Life Without Baby

filling the silence in the motherhood discussion

Using Prompts to Start Telling Your Story

TypewriterIn the corner of my bedroom is a large bag of journals. At first glance you’d mistake me for one of those people who fills book after book with profound thoughts, but that’s not who I am. Each journal has a handful of entries for each time I decided to dedicate myself to journaling. I’d write for a few days, then skip, then quit. Even as I worked my way through infertility and knew that journaling would help me, I never managed to keep it up for long enough to dig down into the good stuff. Turns out I’m not much of a navel gazer.

Under the desk in my office is another pile of journals. Every page of these books is filled with my writing. So what’s the difference?

The stories in the second stack of journals were almost all generated from writing prompts. These prompts might have been lines pulled from books, prompts given to me in a class, or verbal or visual prompts that set me off in a particular direction.

The thing about prompts is that they force you into the writing. There’s no room to ponder what to write. They take away the pressure of trying to find something profound or important to write about. You just pick a prompt and jump right in.

If you’re thinking about writing your story but don’t know where to start, consider trying some prompts to launch you into writing.

I like first-line prompts because they force you into a starting point. Take a look at the prompts below and find one that speaks to you. Begin writing with that line and see where it takes you.

If you tend to ponder or find yourself trying to come up with the perfect story, don’t overthink. Set a timer for five or ten minutes, pick a prompt that resonates with you, and dive in.

Here are a few first-line prompts to get you started:

This was a matter of life and death

It takes more than inspiration to become great

Don’t put on a brave face

There is something wrong in this house

I take a deep breath when I read this

Weekdays revolved on a sameness wheel

We have something bigger in common

Let me know in the comments how you did and if anything interesting came up for you.

 

Writing to Heal

“I write to make peace with the things I cannot control.  I write to create red in a world that often appears black and white.  I write to discover. I write to uncover.   I write myself out of my nightmares and into my dreams.  I write to remember.  I write to forget.  I write to quell the pain.  I write because it allows me to confront that which I do not know.  I write as an act of faith.  I write to the music that opens my heart.”

~ Terry Tempest Williams

I love this quote. It sums up everything I feel about the art of writing. Whenever I have one of those days when I wonder why I ever decided to become a writer, or what the point is of my putting the thoughts that are in my head down on paper, I pull out this quote and remember.

When I first started this blog or when I first had the thought that maybe I should write a book, I hadn’t yet found this quote. I just felt an urge to write about what was going on with me. But it turns out that the process touched on every aspect of the quote.

Writing has helped me come to terms with being unable to have children, something that was completely out of my control.

I have definitely discovered and uncovered a lot about myself through writing, and I’ve certainly touched on the areas of being childfree that are far from black and white.

I’ve written myself out of my nightmares and found a way, not to forget, but to move past the nightmare of infertility by committing the stories to paper (or screen.) And I’ve most certainly confronted aspects of myself that I did not know.

If you’re still trying to work through your own thoughts and feelings about not having children, try writing. Even if you don’t want to air your dirty laundry in a blog, get yourself a journal, or ask for one as a gift, and just write. Don’t try to make it good writing, don’t even worry about doing it every day, or finishing a thought. Just write. It will help to clear your mind of all the clutter and sort through some of those feeling that don’t always make sense.