Navigation Menu+

Writing and Healing Prompts

The writing and healing prompts gathered here have been developed and gathered over the past 10 years or so, and are now numbered—beginning with the earliest prompts posted in 2006.

In addition, I’ve started in 2016 posting twice daily writing prompts at Twitter. These prompts are different than the numbered ones below, and you can read more about them and see the prompts here.

Please feel free to share any of the writing prompts as you wish—

1. Designing a Healing Retreat

2. Freewriting

3. The Body as a Healing Place

4. The Easiest Writing and Healing Exercise Ever

5. A Shopping Spree

6. Discovering Needs and Desires

7. Has Writing Ever Changed Your Life?

8. Buy a Box

9. The Mystery of Language

10. Conjuring New Images and Metaphors for Healing

11. A Scavenger Hunt

12. Falling Apart

13. Lifelines

14. Considering a Package

15. Listing What Remains

16. A Walk on a Strange Street

17. Steps for Making a Written Collage

18. The Things We Carry

19. The Good Part in Other People’s Stories

20. Finding a Benefit in Adversity

21. Meanwhile

22. Once Upon a Time

23. What If the Moon’s a Balloon?

24. Deciding Who to Bring on the Train

25. A Memo at Your Breakfast Plate

26. Figuring Out the Shape of the Story

27. What Am I Here For? (part one) //    What Am I Here For? (part two)

28. Consulting with the Wizard of Oz

29. A Title for Your Quest

30. Choosing Chapter Titles

31. Locating a Turning Point

32. Keeping a Process Journal: A Long-Term Solution to Writer’s Block

33. Imagining Refuge

34. The Next Step

35. My Favorite Piece of Writing Advice from Natalie Goldberg

36. A Letter for Breaking Through Resistance

37. A Conversation with a Companion

38. I’ve Always Meant to Tell You: A Different Kind of Mother’s Day Greeting

39. Changing the Plot

40. A Clean Copy

41. Reading to Discover What You Most Want to Write

42. Imagining the Future

43. Rest Hour

44. What Audience Do You Imagine When You’re Writing?

45. Drawing a Map

46. Opening the Door

47. Choose a Word

48. Locating a Potential for Change

49. What Really Counts in This Life?

50. Listening in the Silence

51. Ira Progoff’s Stepping Stones

52. Stepping Stones in 3 dimensions

53. Words as Snowshoes

54. Become a Lake

55. Gratitude as Antidote

56. What if Appearances Are Deceptive?

57. Instructions by Neil Gaiman: The Writing Prompts

58. Writing about Rain

Writing and Healing Prompt: A Poem and a Meditation

Posted by on June 15, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts, Writing and Meditation

Writing and Healing Prompt: A Poem and a Meditation

________________ “Hurry” by Marie Howe We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store and the gas station and the green market and Hurry up honey, I say, hurry hurry, as she runs along two or three steps behind me her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down. Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave? To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown? Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her, Honey I’m sorry I keep saying Hurry— you walk ahead of me. You be the mother. And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says, hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands. ________________ “Meditation: Make the Best Possible Use of Time” by Matthieu Ricard Contemplate the passage of seasons, of the days and months, of each moment, and the changes that affect every aspect of the life of beings. Then think about death, which is inevitable but whose time is uncertain. Who knows how much time you have left to live? Even if you live into old age, the latter part of your life will pass just as fast as the beginning, if not faster. So you need to consider, in the deepest part of yourself, what really counts in this life and use the time left to you to live in the most fruitful way possible—for your own sake and others. If you have the wish to meditate and develop your inner qualities, it is never too soon to start. Some questions: What really does count in this life? How can we weave this glimpse of what counts into our ordinary lives? And how can we maintain some sense of humor about it while we’re doing so? ___________________________________________________________________________ The poem, “Hurry,” by Marie Howe is from her book, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. The meditation is from the book, Why Meditate? by Matthieu Ricard, which can be found here. You can learn more about Matthieu Ricard and his work at matthieuricard.org and at karuna-shechen.org...

read more

Writing and Healing Prompt: Locating a Potential for Change

Posted by on April 27, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts, Writing and Meditation

Writing and Healing Prompt: Locating a Potential for Change

The idea here, coming out of Matthieu Ricard’s instructions in Why Meditate? is to establish a motivation—a why—right at the beginning. His first suggested meditation, “A Vow to Transform,” included in his preliminary instructions, brings together many of the early ideas from his book—especially this notion that change is both desirable and possible—for any of us—for all of us. Though he presents it as one paragraph in his book, I’m presenting it here in 5 pieces—2 questions and 3 pieces of advice. And, of course, you could adapt this in a way that makes sense to you.  Here are the 5 pieces: Reflect on how you are now. Do you find patterns of behavior and habitual reactions in yourself that need to be improved or transformed? ** Look into the deepest part of yourself. Can you sense the presence of a potential for change there? ** Arouse the confidence to believe that change is possible through effort, determination, and wisdom. ** Take a vow to transform yourself not only for your own sake but also, and especially, for the sake of one day being able to dispel the suffering of others and contribute to their enduring happiness. ** Let this determination grow and take root in the deepest part of your being. Looking over the pieces now, I feel like the second piece is the core of this meditation—its seed: Look into the deepest part of yourself. Can you sense the presence of a potential for change there? What does this potential for change look like? Does it appear as an image? A feeling? A word? Where in yourself do you sense it? What might it look like and feel like if it began to grow and take root? What kind of attention does it need? What kind of nourishment? _______________________________________________ The book, Why Meditate?, can be found here. You can learn more about Matthieu Ricard and his work at matthieuricard.org and at karuna-shechen.org The picture above is from a time-lapse video of a crocus unfolding by Neil Bromhall. Because it is spring and because I love time-lapse photography and the way it makes change visible. You can learn more about Neil Bromhall and his work...

