Journaling + Fiction – April 12

“To bear trials with a calm mind robs misfortune of its strength and burden.”Lucius Annaeus Seneca Journal prompt: Reflect on your previous journal entries and spend at least 20 minutes writing about why you are troubled by a society-level misfortune. Fiction writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist must fake a calm response to a devastating misfortune.

Journaling + Fiction – April 11

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.”C.S. Lewis Journal prompt: Spend at least 20 minutes writing about that to which love makes you most vulnerable. Fiction writing prompt: Write the scene in which your protagonist’s heart first was broken.

Journaling + Fiction – April 10

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.”Maya Angelou Journal prompt: Spend at least 20 minutes writing about a challenge you’ve persistently resisted. Fiction writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist must bravely face a humiliating defeat.

Journaling + Fiction – April 9

“Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.”Irving Berlin Journal prompt: Spend at least 20 minutes writing about an even that at the time seemed important or signficant about which you now have a different perspective. Fiction writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist fails to persuade a loved one to put a relatively minor event into perspective.

Journaling + Fiction – April 8

“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Journal prompt: Spend at least 20 minutes writing about an object or idea you consider sublime that most other people do not. Fiction writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist finds no allies in his/her appreciation for an object of beauty.

Journaling + Fiction – April 7

“Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark.”Isaac Bashevis Singer Journal prompt: Spend at least 20 minutes writing about the truth you’ll see tonight after you turn off your lights. Fiction writing prompt: Write the scene in which your protagonist first stayed up through the night and into the next day.

Journaling + Fiction – April 6

“The important thing is this: to be able to give up in any given moment all that we are for what we can become.”Max De Pree Journal prompt: Spend at least 20 minutes writing about what you’d give up right now to become different. Fiction writing prompt: Write the scene in which your protagonist first gave up herself or himself to become the person s/he is now.

Journaling + Fiction – April 5

“Silence is a lesson learned through life’s many sufferings.”Lucius Annaeus Seneca Journal prompt: Reflect on your previous journal entries and spend at least 20 minutes writing about what you learned from an experience when you’d have been better off saying nothing instead of saying what you did. Fiction writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist faces escalating consequences because s/he...