Writing Prompt:
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A writing prompt…on that most complex of relationships—mothers. This one can work equally well for fiction writers or memoirists. For fiction writers, if you are using 1st person narrative, I’d go with that; if not perhaps try a 1st person exercise or journal entry using one of your characters you want to learn more about.
First, simply choose one emotion. It can be anything—embarrassment, anger, pride, disappointment, love… Then write a scene where your character (or yourself for those writing nonfiction) interacts wish their mother when the chosen emotion is predominant (or, if not a scene, a monologue) and when your character (or you) is sixteen year old.
Then do the exercise again when your character is six years old. Do it one more time when they are forty-six years old.
[If you are intrigued by how some nonfiction writers have taken on the puzzle of mothers and motherhood, bioStories magazine has a short anthology of some of the essays that have appeared in its pages titled Mothers and Other Creatures.]
