Stop Thinking and Start Writing and a writing prompt

I used to teach a community ed class called Stop Thinking and Start Writing. I loved it. I loved inspiring others to put pen to paper, loved their excitement when they brought their writing to class to share. I think teaching that class will go down as one of the highlights of my teaching career (11 years now; who knows how much longer),

I stopped teaching it for a couple of reasons. 1) It was just too much to teach it (and plan for it) and do my master's work (and my husband was soon to be deployed for the 2nd time).

2) It stopped being fun. This, I'm sure, had to do partially with being overwhrlmed and exhausted. But it also had to do with a shift I saw in what many of my students wanted. Before, they just wanted to write, to have that rush that comes with a well written piece or a page or even a sentence. Later, many people wanted advice on publishing. They wanted to be "great" writers and get big advances. And I totally get that because, as a writer with a rather large student loan debt from my MFA, I, too, would like to "make it big" someday. Or at least pay my bills.

But I'm not there yet and so I began to feel utterly unqualified for that work. And teaching became a chore because, instead of finding new ways to inspire my students, I was trying to help them be something I wasn't yet.

Here's the whole point of this ramble: I still just really want to inspire people to write. I still love it. So, I'm going to use my blog to do so.

Is this going to be a regular gig? Pfft, I don't know. I always have the best intentions to blog regularly, but often fail. So I am choosing to make no promises.

But I shall try.

One thing I want to do us share some of my collages as writing prompts. Today's prompt is at the top of this post: look inside.

If you'd like, you can respond to the prompt and leave your writing in the comments. Or maybe you'd like to post it (if so, instead of posting my picture on your blog, would you kindly just give a link to mine?) on your own blog and leave a link in the comments.

Lovely! I can't wait to see where this inspiration takes you!