Writing Prompts

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.” –Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister Tell us the story of a time that you changed the course you might have followed because you made a choice, a decision, an act of […]

“We give thanks for the invention of the handle. Without it there would be many things we couldn’t hold on to. As for the things we can’t hold on to anyway, let us gracefully accept their ungraspable nature and celebrate all things elusive, fleeting, and intangible. They mystify us and make us receptive to truth

“Every single day, I get emails from aspiring writers asking my advice about how to become a writer, and here is the only advice I can give: Don’t make stuff because you want to make money — it will never make you enough money. And don’t make stuff because you want to get famous —

“The problem with the world is that we draw the circle of our family far too small.” —Mother Teresa Share an experience in which you found this statement to be true—or false.

“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression.” —Isaac Bashevis Singer Tell me how you get past the disappointment when you don’t yet have the skills to manifest your creative vision. Or a time you gave up because you weren’t good enough to actualize the thing you wanted to

“To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the times comes to let it go, to let it go.” —Mary Oliver Tell me about a time this was true in your

“When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his death bed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.” – Winston Churchill Tell me about your relationship with worry.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” – Alan Kay Tell me about a time you invented your own future.

“I do not believe in God. I believe in cashmere.” —Fran Lebowitz Tell us about a material thing you love. Let it rip. Write an ode—a love song—to that thing.

“The way home has always been there. It has stretched out in front of me but I have not had the eyes to see it. The way home is a broad, dusty road. There are curves and overgrown places. Forest pathways and granite cliffs. The way home is always lit—by sunlight, by moon light, by

“A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimension.” —Oliver Wendell Holmes Tell me about a time exposure to a new idea changed your life irrevocably.

“Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can—there will always come a time when you are grateful you did.” —Sarah Caldwell Tell me about a life lesson you learned in a completely unexpected way from a completely unexpected source.

“I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray.” —Stanley Kunitz, The Layers Respond to these three prompts, each for fifteen minutes. Do them in a row: Who I used to be Who

In Wild, the author recounts her months-long hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, a journey that she took entirely alone after life as she’d known it had fallen apart. “It was a world I’d never been to and yet had known was there all along . . . one I’d staggered to in sorrow and