This Week’s Prompts*

1. His mother lay upstairs sleeping while his father sat beside him, softly giggling.

2. After 6, when the museum closes, it is dark, still, and deceptively quiet.

3. Anthony was the child who got the corner pieces of lasagna and brownies.

4. Describe being woken from sleep by a very unexpected sound.

5. Two by two, the children marched through the door, blinking at the bright lights and nervously scanning the crowd for their parents.

6. A walker, and a grabber, and even a "sock aid": When had he gotten so very old?

7. "It's pronounced 'Glou-steh'," the cabbie corrected me, now looking me full in the face in his rearview mirror, "Glou like 'ow, that hurts.'"

*How to Use These Prompts: The italicized prompts let you create your writing entirely from scratch; the non-italicized prompts are intended as your first line and jumping off point. But, at the same time, there are no rules. Write on!

Book(s) We’re Reading This Week

Love Forms by Claire Adams
A woman in her late fifties reflects back on her life and the choices she’s made that have taken her from her hometown in Trinidad to her current home in London…and one of those choices was the decision to give up her child for adoption when she became pregnant at 16. So far, it’s an even-paced and insightful look into how daily decisions, big and small, end up shaping the paths of our lives. (It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize.)

_{Grab it on Bookshop.org (and support local bookstores!)
Grab it on Amazon}

Top (Published) First Line of the Week

The nipples bobbed and bounced on the surface, the steam rising and the bubbles mixing to form a nipple soup.

From Doll Parts by Penny Zang

_{Grab it on Bookshop.org (and support local bookstores!)
Grab it on Amazon}

P.S.

Slow and steady really can win the race. If you feel like you’re not making progress as fast as you’d like to, grab some inspiration from this podcast episode and Elyse, the self-proclaimed President of the Slow Turtle Club.