Dear Writers:

Work Left To Do ~ Bruneau ID, where I grew up, and a place I write about under the working heading “Gracie and Them.” I took this pic last summer.

I’ve rarely given my students writing prompts, so it’s been interesting for me to attend a writing practice where prompts are routinely used. When I receive prompts, often I get practical and bend them into a project I’m already working on.

One of the prompts was “blissful.” Since my stories tend to be darker, this time I decided to just play. Below is what I wrote, reinforcing for myself what I by this time know. Even if I don’t intend to, I find that all of my stories readily fall into a few categories: a) struggles of the working class, b) stories about small-town life, and c) men, or rather, all the men I never.

(If you clicked on that last link, yes, that’s me in the wedding dress. I still have that dress, which no longer fits sixteen years later, but neither did the groom and I grew out of him first.)

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