I gave my Afghan Women’s Writing Project workshop a third prompt this morning, this one meant to jump-start a personal essay. The prompt goes as follows:
1. Think of something you have done in your home. It can be anything. Maybe you made a blanket with your mother. Maybe you had a fight with your sister. Maybe you read your first book or wrote your first poem. Maybe you met your husband, or your best friend. Don’t worry too much about what it is. But do choose one specific event. For example, don’t think of all the fights you’ve had with your sister, but rather one specific fight you had on one specific morning. And you aren’t writing yet, you are just remembering.
2. Choose one specific physical thing in your home, in the room you associate with the event you chose in step #1. It can be anything at all: the molding around the front door; the panes of a window; the kitchen sink; a blanket or piece of furniture or a rug; the inside of a closet.
3. NOW pick up your pencil, or go to your keyboard, and write at least one sentence describing how the thing you chose in step #2 looks. Try to keep in mind how you felt during the event you choose in step #1, but only describing the physical thing: the sink or the blanket, the closet. Be specific in your description. Don’t say “the color is beautiful.” Try for something more like F. Scott Fitzgerald description of Gatsby’s bedroom in The Great Gatsby: “two hulking patent cabinets … held his massed suits and dressing gowns and ties, and his shirts piled like bricks in stacks a dozen high … shirts with stripes and scrolls and plaids in coral and apple green and lavender and faint orange with monograms of Indian blue.” (And if you can write that well, you don’t need my help!)
4. Now close your eyes and touch the thing. Write a line about how it feels, perhaps comparing it to something else.
5. Put your face right up to it and breathe deeply. What does it smell like? Write a line about that.
6. Now begin a new paragraph with the line “When I was [whatever age you were in the event you chose for step one], I _______.” Then tell the story of what you did. Try to use the details of your description with which you have started the piece, and add new ones, as you tell this story.
Happy writing!
–Meg
