Category: Writing

Prompt 2: Tension

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Close your eyes and check in with your body. Start with the top of your head and scan down to your toes. Check for places where you’re holding tension. What’s your posture or pose like? Where are your muscles relaxed or contracted? Write about your current state.

People say we “hold tension” like it reflects negatively on our character. I just want to say hey, maybe this tension is carrying me right now, but I don’t think we’re supposed to say that here in the always-be-positive land of the lean-into-adversity go-getters. And then again maybe I’m just troubled by this prompt because I am carrying a bit more tension, I think, in my neck and shoulders these days, and I don’t know what to do about it.

With education you progress, it seems, from a machine to a bench to a desk; but here, eyes straining behind dusty spectacles, legs and arms bent in a collared shirt and wrinkled slacks, I sit before a more cerebral machine as it shapes me into an image of itself.

Prompt 1: A Postage Stamp View of my Office

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Note: I am working through the book The 1-Minute Writer by Leigh Medeiros, which is available right now as part of a Humble Books Bundle at Humble Bundle.

You’re on the phone with a far-flung friend who wants to hear about where you are right now. Check out your surroundings. Capture the essence of what you see around you in just a few sentences.

The light streaming through the windows in my office is brilliant most mornings, but this morning it is shifting with the clouds: bright yellow-white one moment, a dull gray-white the next. It shines on a mess of papers spread around my computer—the litter of a week in which I missed two days sick and came back to a growing list of things to do. The computer and its two glowering eyes perched atop the desk leave little dominate my field of vision as thoroughly as they dominate the room itself. I wonder sometimes if I am meant to serve the computer or if it is meant to serve me. The brilliant light streaming through the windows eases these thoughts, while the pines, water oaks, flowers, and grass it reveals with each blossoming moment offer a compelling antidote.