read more

Writing and Healing Prompt: Choose a Word

Posted by on March 23, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts

Writing and Healing Prompt: Choose a Word

This follows from last week’s writing prompt and also from coming across a post recently by Sharon Bray. She’s an author and teacher who posts weekly writing prompts at her site, Writing Through Cancer; she wrote a lovely post in January about choosing a word for the entire year. You can consciously choose a word (or two) that you want to explore and consider and define. Here are some possible words: contentment, delight, patience, kindness, healing, recovery, grief, sorrow, peace, reprieve, time, impermanence, death, love, compassion, success, regret, guilt,  meditation, happiness. But it could be any word. Periodically, I’ll ask students to choose a word for our writing catalyst for the day. The other day one student chose omnipotent. Another chose vitriolic. Another chose divulge. _____________________________________________________...

read more

Writing and Healing Prompt: Count Key Words

Posted by on March 16, 2014 in Blog, Writing and Healing Prompts

Writing and Healing Prompt: Count Key Words

After writing last week some early thoughts about happiness, I decided to go back and see if I tend to use the word happiness much—and discovered I don’t! On this site—before last week (when I used it twenty or so times)—I’ve not used the word once, and in the entire draft of my book I’ve only used it seven times. I was interested to see then what words I do use and found, for instance, compassion was much more common: 50 times. Suffering: 42 times. Peace: 37. James Pennebaker has a program that counts words and looks for patterns—and has yielded interesting results. But one can also count particular words in a Word document by simply using the find feature. It occurs to me that the pattern of words we use can be a clue to what preoccupies us. So . . . the prompt: count key words. And you can decide what those key words might be. You can begin by looking through a few pages of your own writing and looking for patterns—what words stand out? Or you can begin by generating a list of possible candidate words and then do searches of them in your own writing. Or you can start with these four words: happiness, peace, suffering, and compassion.     You can also use Wordle to get a snapshot of key words in a piece of text or a blog. I entered my own blog and got this word picture: (The word happiness jumped in frequency after last week’s post.)   ____________________________________________________ Also: at analyzewords.com you can analyze Twitter feeds using James Pennebaker’s program: Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC). The site includes a link explaining the analytic program and leads to links for additional resources on his analysis. His program focuses on the use of pronouns, articles, prepositions, and other small words. He’s become interested, through his research, in these smaller, connecting words rather than key...

read more

Writing and Healing Prompt: Opening the Door of Mercy

Posted by on April 9, 2012 in Blog, Healing Poetry, Writing and Healing Prompts

Writing and Healing Prompt: Opening the Door of Mercy

  Last week I shared and analyzed an essay with my sophomores: “Opening the Door of Mercy,” an essay by Karen Round published as part of the “This I Believe” series on NPR.  I couldn’t resist discovering the vivid language in her essay and rearranging it into a found poem, something I’ve discovered is helping me read more closely—and attend to language and form. So. . . here are her words rearranged on the page, a kind of distillation of the essay. The sky darkening. The silhouette of a woman sagging on our threshold. Our location forces difficult choices.   Wisdom advises to act a Good Samaritan is to be naïve, risk terrible consequences.   But when someone approaches, I have to decide: Is my own safety always the most important consideration? Must I fear all whom I don’t know? Do I help or not?   I believe repeatedly rejecting others who need help endangers me.   So here where we live on that afternoon one summer when the woman was sinking like the sun on my front porch, I made my choice. I opened the door.   We discussed in class how this essay could become a kind of mentor text or catalyst—finding that moment or series of moments in one’s life where a choice had to be made—and then using that choice to begin an essay—and, in so doing, to find ways to bring other readers in, to recognize and write our way towards the notion that we are all often facing similar kinds of choices. Like this choice: when a stranger arrives at our threshold, do we open the door or not? (And how do we balance wisdom and compassion when we’re making such choices?) This essay also puts me in mind (yet once again) of Rumi’s poem about the guest house and the way that outer guests and inner guests can mirror each other and correspond.  (I’m beginning to suspect this poem by Rumi can connect to many, many things.) This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.   A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.   Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. This could lead to yet another writing idea: Who or what is waiting at the threshold?  Is now the right time—or not—to open the door?  What might happen if one did? _________________________________________________ See also: Karin Round’s essay at NPR November Angels The Guest House, at...

read more