July-August

A writing prompt is the general topic of this exercise. You can write a poem, a short story or a few sentences, but you have to vividly portray the person, place or thing in such a way that the reader can visualize the topic and inter into the writers experience.

If you have any ideas for a daily writing prompt, please send it per PM to an administrator or post it in the 'General Discussion' section.

Today's Prompt: Write about the emotions you'd feel while climbing a mountain.

Stepping from one rock to another
And breathing fresh air
Great job she did earth mother
When you feel the wind going through your hair

At the top of the mountain
Enjoying the view
Like the clear water in a fountain
I watched as eagles flew

Feeling the sun on my skin
While going down the rock
Oh how long has it been
The clock already shows four o'clock

Walking down the dirt road
And looking back again
Seeing a tree toad
Climbing makes me feel human

Today's Prompt: "How can you even eat that? List three foods you cannot stand to eat. Choose one of them. Pretend you're no longer you and write about one, describing it as though it was the most delicious thing in the world."

Today's Prompt: "Who cheated you? Friend, enemy, or a stranger? Write about the experience."

Quote :

Friend: A person you know well and regard with affection and trust! A friend is someone who goes with you in the good times and bad times!

Yes those lovely, lovely friends. When can you call a friend a friend? When he was there for you after one bad breakdown? Or when you just feel to call him a friend because in your eyes he has all the things a friend needs?

Yes that is what I thought too. I had a lot of friends. People I thought would stay in my life forever. People I thought would still know me when I'm eighty and would experience some things with me. You often think that you know the people around you, the ones who you call "friends", but if you take a second look you’ll see that not all of them are what you think they are. It is kind of sad to realize that, but you’ll see who your true friends are as soon as something in your life changes. Whether it’s something good or bad, you’ll notice it.

Of course I'm not talking about people you go to school with. Because after high school you will go to a college in California and your friend might go to New York. I’m also talking about "online friends" you might never meet in your entire life. Probably a lot of you will say; "Fuck the online friends"! and well yes I have to admit that you should really do that with some of them, but not all of them. Although sooner or later you will find out who is a friend of your "online friends". I'm talking about people you meet in life under whatever circumstances ever. People you spend a lot of time with, people you there for in bad times who are never there for you though. For sure you start to think 'What the hell is going on', but because you're a person with a big and good heart you just think that life comes first and they will be back again. But I found out different. Not only with one person, but more than one. I was asking myself in the beginning if I was the problem. If it was me who just wasn't able to have a friendship. But no it is not me. They can't expect that a friendship only comes from one person and the other one isn't doing nothing for it. It is kinda like a relationship. It only works out when both people are in it. I learned a lot about friendships. I'm not gonna make the mistake again and let some people come into my heart and ain't doing nothing to keep the friendship alive. Sometimes life doesn't go like you want it, and you have to fight to keep going. But in situations like that a friend should always be there. A friend should be by your side doesn't matter what will come. He will still be there when everyone walks away. I have three friends who I know will always be there; My Baby, her sister and my dude. I know for sure that no matter what will come they will hold me up and won't let me fall.

Human nature is not to be trusted, so as you get older you will find not only friends will fail you but also many times family will too!. This is part of growing up, but you will figure out who to trust in the end, those who perform their word, those that complete tasks they promised.

Today's Writing Prompt: "According to you, what's the easiest thing to avoid? Write about it."

The easiest thing for me to avoid is confrontation. I don't care to get confrontational with anyone. I am a very quiet and contemplative person who holds people in high regard. For this very reason though, I've been hurt many times and with the pain came a barrier that not many can break though. I've guarded myself against most things in hopes not to get hurt. Does it work? Not always, especially if that hurt comes from the people closest to me. But no one ever said life was easy. So I do what I can to keep the peace, everyone has a right to their opinion and I'm no different. If you ask me for mine I expect you to take it without judgment or anger. If I ask you for yours you'd expect the same thing. Confrontation is nothing but a ploy to get attention for most people. Dramatics are best left in writing.

"Why do you even remember that? Think of a trivial fact you know. Center a piece of writing around it."

If you have any ideas for writing prompts, please share them so we can build a database for future members. Thanks in advance.

Can it soothe a savage beast? Listen to some music you haven't listened to in a VERY long time. Write about a memory associated with that music.

Where is your favorite place to read and why?

"What did you want to hear? Imagine that many years ago you visited a fortune-teller, one who actually had some skill. Write what the fortune-teller said to you as he/she flipped the cards, glanced at your palm, studied your tea leaves, or whatever. Apply your writing to your present or future: your choice."

"Why don't people with working ears use them? Write about a time that someone refused to listen to some good advice."

So does anyone have any ideas for prompts? Don't be afraid to throw them out there!

"Why so dishonest? Think of any lie you once told, and force yourself to stick with the first one that pops in your head. Write a piece about that lie."

