Welcome back, dear writers and readers.
There’s a theme this week: pets and play, so I’m ending with a funny dog poem by Billy Collins. But first, a quote by David Foster Wallace, from his essay, "The Nature of Fun.” Here he reminds us that writing fiction is really a way of telling the truth.
Fiction becomes a weird way to countenance yourself and to tell the truth instead of being a way to escape yourself or present yourself in a way you figure will be maximally likable. This process is complicated and confusing and scary, and also hard work, but it turns out to be the best fun there is.
In the last few years, most of what I’ve been writing and publishing has been non-fiction, but writing fiction is my first love. And I find that some of my silliest writing prompts help me return to this again and again.
So this week’s virtual writing workshop features a playful prompt, which came to me one afternoon when I began to think about funny words, words that make me giggle. Instead of simply saying "Let's walk," I started to mess around with more playful words like, “Let's scamper, frolic, gallivant, skitter, traipse, skip, hop." And as I often do, I thought, This would be a great writing prompt.
The prompt:
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