, whether they are memories, imagined scenes, fantasy, etc. Write.

January prompts

Comfort Foods
Most people have a favorite food. Maybe your favorite food now is your favorite food from when you were a child. Sometimes, people use food not only for nutrition and taste, but for comfort.

Silent Night
What memories do the words “silent night” bring up for you?

Old Wives' Tales
“Early to bed, early to rise...”
“Cold hands, warm heart.”
“Cross your heart...”
“Cross your fingers...”
“Make a wish.”
“Cats that steal children's breath in the night?”
Nonsense? Wise words? Do you remember any “old wives tales” from childhood?

Which fairytale or childhood story has your life most resembled?
Have you met your prince charming, the big bad wolf, the evil step-mother, the Wicked Witch of the West? Are you a warrior, a princess, the Queen of Hearts? Briar Rabbit? Did you become a graceful swan? Will you live happily ever after?

Best Friends
Blood brothers, soul sisters, perhaps a sibling, neighbor, or an imaginary playmate.
Who was that special friend from childhood? Describe the bond between you. Maybe write a letter that long lost friend. Are you still in touch? How has your relationship transformed over the years?

When I grow up?
What did you dream of becoming when you grew up? What did you promise yourself you would never be when you grew up? Are you grown up yet? How similar or different is your life to what you imagined it would be like?

Musical Memories
What song brings back vivid memories for you? Something you learned in school, on the bus, a made-up song from a family member, one of the top ten on the radio of that decade, your first slow dance?

What did you believe as a child?
ideas if you're stuck:
When did you start of stop believing in God, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, etc?

Birds, Bees, Storks?
How did you learn where babies come from?