Before we get started, a preview of a new podcast episode:
Michelle Terrill Heath
Michelle and I met by coincidence at a writer’s conference. Her story and presence touched me so much that I had to get her on Writer Pilgrim Sounds to let her talk about her experience, knowledge and share how she and her family navigate this life as her partner Andy lives with Parkinson’s disease and Michelle is his caregiver.
If you have been writing to the prompts regularly, well done. If you haven’t followed any prompts yet and you’re here now, this is what matters. Be brave, give it a go and be present. Write and pour your heart on to the page. Write by hand if you can. When the time is up type it up. Explore a new genre if you wish. Look at today’s theme and write what first comes to your mind. If you are an artist who prefers to draw or create other pieces than writing that’s ok too.
Writing is about what you see and how you see it. Others may not want to see what you have to share. It’s your job to tell the story that’s burning inside, even if the pages get to carry too much. Your job as a writer is to write it.
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If a prompt doesn’t work, make it work for you. Pick an element, a word or an angle and try again and well done for persevering. Be gentle and be kind to yourself.
Previous prompts are available on the Prompt Station starting page. Give all prompts a chance. While you may be inclined to pick and choose, you may want to look more closely at the ones you’re avoiding. It may be that those prompts can offer you some guidance or discovery as you set out to write. Don’t always go for the safe option. Try new things in your writing. That’s what a prompt is for, to play, explore have fun and be silly or serious without planning.
Today’s prompt is:
Set your timer to 5 minutes. If you feel like writing more after the 5 minutes have passed carry on.
This is a 5 minute exercise in writing in long hand and letting your pen lead your words on the page. No judging, no editing, just a stream of words coming out.
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Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.
Well, you are just a denier. Angel hater. What’s wrong with you?
I have nothing against angels whatsoever. I’m not even alleging they don’t exist.
Then what’s your gripe? To a playful display of our airborne guardians.
Im chapped by how this exemplifies the weakening of our national fiber. The erosion of any vestige of a can-do attitude.
Do share.
Why in hell would a winged creature ever need a swing? Too lazy to hover?
Under the grid of glass sky, angels perch on black beams like forgotten birds, wings half-spread, faces soft and childlike, gazing down at the hurry of coats and briefcases below. They don't flap or sing; they simply sit, balanced on steel, as if waiting for rain to drip through the panes or for someone to look up long enough to notice. The dome beyond the roof looms like an old promise, rounded and stone-heavy, while these little guardians float in between...neither fully in the sacred past nor the rushing now.
A woman pauses mid-stride, coffee in hand, tilts her head. The angel above her seems to lean a fraction closer, or maybe it's just the light shifting. Strangers are angels unaware, the old verse whispers in her mind...maybe the barista who smiled too kindly this morning, the man who held the door without a word, or these silent watchers overhead who never ask for thanks. What if every passerby carries hidden wings, folded tight against the daily grind? What if the prompt isn't to write something safe, but to look up, to entertain the possibility that grace is already hovering, perched on beams we barely see, waiting for us to notice and be silly enough to wave back?
The timer dings. The angels stay put. But the sky through the glass feels a little less gray.