Good morning. I’ve been thinking about kindness, so that’s where we’ll start today.
Today’s prompt was inspired in part by Hillery Stone’s remarkable Modern Love Essay, The Dentist Who Treated my Divorce. (That’s a gift link, so you don’t need a subscription to read it, and it won’t count against your article limit.) I loved this part in particular, when she describes a visit to her dentist during a dark early part of her divorce:
Then my dentist, as though watching a film clip of my mind, took off his two layers of masks and said, “Listen to me.” His face was startlingly full of skin. “My wife left me and our sons when they were 2 and 4.” There was a long pause. “Then she died.”
I stared at him. I had met his now-teenage sons in the office. Their photo was above us on the wall.
“I thought I would die, too,” he said. “But I didn’t. I took a serotonin inhibitor for a year, and it got me through. I could get up in the morning. I could walk myself to work.”
I swallowed, my mouth sour.
“You need to get on something. This year will be the hardest, but it will get you through.”
I’m so moved by that moment of kindness, the human connection that could so easily have not happened. (The essay has many other merits—I don’t think you’ll regret clicking through and reading the whole thing if you have a few minutes.)
today’s exercise
Make a list of people who’ve been kind to you, especially when you particularly needed it, or didn’t expect it, or didn’t feel you deserved it.
Pick one of those and write the story.
One way to get the details down: write one run-through, a page or two where you just get down everything you remember. Then take a look at what you’ve written and see where you can add sensory details: where were you? what did the space look like or smell like? (The dentist’s face being described as “startlingly full of skin” once he removes his mask is one moment from the Stone essay that’s really stuck with me.) Can you add dialogue—either what you said, or what the other person said?
If you like a parameter for length, you could aim to write 3-4 pages, or write for 10 minutes total.
a little note of welcome
A special welcome to all the folks who’ve joined us in the last day or two. I’m so glad you’re here. As you’ve probably gathered, we’re doing National Poetry Month a little differently this year—rather than the frantic pace of a poem-a-day, we’re writing little snippets each day, then pausing every couple of days to shape those snippets into drafts. The first poem prompt, which drew on the writing from days 1-3, was yesterday. You can read more about the rationale for this slower (and hopefully more humane) approach here, and you can find all the exercises (and a year’s worth of prompts, tips, encouragement, interviews, and more) in the archive. I’m so glad you’re here.
two upcoming events
This Thursday, April 7 from 2.30-4.20PM eastern, I’m cohosting a reading, discussion, and generative writing exercise to celebrate my new anthology, The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood. It’s part of Stockton University’s Visiting Writers Series, and we’ll have contributors Jasminne Mendez, Kwoya Fagin Maples, and Joy Ladin to share their work and talk about their creative process. Following the discussion we’ll have a generative writing exercise, with time to share. It’s free, and open to the public via zoom (and on campus, if you happen to be in south Jersey). I’d love for you to join us. You can email info@murphywriting.com to get the zoom information.
And later this month, on Saturday, April 24 from 1-4pm eastern, I’ll be leading a workshop at Rutgers-Camden’s Writers House titled Writing through the Confetti Time of Caregiving. You can attend the workshop in-person or via zoom. The workshop is $60 or $10 for Camden residents. If you’ve enjoyed the prompts in this newsletter, I think you’ll really like the workshop. You can read more and register here.
I’d love to hear from you. You can always reply to this email, comment below, or find me on twitter (@nancy_reddy) and instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).