Some resources for your writing practice

Writing Prompts

There’s a list below, but also, remember they are everywhere.

Here are a few places you might find them…

  • Eavesdropping. Sometimes a snippet of a conversation from someone walking by or at the next table is all you need to get going.

  • Read a poem. See what line shimmers out to you (don’t go picking and choosing—your inner critic will get too involved) and start there.

  • Open a book to page 34. Put your finger in the middle of the page. Any phrase below that is your prompt. (Same as the poem—let it shimmer. Don’t go hunting.)

  • Wacky phrase on a billboard? There’s your first line.

  • Line from a song playing in the car or grocery store that catches your ear.

  • Movie title. Line from a movie. Book chapter title. Book dedication.

  • Something you hear in that liminal space between waking and dreaming.

Just check out what pops out to you from the blurry backdrop of your everyday and let that be the starting point for the next ten minutes of your life. Or write them down for later.

And if you still need one, here are… well, 50.

  • I can’t believe…

  • All I hold on to

  • Tripping and falling

  • I’m a little obsessed with…

  • Like any other day

  • If it never happened, then…

  • When I opened the door…

  • The smallest gesture

  • A love letter to an enemy

  • The first thing I see…

  • I wish I could explain…

  • I may never be done

  • My favorite sound in the world

  • When my heart breaks…

  • I’d do anything for…

  • In the cocoon

  • Turns out I was wrong about…

  • In the beginning, there was…

  • I’ll admit it

  • Something I do every day that I loathe (or love)

  • No.

  • The kindest thing

  • The cruelest thing

  • A story I don’t want to tell anymore

  • I am devoted to…

  • Out of nowhere… 

  • The next thing to do…

  • My 10th birthday

  • My 90th birthday

  • What I thought I heard

  • Through the open window

  • Give and take

  • I never thought I would…

  • I gave up on…

  • What I should have said

  • The first time I bled

  • Telling on myself

  • Star of the play

  • I swear I’m not making this up

  • Being good

  • My little rituals

  • On the verge

  • For reasons known only to them…

  • As far back as I can remember…

  • What, this old thing? 

  • If I just kept going…

  • I need…

  • I always used to…

  • I’m waiting for…

  • Getting lost

What would you add? Maybe you can start your own never-ending list.

For tips & encouragement

The few books below are my go-tos precisely because they aren’t about getting better at anything. That stuff has its place, but for our purposes it’s largely exhausting and intimidating. 

For instance, I adore Mary Karr’s writing, but a few chapters into her book The Art of Memoir, I felt myself starting to shut down. It’s so damn intelligent. She is so good at what she does. So yes, read it, but just know there’s a particular aim: that you are goddamn serious about writing a goddamn memoir.

These, on the other hand, are about getting freer. They’re about devotion: to yourself, to your voice, to your practice. 

  • Writing From The Heart and Memoir as Medicine, Nancy Aronie

  • Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind, Natalie Goldberg

  • Mastery, George Leonard

Books

Memoir

Check out how these authors write about themselves—what they notice, what they include. This has helped my own writing more than anything else. No need to make a study of it; simply let it wash over you. 

Here are a very few favorites off the top of my head. By “favorites” I mean I lived and breathed them during the reading, plus the spaces between and for weeks after. This is what honest writing does. It is not necessarily flowery or grammatically perfect or carefully structured or even objectively historically accurate. Rather, it is resonant; it comes through in a way you can feel. You are pulled into the person’s world. Their breaths. Their soul. 

How generous.

  • Wild, Cheryl Strayed

  • The Salt Path, Raynor Winn

  • Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs (really anything by him)

  • Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

  • Becoming, Michelle Obama

  • Expecting Adam, Martha Beck

What books do you recommend? What teachers have helped your practice, what stories have moved you?
I’d love to know.

You are so very welcome to come practice all of this in a group of people as brave and terrified and longing and uncertain and confused and wondering and broken and regretful and healed and human as you are. Most happen online and are accessible from anywhere. Here are the current offerings.

You can also create your own group. As a dear friend says, it’s not rocket surgery.

Groups & workshops