Wednesday, March 26

WRITE ABOUT SOMEONE YOU LOVE WITHOUT REVEALING WHO THEY ARE

If the prompt feels impossible, it is. You have been taught to include specifics & it will be counterintuitive to withhold meaningful details about a beloved person. Do it anyway. Keep the secret details for yourself. Your private memories will help you survive the exercise.

If the prompt feels impossible, it isn’t. In order to reveal someone, you must know them deeply & this is someone you thought you knew but whom you do not know. Take comfort in the fact that your bewilderment in the face of your own wrongness will help you write. You cannot reveal what you do not know. This is a built-in safety mechanism.

Final constraint: What you thought was the beginning, that which you had long waited for, by turns patiently & impatiently, peacefully & restlessly, ardently & with as much willpower as you were capable of summoning, is the end. The prompt relies heavily on this constraint: What you think is the beginning is the end.

(Jennifer Tseng)