"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Archive for the ‘Writing Prompts’ Category

Sometimes the Prompt Tastes Like Rain

9/10/2015

Daily Prompt

“The taste of every living thing is in the raindrop”~Afaa Michael Weaver

Make art about the taste of weather.

rain-drops-green-leaf_106255

 

Daily Prompt Catch-Up :-) Salvage, Reconstruct, and Dreams of Lace

 

Daily Prompt Catch-Up 😀 Soooo busy around here lately! LOL

9/4/2015

Lots of thinkin this week about salvage. “The wreck is a fact…The salvage trucks back in and the salvage men begin to sort and stack, whistling as they work.”~Kay Ryan Make art about salvage, or salvaging something.

 

9/5/2015

Sink, suffer, self-destruct. Rise stronger, reconstruct”~Lamb of God Make art about reconstruction, about reconstructing from what’s left.

 

9/6/2015

Someone I love is battling cancer. Make art about illnesss or disease.

 

9/7/2015

Dreamt someone I love brought me yards of unbleached cotton and lace. Make art with flowing white fabric, or lace, or lacing as the central metaphor.

 

 

Sometimes the Prompt is the Key :-)

9/1/2015

Dreamt someone I love gave me a ring full of keys and I gleefully skipped around unlocking and throwing open doors. 🙂

Make art about keys, about finding the key. keys

 

Daily Prompt Catch-Up :-) Big Family Weekend :-)

 

Daily Prompt Catch-Up 🙂

8/29/2015

All my kids coming home for a visit 🙂 Make art about visitors.

 

8/30/2015

You are my children. You are my jewels. We old ones invest our future in you.” ~Diane Samuels Make art about children, young or adult, or about parenting.

 

8/31/2015

I’m fixin to go on a sewin binge 🙂 The first known sewing needle came from southwestern France and dates to about 25,000 years ago. When I sew, I feel an endless procession of women surround me, as I, in my small way, add to the story. Make art about sewing, or needlework, or stitching something together.

ice-age sewing needles

A set of bone needles from the Cave of Courbet in the Aveyron Valley, near Toulouse, France. Believed to be over 13,000 years old.

When the Dream is the Prompt, or the Prompt is a Dream :-)

8/28/2015

Daily Prompt

“I see you in your backyard’s lavender, post-lunch doze, dreaming someone.”~W.S. Di Piero

Make art inspired by lavender, the color or the scent or the flower 🙂 or the feeling 🙂

lavender dreams

Daily Prompt :-) In Pieces

8/24/2015

Daily Prompt

Woke up feeling like life’s full of promise 🙂 So many dreams last night, but all that remains are shining fragments 🙂

Make art about fragments.

fragments

Sometimes the Dream Is the Prompt :-) and the Poem

8/23/2015

Daily Prompt

Last night I dreamt of so so many shining spoons, too many spoons to choose from 🙂 Someone I love stood at my side and laughed indulgently at my excitement about all of those spoons LOL

Make art about spoons. 🙂

spoons

Poetic and Visual Prompt :-) ‘Cause I’m Obsessed with Them Layers

8/19/2015

Daily Prompt

“The brain, like the earth, lies in layers”~Patricia Kirkpatrick

Make art about layers, literal or metaphorical, or use structural imagery and build a piece of art–poem, painting, essay, story–itself in layers.

layers-of-paint

 

‘Cause I’m Crazy Excited! Daily Prompt :-) Passing on the Old Ways

My mama kept a garden to feed us kids when I was growing up. We were poor, but nowhere near as poor as my mother had been as a child, growing up as she did back in those beautiful North Carolina mountains in the Depression era.

One of the reasons I can is to remind myself to be grateful. I think about how this was the only way my grandmother–we called her Miz Pearl–had to feed my mama and her brothers and sisters, and how she’d work all summer so they would have anything to eat at all in the winter. One hard winter the only thing they had at all were the green beans Miz Pearl had canned the summer before. So as I’m working, I’m thinking how lucky most of us are, to have access to food in ways that the generations before us did not.  I’m not rich by any stretch, and I do love my home food, but I have never been hungry, not truly, because of women who put up food this way, who had that wisdom.

So i’m grateful. and really really aware of how I don’t need this food to live, how I don’t have to haul water up from the creek, how I don’t have to build a fire to cook, how hard, how so so so hard, those women before us worked to care for –just to feed–their families.

I’m even more grateful, and excited, because for the first time, my sons, my oldest J, who is 26, and his younger brother Dean–the one I call Manchild 🙂 just months away from his 21st birthday– have asked to learn how to preserve food by the old canning methods. Even Manchild’s best friend Colin wants to learn! So I’m one Happy Hippie Mama right now 🙂

The web of cultures in which I was raised teaches us to honor the wisdom of elders, to honor and appreciate the wisdom born of survival and innovation and ingenuity developed over thousands of years walked by the procession before us. It teaches us to honor what sustains us, the planet, and our community. I am excited to share this with my sons, with these young people.  I am honored, and humbled,  to have the chance to teach this way of Loving as it was taught to me.

*********************************

Daily Prompt

“Oh my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways. And deep ways and steep ways, and high ways, and low.”~Henry Lawson

Make art inspired by old wisdom.

**********************************

“When we respect our blood ancestors and our spiritual ancestors, we feel rooted. If we find ways to cherish and develop our spiritual heritage, we will avoid the kind of alienation that is destroying society, and we will become whole again. … Learning to touch deeply the jewels of our own tradition will allow us to understand and appreciate the values of other traditions, and this will benefit everyone.

I always encourage them to practice in a way that will help them go back to their own tradition and get re-rooted. If they succeed at at becoming reintegrated, they will be an important instrument in transforming and renewing their tradition.”― Thích Nhất Hạnh

 

Writing Prompts Updated Daily!

Check out the Writing Prompts Page!

Writing Prompts

Tag Cloud