Flashpoint Fridays 1

A new feature, writing to prompts

Vivian Maier

Where does a piece of writing begin? Even in your mind as you sift through things that might happen? It can begin with the most dramatic moment you can think of as you turn on your engine to write.

I saw my first dead person.

The cat followed me home and kept jumping against the glass door.

I still think about the mouth of the man in the subway.

I suggest you forget what really happened. Forget it entirely and make it up now, from sentence one and where the language in that sentence takes you.

Today is the launch of Flashpoint Fridays, a new benefit for PAID SUBSCRIBERS. I send you a prompt. You write for 20 minutes or so. You post a short paragraph (up to 300 words) on the "Chat" platform in Substack that other readers can comment on. You go to substack.com/chat and type in “Everything is Personal” in the search box. I will also post the prompt on a new CHAT thread each week. The CHAT feature for the stack is available to PAID SUBSCRIBERS.

This is an experiment to offer more benefits to PAID SUBSCRIBERS who may be interested in developing their writing practice. Most mornings, after Richard has breakfast, he comes to the room where I’m working, and we write together for about 20 minutes, and read the pieces to each other.

All the work I develop into longer pieces and eventually books starts with this practice. I try hard not to come with a fleshed-out thought or memory. I want to be surprised by what the language tossed up by my unconscious produces in terms of associations. I’m trying, as I work, to produce a layered conversation with the reader.

Richard and I are not trying to set down moments we’ve lived, just because we’ve lived them and they really happened. We’re trying to use memory only as a tiny prompt—a nick, a fall, a promise, a kiss. And then go.

If this turns out to be a fun experience you want to keep going with, I’ll have more to say about how language, itself, produces “the story” or the meditative narrative. You see how often I use the TV thing we streamed the night before as a prompt and how these pieces aren’t standard “reviews.” Rather, I use them as provocations to think about something the show has stirred up for me. I’m not trying to show you the movie or the show in its own terms, perhaps. I’m trying to show you how my mind works and what I fall in love with, using the show as a means of doing this.

Today, too, you could use the photograph above by Vivian Maier as a prompt or use the prompts behind the paywall.

REMINDER: There is still time for PAID SUBSCRIBERS to sign up for TOMORROW’S ZOOM CONVERSATION on writing craft, January 20 from 3 to 4pm EST. RSVP: lauriestone@substack.com.

Happy writing and happy being alive today. Sending love on a cold, snowy day from Hudson, NY. The prompts are below. To upgrade to PAID, please click here: