HELLO. Happy Friday the 13th, and Day 13 of 28 x 20, and also of Black History Month.
I want to say that today’s prompt is about ways of seeing, but that’s dumb because aren’t they all?
In On Photography, Susan Sontag said that when we hear about something that happened to someone somewhere, we tend to think, photos or it didn’t happen. She said that long before the advent of Disgracebook and Instagram. Sontag also pointed out that no one takes the same picture of the same thing. Does this remind you of anything? As creative nonfiction writers, are we telling the truth about a moment, an event, a conversation if someone else remembers it in a whole different way? Where do we find truth in storytelling?
I love today’s prompt a whole lot. I love it in a very personal way, and for the way it emerged directly from my own writing practice. And I love it because it always yields interesting results in workshops. That’s my humble brag. It’s a prompt that’s developed and evolved over a long period of time (last summer marked my 10th year of teaching — another humble brag). This thing has five parts total (so far), and it’s a little different every time. Which parts I use at one time depends on where I’m using it, and why, and, of course, how much time we’ve got. For 28 x 20, we’ll do this in two parts.
If you tell me this prompt doesn’t do anything for you, that’s just bullshit. I don’t even want to hear it. I’m kidding. I do, actually, want to hear it.
LET’S GO.
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