RemembeRED

1. Imagine after you die, your daughter/son will be given the gift of seeing a single five-minute period of your life through your eyes, feeling and experiencing those moments as you did when they occurred. What five minutes would you have him/her see? Tell us about them in the finest detail.

2. This is from Kate Hopper. Writing Prompt: Memory and Reflection
Our memories are powerful—whether they actually happened the way we remember them isn’t as important as what we remember and why. So something I would like you to try this week is to hone in on a memory and then interrogate it. One way to incorporate more reflection in your writing is to constantly be asking yourself questions.

This is a writing exercise in two parts:

Part I
Make a list of some of your most vivid childhood (or more recent) memories. (Maybe it’s an image of your father or mother doing something they did regularly; maybe it’s a visit to a grandmother’s house.)

Jot down a few memories and then pick one and write it down in as much detail as possible. (Take 10-15 minutes to do that…)

Part II
Now I want you to investigate what this memory means to you. Ask yourself the following questions: Why has this stuck with me? What did this mean to me at the time? Why did I (or someone else in the scene) react the way I (they) did? How does it feel to look back on it? How does it still affect me (or not)? (Take 10-15 minutes to do that.)

3. Write a piece – 750 words maximum – that brought us to a particular room important in your life. We want to feel like we’re there with you.

4. Imagine you are meeting someone for the first time. You want to tell them about yourself. Instead of reciting a laundry list of what you do or where you’re from, please give us a scene from your life that best illustrates your true self.

It never fails to shock me when my sons speak with a regional Southern Maryland dialect  “Mahm! I need some wah-durr.” It leads me back to a tidbit from my linguistics class: a trained linguist can determine, just from listening to one’s speech, the birthplace of the speaker within thirty miles. So, in the spirit…

A close friend is currently in the midst of a decision that would involve moving almost 1400 miles. While I unequivocally support any decision she and her husband make, my own emotions about the possibility of the move have given me the opportunity to really think about the role that her friendship, and friendship in…

Do objects have a memory? Does a rocking chair hold the essence of the snuggles it has witnessed? Does a pottery mug remember the comforting warmth it offered a struggling soul? The dictionary defines personification as “the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality…

In the morning, the bubbling glasses of champagne were flat and warm, scattered around without exuberant laughter and anticipation of the New Year filling the room with hope. Welcoming in the new year brings resolutions and goals to the forefront of people’s minds; resolutions are written in secret or shouted from rooftops or proclaimed pointless….

The countdown. We’ve all done it, whether it’s disciplining our kids, gathering up nerve, blasting off into space, or getting ready to pop champagne and scream “Happy New Year!” This week, we’d like you to write a post – fiction or creative non-fiction – which begins with a countdown. “Three, two, one.” You pick what…

Cleaning house. Sometimes it means exactly that–scrubbing, polishing, and tidying up. And sometimes, it means that we are metaphorically clearing out the clutter and debris in our lives. Think of a time that you “cleaned house.” Consider the subtext—we’re not writing about Windex here. We’re writing about relationships. Or feelings. Or a captured moment in…

Today we’re trying a little something different. Are you ready? Your word is below. Take the next ten minutes to write about the first single memory that word calls up. Focus on the emotions and the experience, spend ten minutes really exploring that memory. Then wrap it up, publish, and come back to link up.

A little something different for you this week. I know this is late in coming, but don’t worry, you don’t need a lot of prep time for this one. We’re going to do a flash writing prompt for RemembeRED this week. Tuesday morning, the linky will go up as usual, and in the accompanying post…

Everyone has a favorite photo of themself, whether it’s a childhood snapshot, a professional graduation or wedding photograph, or a close-up taken amongst friends. Some say a photograph steals the soul. This week, show us yours: take us into the moment that photograph was taken. Show us who you were then and what the photograph…

Kayli’s teacher gives the class writing prompts. Everyone writes their answers in their own way and their responses are bound into a book. Sound familiar? These seven year olds are so rocking memes. Their most recent book is called, “My Quiet Place.” Each student picked a special place where they can just be -relaxing and…

It’s dialogue week at Write on Edge! Now it’s time to turn our ear for dialogue towards memoir. Pivotal conversations. We’ve had ‘em.  The moment you chink the armor, or perhaps the moment you say something that you can’t take back. Conversations you review in your mind, for better or for worse. Recreate a pivotal…

Image courtesy of Pinterest. Click photo for source information. I am sure we were all shocked and devastated by  the news of the divorce of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries after only 72 days of marriage. Right. But in the spirit of relationships that we all knew wouldn’t work, we’d like for you to write…

Lately, I’ve been cooking more than writing. Pumpkin bread, soups of all sorts, carnitas and borrachio beans. There’s something about autumn that pushes me into the kitchen, to make foods that warm my family from within. Though I live in a warm climate now, my childhood winters in Maine are never far from my mind….

