Category: writing assignments

  • Eastlake Terrace

    Prompt 1:  Practice setting the scene…Describe in detail your favorite room in your home or apartment.  What pieces of it are special? Which pieces in the space could involve action?  If you were to set a scene here in a play, movie, or novel…What might happen based on the room’s exciting features?  What might be…

  • Customer service

    Assignment: An “expert” blog that teaches something In the days when computers were new, and I was a few decades younger, people wrote letters – to family, friends, and companies. I was chronically deficient in the first two but financially fortunate in the latter. I was a pen for hire. Here’s how it worked. Let’s…

  • A powerful speaker

    Prompt 2:  Write about a time you witnessed community solidarity or were inspired by or completed/attempted an act of kindness.   The Rev. Edward Harris was a two-year interim minister sent by the denominational office in Boston to the Unitarian Church of Evanston, where I was a member in the early nineties. Ed was a wonderful…

  • One room

    I live in a room. Literally. One room. Before coming to my son’s home, my wife and I had lived in a seven-room apartment whose sunroom directly overlooked the lake. Sunrises and moonrises over the water were breathtaking, and it was fun to watch airplanes heading for O’Hare from the east. One Sunday evening, we…

  • Rapid write

    Assignment: Rapid write. Write fast, don’t look back, don’t edit. I think I’ve been stiff and stuffy all my life, both physically and emotionally. Where other guys bounced around on the balls of their feet, I tended to plod. It’s curious: I watch gymnastics on YouTube, men and women, and I can feel the freedom…