Scrolling through my phone recently, my eyes caught on Brian Macaluso’s essay, “Lights Out” on Memoir Land, in which the author “looks back at the August, 2003 blackout in New York City.” Before even reading the first line of Brian’s lovely piece, I immediately felt inspired to write. I, too, had a memorable story from that day: of psychically meeting up with my best friends at the park without any communication, of notably not trying to seek out my then-boyfriend, which led to our breakup the next day… Just seeing the headline and subhead of someone else’s essay not only made me want to write, but gave me that feeling of wanting to write for no particular reason at all, my favorite.
This is all to say…maybe this is just the kind of inspiration you need too? For this week’s writing prompt, I urge you to look back at some kind of major event you lived through — be it the East Village Squatters’ Standoff of 1995, Hurricane Katrina or Harvey, the George Floyd protests — and write about it. Where were you? What do you remember about that day — the way it happened, looked, felt, smelled, seemed? Write it all down! If you’d like to share some of what you wrote here, we’d love to read it. Or, if you’d like to start here and then keep going off the page, that would be great, too. In short, if you’re itching to write today but not sure where to start, maybe this will help. We hope so!
P.S.: What were your writing wins this week, large or small? Head over to the Narratively Academy Chat and tell us about them in the #WeeklyWin.
April 29, 1995 when the bombing at the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma happened, i was working at my university desk in Atlanta. A retired Air Force Reservist, I had performed my annual training at Tinker AF Base for 10 years in Midwest City a suburb of OKC. As I saw the carnage on television the following days, I was both saddened and relieved. Relieved as one year while doing training, I'd had to visit the Murrah building for some required paperwork. Realizing the bombing could have happened the day I visited. Carol Gee, Author Random Notes (About Life, "Stuff"And Finding Leaening To Exhale)