Recap: Catapult Student Write-In (with Writing Prompts from Instructors!)

Writing can feel lonely at times—we know this, so on October 27th, we invited the students from Catapult’s writing program to our office for a communal writing session. Everyone spread out with their laptops and notebooks and got to work.

We also know that sometimes, pizza can serve as inspiration to achieve anything.

It was an extremely productive and successful night, and we’re already planning on hosting another one very soon. Thanks to all who came; we hope you had fun.

Two of our wonderful instructors, Sarah Gerard and Garrard Conley, provided writing prompts to help get the creative juices flowing. We’ve posted them below in case you at home need some motivation. We encourage you to share your response here on Community!

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Prompt from Sarah Gerard:

Someone from your hometown has given you an empty storefront to do with as you please. How do you use it? Write your response in the form of a short story.

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Prompt from Garrard Conley:

This one I like to call sleight-of-hand. The idea is simple. You begin with one subject and end with another, seemingly unrelated subject. I’d like you to try your hand at writing about two subjects, seeing how they interact with each other and brush up against each other to create meaning. I’m not talking about mere braiding here (you don’t have enough space for it!) but rather making a subject into a gateway for another subject.

Sound too abstract? Consider this excerpt from Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, a long philosophical meditation on the color blue (primary subject) that occasionally shifts into a discussion of love:

“Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that all desire is yearning. ‘We love to contemplate blue, not because it advances to us, but because it draws us after it,’ wrote Goethe, and perhaps he is right. But I am not interested in longing to live in a world in which I already live. I don’t want to yearn for blue things, and God forbid for any ‘blueness.’ Above all, I want to stop missing you.”

See how shocking and gorgeous that last line is? Aim your arrows toward that shock.