Literary – July 16

“All morons hate it when you call them a moron.” -Holden Caulfield, narrator of The Catcher in the Rye, published this date in 1951. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which a young, insolent person justifiably calls out your protagonist for making a stupid mistake.

Literary – July 15

“If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what’s funny in the joke.” -Richard Russo, born this date in 1949. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist fails to make everyone else get the joke.

Literary – July 14

“Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.” -Ingmar Bergman, born this date in 1918. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist fails to persuade a curmudgeon that something important to your protag should be important to the curmudgeon.

Literary – July 13

Writing prompt: Write the scene of your protagonist’s most humiliating defeat.

Literary – July 12

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” -Henry David Thoreau, born this date in 1817. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist impoverishes her/himself with an inability to ignore something.

Literary – July 11

“Relationships do not preclude issues of morality.” -Jhumpa Lahiri, born this date in 1967. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which someone your protagonist loves forces your protag to confront a serious, legitimate challenge to his/her definition of integrity.

Literary – July 10

“There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.” -Marcel Proust, born this date in 1871. Writing prompt: Write a scene from your protagonist’s life that s/he would rather forget.

Literary – July 9

” ‘Dangerously well’ — what an irony is this: it expresses precisely the doubleness, the paradox, of feeling ‘too well’.” -Oliver Sacks, born this date in 1933. Writing prompt: Write a scene in which your protagonist’s sense of feeling too well causes her/him to end up feeling not very well at all.