Friends connected to my personal page on Facebook know I have an addiction to what I refer to as image quotes. Little sayings and thoughts that hold deep meaning or inspire a laugh. They can also serve as writing prompts.
Take, for example, the one to the left. You can picture this happening in a movie or in a book. What would be the reason for such a dramatic move in your own writing? Is it a treasure map, a guide to a search and rescue mission, or a plan for renovating a house? Let your imagination go as you put your thoughts on paper.
Years ago, when taking a course on writing for children, we were advised to save pictures from magazines we liked and put them into a book or folder for use as writing prompts. I probably still have that collection of magazine photos somewhere. I don’t think I could ever bring myself to toss them.
That may be why my phone is full of memes for sharing. I’ll admit that some are political, some inspirational, and some just fun, with the intention of evoking feelings and responses from a diverse range of people. When you are struggling with your writing, whether it’s a book, magazine article, or blog, flip through Pinterest, Facebook, magazines, or anywhere else you find inspirational images and save a few to inspire your stories.
Look at this cute image of two smiley-face dolls sitting on a bench. They display the words ‘Happy’ and ‘Keep Smiling,’ but what is their story? Why are they sitting on that bench? Are they friends? Siblings? Strangers? Write a story about them.
There are many thoughts out there on memes that create memories of the past. Anything from the sound of the National Anthem followed by all TV stations going off the air to the idea of having to run and answer the phone because it was connected to a wall with no caller ID or answering machine. You had to answer, or there was no way of knowing who it was or what they wanted.
The purpose of a writing prompt is to get your mind rolling. By taking the focus off writer’s block and getting the mind rolling, your thoughts will soon exceed the speed at which you can type them. Keep in mind, it is only a starting point, and your story can go as far away from that beginning as you want.
Some writers develop their writing, which begins with a prompt, into something they later publish. Others consider it throwaway writing, where it allows them to experiment with a variety of topics and techniques without worrying about perfection or failure.
I was in a writing group for a while, where they did a fun thing at each meeting. About half an hour before the meeting was scheduled to end, a writing prompt was given. It was usually a sentence or two or an image. We were then given 15 minutes of quiet writing time to craft a story based on that prompt. At the end of the writing period, we would go around the room and each person would read aloud what they had written. It was fun and engaging to see how stories that started from the same prompt varied significantly in content.
Another area of writing prompts is the ideas you come across when reading. A couple of years ago, I visited a museum in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, and purchased the book “The Grey Eagles of Chippewa Falls – A Hidden History of a Women’s Ku Klux Klan in Wisconsin” by John E. Kinville. The information about a woman’s Ku Klux Klan group inspired my curiosity and led to the sale of an article published in the Freshwater Reporter, “The troubling persistence of Michigan’s Ku Klux Klan” [ https://freshwater-reporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/FreshwaterReporter_Jan24-web-2.pdf ]
I have also had other articles published as a result of prompts I received while reading about history. A recent example was when I read “The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street” by Susan Jane Gilman. In the novel, she writes that the creation of soft serve ice resulted from a flat tire on an ice cream truck. My mind kept going back to that incident, so I looked it up, and she had taken creative liberties in the story, but the basis of fact was there. I used that prompt for an article that will be published in the upcoming issue of the Freshwater Reporter about the history of ice cream.
The possibilities are endless once you open your eyes and mind to the numerous prompts that are around you. It can be two children on a playground, a family dining out together, or an image of an older man on a tractor. It was the meme about sweeping everything off a table to make room for a map that inspired me to write this blog. I shared it on my personal Facebook page a week or so ago, but it kept creeping into my brain. I even started a story with it that became a throwaway, and that led to this article.
If you have been following my blog for a long time, you know it has been a while since I last wrote. The time between blog posts has been significantly stretched over the past few years. When I look back, I feel bad for getting wrapped up in life and not writing more. At the same time, my ‘Life is a Melting Pot’ life means that after swirling around in that pot, I have now grabbed onto the spoon, climbed up on the edge, ready to dive in with a broader variety of writings and more frequent posting.
If you have been with me for the long haul, Thank You! I hope you’ll enjoy the new format and pass my link along to your friends. If you are a new reader, Thank You! Please sign up to receive an email notice each time I post a new blog.
When you are born a lover of the written word it never goes away, it just transitions over time. Writing and literature go hand-in-hand. My high school classes were filled with literature…classes in modern short stories, mysteries, American literature, Advanced Grammar and Composition, and more. When I went back to college in 2010 one of my favorite classes was public speaking because I was writing whatever I chose to talk about. It was fun!
I write in many formats. I titled this blog Life is a Melting Pot because my life is a jumble of various activities and I like to write about whatever strikes me at the moment. This blog is not the only regular writing I do. For the past eight years I have held the position of newsletter editor of Bluewater Family Backgrounds, a publication of the St. Clair County Family History Group. As the editor I gather content and put together the entire newsletter, writing some articles that go into it. I have been writing a column called “Who AM I?” for the past five and one-half years for The Lakeshore Guardian, and local free publication. The column is on genealogy. I am in my fourth year as an opinion columnist for our local newspaper, The Times Herald. I select my topics and how often I write a column, frequently selecting topics that can be a bit controversial. Finally, my daytime job is that of Paralegal in which I spend my days doing legal writing. All of the areas in which I write are slightly different and I enjoy each one.
I belong to a Freelance Writer’s Group and at the meetings I see a variety of people with a wide range of interests. The group includes people who write children’s stories, adult novels, travel columns, science fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and more. We all have one thing in common…we love to write! Writers are like any other type of artist, they are imaginative, creative, passionate about their art, well-read, self-promoters and self-starters. Writing is something you do solo; you have to be motivated to write or you will never succeed. Writers love words, language, and people watching. Everything is a potential story or scene. If you spend much time with a writer you may find yourself popping up in their stories, blogs, or columns. You may not be there in name, but you will likely recognize a scene in which you have lived.
--- LIFE IS A MELTING POT --- Grace Grogan...Writer, Photographer 