A prompt & a pearl: Week 13
A writing prompt and bit of writing insight (almost) once a week in 2024
It’s been an emotionally charged few weeks. What would have been my mother’s 70th birthday was April 16th, and my essay “An Epistle for Edenia” was published the next day. Of course I knew it was being published, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t bracing myself for its release. It’s the first excerpt of this new book I’m writing where I integrate both of our stories—mine and ma’s—so I was especially anxious. I’ve been processing and releasing by putting my hands in soil, cleaning my garden and getting it ready for the planting season.
I’m proud of the work. I’m also super vulnerable… All of this is to say, I know I’m behind in the prompts I promised you all. Give me grace, mi gente.
This week’s prompt is inspired by my essay…
The Prompt
Write a letter to someone you has hurt you—a family member, a friend, a former friend, a former lover, you choose. The point is to write a letter where you address what happened, why and how you were hurt. Write like you’ll never send the letter. Remember to include scenes, show what led up to the situation, how you handled it (or didn’t), what you take from this moment.
The Pearl
I’m doing something with an essay chapter that’s got me going a little mad—weaving a new thread that I’m not sure about but have to flesh out because I know there’s something there though I’m not sure what it is or how it will result or even if this effort will be successful.
Like gardening, so much of writing is about trial and error. I always tell my students (and remind myself): when you’re trying something new and/or experimenting, surrender to the pull. Don’t give up if it’s not coming together as quickly or fluidly as you want. Keep going. This lesson has been reinforced for me in my gardening. I’m a novice, really—this will only be my third year of gardening—and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I will fail, I will learn something new from that failure and I will try again. I will always try again.
Toni Morrison started with one idea for The Bluest Eye, and then changed her mind and rewrote the whole thing. Of course this was an enormous task but imagine if she’d given up! (insert collective gasp) In an interview, Morrison said: “[I]f I had approached it like, ‘Oh, my God, I did it wrong, now I have to do it right,’ I would never have done it at all. It's a process of discovery.”
It’s true that the effort may not be successful. This is always a risk. But no matter what happens, you still learn in the process and you end up with new writing. This is what I’ve been telling myself lately. Perhaps it will help you in what you’re doing.
Mucho amor,
V