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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.
If you use these prompts to make a post or other work please say what inspired you to create and link it back to this post and the Writer Pilgrim by So Elite publication.
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.
These prompts started for the participants of writing workshoppers and have continued to include everyone. You may choose to write to the prompt and keep it private on your notepad. If you decide to post your writing in comments, you may get a comment or like from someone other than me! Can you handle it? This page is online, so only share what you are comfortable with.
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One special stone was found
From thousands of rocks laying around
It held a creature of the past
Though long dead it still does last
They call them fossils now
Echoes of a time that existed somehow
Many have been found as evidence
That life was here a long time since
Before man walked on the earth
Only little primates scuttling into their berth
Became a man-ifest destiny
Where he destroys all he sees
Such examples of previous lives
Should awaken man to all he strives
That time on earth is not guaranteed
We should cherish the land or we
will suffer the fate of those long dead
If we would change our ways to go ahead ,
But we must give up some olden ways
To assure our conditions see a brighter day ✨️
Thank you, Writer Pilgrim !
I need hope every day forward.
Not the loud, triumphant kind.
Just the small, steady kind that lets me get out of bed and meet whatever the next appointment, the next tremor, the next test result brings.
The stone gives me that.
Even though I know it is only a placebo.
Even though I know the voice I once imagined was my own exhausted mind reaching for something solid.
Still, the relationship holds.
I keep it on the windowsill where the morning light finds the hole first.
Some days I pick it up before I check my phone, before the medical emails, before the body’s latest complaint.
I feel its cool weight.
I look through the opening and the ordinary room becomes, for a second, a little more possible.
It does not heal the cancer.
It does not strengthen the heart or quiet the Parkinson’s.
It only keeps the private bargain we made:
I’ll keep you
if you’ll keep reminding me I’m still here.
And so every day it does.
Not with miracles.
With presence.
With the simple fact that I chose to let this small, holey thing become my touchstone - something I can reach for when hope feels thin.
The relationship is real in the only way that counts:
it is the place where I practice staying.
Where I practice gratitude for another morning.
Where I practice believing, just long enough, that the next day is still worth meeting.
Even if the magic is only the magic I lend it,
I keep lending it.
Because I need the hope.
And the stone, patient and silent, keeps receiving whatever hope I have left to give... and returning it to me, day after day.