Post #35 – Women’s Memoirs, Writing Prompt – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
By Promptly Portland
I was playing with my niece last week and asked, “What would you like to do?”
“Draw. Let’s drawwww.”
Maddy skipped to her room and brought back her chartreuse plastic bucket filled with crayons while I scrounged through the drawers to find some paper. I invited Maddy to choose her crayon and then I chose. She picked blue and I picked yellow. Then, companionably, we sat side by side on the little orange wooden chairs that match her table she insists on keeping in the already crowded kitchen.
She’s more of an abstract artist while I tend toward the representational. Since I can’t draw much more than stick figures, I judiciously use the word representational. Maddy’s drawing while perhaps light in spirit had a dark tone to it. Her navy blue crayon left circles and swirls as her hand moved around the page, occasionally running onto the table top. She completed her picture by filling in many of the enclosed spaces. The result could be considered ominous. Meanwhile, I had a yellow sun with spring’s daffodils standing upright.
“Maddy, could I have your crayon? I’ll let you use mine.”
I got out new pieces of paper and positioned them on our little table, tucking my knees as to not scrap them. Maddy picked up the yellow crayon and let her imagination take her in new directions. I meanwhile redrew my sun and daffodils, using the navy crayon. In comparing the two, I saw the effect of color. The same composition looked different in yellow and dark blue.
500 Words (or more): Memoir Writing Prompt
1. Think of a scene or brief vignette. Hold it in your mind. This might be something that happened to you today. It might be a piece of your life story that you are already writing.
2. Choose a crayon color. Translate that color into words and phrases. Happy, cheerful, joyous. Undecided, neutral, inconclusive. Weepy, disgruntled, humorless. Whatever words fit the mood of the crayon.
3. Write the scene/vignette incorporating the words related to the color.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3, using the same scene/vignette but with a different colored crayon.
5. Read your two scenes out loud in a room by yourself. Do the different color words help you perceive the scene differently? Think now about the reader. Will she understand your scene differently?
Hopefully this prompt will help you explore how your own mood gets translated into the words you choose in your writing. Choose carefully.
Do you remember this story?
I am reminded of a story I used to hear. Mr. and Mrs. Kramer began to worry because their child’s pictures that came home from school were always drawn with a black crayon. Fearing their daughter was depressed, the parents became so upset that they went to see the teacher after several weeks of receiving these “drawings in black.” The teacher hadn’t noticed the pattern and also became quite concerned. Finally, they asked Chris why she always drew everything in black.
“That’s the only crayon left in the box by the time it is passed to me.”
Alarm over.
Note: Readers will not know why you have chosen your specific words that convey mood. Don’t just let them happen. Reach out and grab the words for your drawing. No one has used up words in the crayon-word box. They are all available to you.
Until next time,
Promptly Portland
PS There’s no need to worry about running out of all your favorite colors. Crayola produces enough crayons per year to circle the Earth six times. How many is that? Three billion. I’m not sure how they measure this, but the company reports that the most popular crayon is blue.
PPS If you want to tell me about your favorite crayon color and why, just leave me a note in the Comments section below.
memoir writing prompt
writing tips
craft of memoir
memoir writing
writing
