Writing Prompts

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” —Neale Donald Walsch Take a large sheet of poster paper or butcher paper, some markers, crayons or pens. Draw a picture of your comfort zone as if it were an actual landscape—a neighborhood, an ecosystem, a country—with topographical details, as if it were a real physical […]

The Artist’s Creed I believe I am worth the time it takes to create whatever I feel called to create. I believe that my work is worthy of its own space, which is worthy of the name Sacred. I believe that, when I enter this space, I have the right to work in silence, uninterrupted,

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.” —Eleanor Roosevelt Tell me about a time you were afraid and acted anyway.

“Listening has the quality of the wizard’s alchemy. It has the power to melt armor and produce beauty in the midst of hatred.” —Brian Muldoon Tell me about a time that listening or being deeply listened to changed something profound in you or another person.

“Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Tell me about when you discovered or learned a truth that changed your

“There is no freedom like seeing myself as I am and not losing heart.” —Elizabeth J. Canham Tell me who you really are, today, just as you are. No holding back. Tell me everything you see. As you write, try to write with acceptance of who you are and what you see.

“There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of head or hands. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise to noon, rapt in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumacs,

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.” —James Baldwin Tell me about a time you stood up to hatred or injustice—a slur, a slight, or an attack on you or someone else. Or tell me about a

“This is precisely when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its

“They had invented a game: ‘the five wonderful things’. Each evening you had to name five wonderful things [that] you had experienced along the day: the patterns of milk and chocolate in cocoa, four raindrops in a row on a blade of grass, a snowflake on your sleeve, the one-legged pigeon, the sound of Rice-Krispies

“Memory doesn’t work directly. . . . You might stub your toe one morning and your mind tumbles back to an old friend, who wrote poems, and introduced you one May to peonies. The buds secreted a sticky sweet juice that attracted ants. The ants crawled in and opened the big petals. The flowers couldn’t

“Strawberries are too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones even bruise at too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten – every piece of fruit – had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone’s knees, someone’s

“You were last seen walking through a field of pianos. No. A museum of mouths. In the kitchen of a bustling restaurant, cracking eggs and releasing doves. No. Eating glow worms and waltzing past my bedroom. Last seen riding the subway, literally, straddling its metal back, clutching electrical cables as reins. You were wearing a

“Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines, hidden under the weedy mass of many years and experiences. Hit a tripwire of smell, and memories explode all at once.” —Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses Tell me about a smell that reminds you of your mother (or a different significant childhood

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” —Albert Einstein Tell me about a mistake that opened the door to something you never expected.