With Halloween approaching, many of us are revisiting fond memories of trick-or-treating, favorite candy, and parties. For Tuesday, reach back to a costume that made an impression. Was it yours? A friend’s? Maybe it was a costume you never got to wear. Show it to us with your words, draw us into the emotions it…

Crisp apples, picked from the orchard, and brilliant leaves blending into the sunset along the horizon mean autumn has arrived in Michigan. If you’re in one of the areas of the country still sweltering in summer-like temperatures, perhaps George Eliot can help bring some autumnal memories to the surface: Delicious autumn!  My very soul is…

In “On Writing” Stephen King wrote, “The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.” Write a memoir post – first-person and true – inspired by that statement. Word limit is 300. Come back and link up with us on Tuesday, October 11. And while we’re talking Stephen…

Your memoir prompt this week comes from Assistant Editor Galit. Conjure Writing short posts is an excellent way to flex your word choice muscles. Which word is the most clear? Poignant? Direct? This week I want you to conjure something. An object, a person, a feeling, a color, a season- whatever you like. But don’t…

 This week’s prompt comes to you from Assistant Editor Angela. Congratulations! Your best selling memoir has just been optioned by a major motion picture studio, and the producers want you advising on the script.  Write the opening scene for the movie.  Would you begin with a visual montage?  Voice-over? Flashback or forward? A conversation? The trick…

Creative non-fiction does more than report events; it draws you into the writer’s experience and allows you to live memories and emotions along with the author. Descriptive language is at the heart of that side-along living. How you as a writer convey sensory information will decide how engaged your reader becomes. For this week’s memoir prompt,…

I wrote the other day about social media and its role in our lives as writers, so I thought it would be fitting that we explore our earliest memories of being online for this week’s RemembeRED prompt. Many of us remember life before the internet. We wrote letters instead of emails, used encyclopedias instead of…

This week’s prompt is to use this image for your inspiration and begin your post with those words…”I miss my childhood…” Let’s keep the word limit to 500 and we’ll be checking random posts, so please adhere to the word count so that members can read through as many posts as possible. Come back and…

Editor’s Note:  Yes, this is way late.  You can blame me, Katie, for that.  I promised to post this early today and then my pregnant brain lost that promise until just as I was going to bed.  At least I remembered while it is still Friday on the West Coast, right?  RIGHT? As a writing…

Okay, it’s time for this week’s RemembeRED prompt. If you’re new here or if you’ve been hesitant to join in on the memoir prompts, we invite you to throw caution to the wind and jump right in. If you’re uncertain about what memoir is, or if you’d like to know more about how RemembeRED works,…

Speaking of change, this week we’d like you to write about a moment in your life when you knew something had to change drastically. Maybe it was a relationship, or career, parenting, school, diet – anything. Really explore the moment. What it felt like to make the decision. Lots of opportunity to show and not…

This week, Erin and Nancy have the following RemembeRED prompt for you… Everyone remembers that first inspiration or mentor in their lives that made them want to be or do something in their lives, whether you actually followed through with it or not. Tell us about that inspiration/mentor. How did they affect or change your…

Here are Angela and Galit again with your RemembeRED prompt for this weekend!   Angela and Galit were both teachers in their pre-Mom lives. When we made that connection so many words popped into our heads: Teach! Learn! Classroom! Lesson! What we finally landed on? Is this: Write a post that either starts or ends…

This prompt is brought to you by Natalie of Mama Track, Your assignment this week is based on rhythm, which you can use to help entertain and engage your readers. Let’s make it more literal. Write about a time that rhythm, or a lack thereof, played a role in your life. And don’t use the…