ROUND 21: JUST JOY

Hi sweet friends. Welcome to ‘Round 21’ of your writing prompts!

Instead of your regular two-parter, I’ve decided to deep dive into one gorgeous prompt to hopefully get your joyful juices (okay) flowing (oop!)

I've been thinking lately a lot about Joy, as you may have read in a previous newsletter, I once had a tricky relationship with writing joy. At the start of my journey of putting pen to page, I thought happiness was boring, that glee was unworthy of the white space. That only sadness and trauma intrigued a reader, or even better - got published. And when it came down to it, I found joy difficult to write. It would always land on the page cheesy and overcooked. A little saccharine poem like a lemon sherbert stuck to my notebook.

The truth is, much like happiness itself, writing goodness takes practice. It’s no easy feat, that’s why when you read a Mary Oliver poem and think to yourself ‘huh, she makes it look so simple! Let me try it!’, you end up frustrated as you glare down at a handful of words about a fun little garden party where you drank mojitos with your feet in a pool (just me?) - like okay that’s cute, but it doesn’t set me on fire and make me want to run into the ocean naked like that poem by Ada Limón or James Tate does. So how do we cause such a delightful effect on our reader?

Perhaps it’s being mindful, I mean, how can we pull the absolute treasures of life from ourselves to share with another when we have our faces stuffed in Tik Tok all day to distract us from reality? (I’m talking to myself here) How can we share the beauty that we’ve encountered when we aren’t pushing ourselves to encounter it?

My writer friends, here is your prompt: