Writing Practice
1.24.26
A note of apology: There was a glitch in the backend of my system over the weekend and these didn’t go out as scheduled. So sorry! I’m double-checking the rest of the Writing Practice posts now to ensure the same issue doesn’t recur.
Welcome to Writing Practice. The idea is simple: I send out a prompt, often with links to related published pieces to help fuel creativity. Then you write. Free subscribers get the Sunday Writing Practice emails; paid subscribers get all of them.
Write as much or as little as you like. I would recommend not over-thinking this, and just using it as an opportunity to jot down some words. I would also recommend just writing through – don’t try to make it perfect (that’s for later).
Some of these prompts may resonate, and you’ll find yourself writing paragraph after paragraph. Others will fall flat, and you’ll roll your eyes, or come up empty and feel frustrated. This, too, is part of having a regular writing practice. On those days of frustration or blockage, try to write something down anyway – even just one sentence, even just one word. And then take heart in the reality that, if we are lucky, there is always tomorrow.
Writing Practice Day Twenty-Four
Welcome to the final week of Writing Practice! Congratulations on making it this far. If you’re written every day, incredible. If you’ve written some of the time, great — that’s almost surely more than you would have done without this little nudge. So good on you for making whatever time you made.
This week we’re integrating the skills we’ve built over the previous three.
Your prompt for today: Think about a moment in which you felt ashamed. Write the story of what happened, keeping a tight focus on emotion. How can you make the reader feel what you felt? What words can you choose to increase the emotional salience? Consider your sentence structure: How can you use shorter or longer sentences to build a sense of anxiety or melancholy or whatever feeling it is you’re going for?
Here’s a piece for inspiration.
xx Jill