Prompt #38: Transition and Change

September 2022

Hi Friends,

I’ve just started taking a novel-in-a-year class with the brilliant and talented Rebecca Makkai, and if you haven’t read her books, you should. The Great Believers was one of my favorite recent novels (it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award). Rebecca is also an excellent teacher (I know this because we teach together in a low residency MFA program here). In our syllabus for the novel class, Rebecca talks about the things we may need to give up in order to write our novels. And I started thinking about what I can give up, what I can change, so I have more writing time.

I know I spend way too much time on social media, and I think it’s because I have always had a terrible case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), so I constantly check Instagram and Facebook, wondering what everyone’s doing, what I might miss out on if I don’t go and have a look RIGHT NOW. But you know what? I can be off social media for weeks (like I was on a recent backpacking trip), and I come home to discover that I didn’t miss much, after all. Maybe there’s a message I need to respond to or a friend’s fabulous vacation pictures or perhaps I’ll see an interesting call for submissions, but the amount of time I waste just to see a few interesting things would be better spent on my novel-in-progress. So I’ve been thinking about how I might spend less time on social media, and I’m open to suggestions if anyone has tried this with success!

For this next writing prompt, I want you to think about something you want to change