"How could that even happen? Write about two people discovering they own the exact same one-of-a-kind object."

"What would it tell them? Pretend you're moving. What item could you leave behind for the new residents that you would not miss AND what would the new residents make of the item? Tell it from the new residents' point-of-view."

For the month of August: "Why was it so great? Write about a gift you received (concrete or abstract) that you still consider to be one of the best gifts ever."

Kellycakes wrote:

For the month of August: "Why was it so great? Write about a gift you received (concrete or abstract) that you still consider to be one of the best gifts ever."

Mr. Hart's Gift

It was nothing special. It was just one book in a larger collection he’d picked up somewhere along the course of his career. He’d shuffled it from one classroom bookshelf to his home library to another classroom then over again, changing schools and districts twice. At no more then fifty or sixty pages long, with a rendering of a raven on it’s cover, it was not the heaviest volume by far, but there were just so many boxes and his back felt old and his temper was growing shorter as the days grew hotter.

As a young man, just home from Vietnam, he’d gone into teaching because he wanted to share his passion for literature with the youth of the country he loved. He’d never dreamed back then that he would one day find himself questioning this choice. It wasn’t just because he was facing possible suspension. That had thrown a different light on things, but it was, as he very well knew, merely a symptom of a greater problem.

The seventh grade and the world weren’t what they use to be. They weren’t what he had planned for. The wall in Berlin was coming down, the birth rate among fourteen-year-olds was going up, and just last month his wife’s brother had had a phone put into his car. A parent was no longer allowed to slap a back talking child across the mouth. Spankings in school was something that was entirely unheard of now, even in the lower grades.

So, why was he so surprised a teacher wasn’t allowed to yell? But he’d done more then yell, hadn’t he? It seemed that no matter how disrespectful the pair of wanna be gangstas in the back row were being it was never acceptable for a teacher to over turn his podium, even if it didn’t hit anyone. Not that he’d been trying to do that. He’d just wanted to get their attention. He’d just wanted them to shut up and let him teach. He’d just wanted to make their bleak prospects in life a little brighter. But all they wanted to do was crack jokes and hurry home to listen to their rap records. It was all, all of it, just too loud for him.

And then there was the book. The bird on it’s cover seemed to be smiling up at him from its backdrop of frosted window panes and purple curtains. It’s expression a mockery of his life and his all too quick approach into middle age and the waiting cold embrace of death. He tossed it into the trash bin. He was in no mood for the macabre today.

The book was hardly out of his hand before he remembered how the school janitors always bitched when ‘paper products’ weren’t put into the new brown recycling bins. His room, like all the others, had been supplied one of these glorified trash cans at the start of the year. It had come along with a warning from the school’s vice-principal that every teacher, not the school’s custodian staff, was responsible for making sure all classroom refuse was properly sorted or trash pickup privileges would be forfeited. His classroom recycling container was sat on the other side of the room, near the door.

Rolling his eyes, he gripped the small of his back with his left hand, and bent down to reclaim this unwanted paper product from the bottom of the trash.

“Can I have that book, Mr. Hart?”

Book again in hand, he turns towards the girl. Her hair is blonde. It was dark brown the week before, or was that the week before that. How it didn’t all fall out and what her mother was thinking letting her dye it in the first place was beyond him, “it’s just an old paperback of Edgar Allen Poe’s poems.”

“I know,” she said, smiling the smile of every child who wants something, “I liked that story of his we read,” he wasn’t shocked the title had seemingly escaped her. She’d been advanced to his class at the start of the grade from the ’remedial’ English class she’d been placed in the year before. Dyslexic was what the huggie feely hippies in the front office called her, but he had his own opinions about that, “and you are throwing it away.”

“Very well, here you go,” placing the book on the corner of her desk he returned to his own, without having to make the trip across the room to the recycling bin; not a bad bargain. When the bell rang a few moments later he didn’t even look up from his homemade lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich and potato chips as the girl, with book in hand, and the rest of her class filed out into the already noisy hall. Why did they all have to be so loud?

A few weeks later, when school let of for the summer, was the last he saw of the girl. He would survive his troubles and remain on at the school for years to come, but she would never came back to let him know that she took the book with the crow on it home and read from it practically every night the first few weeks of that summer.

He didn’t know years later when the book he once tried to throw away got misplaced during a move the girl would go out that very same night and buy a brand new copy of Edgar Allen Poe’s complete works.

More importantly though he didn’t realize that he’d given a thirteen-year-old girl, with weird hair, a Hell of a lot more then a old paperback and a seventh grade English education. What he’d really passed onto her that day was a symbol of their deep love of literature; a now shared passion that would shape the whole course of her life. She would not herself become a teacher, but she would remember him and honor him with a short story about a teacher and dog-eared paperback that was just one book in a larger collection he’d picked up somewhere along the course of his career.