A Prompt Writers Group Experience

I joined a Prompt Writers Group and attended its first Zoom meeting yesterday. The meeting organizer, an experienced writer and group facilitator, provided the prompt, Far from Home. We had fifteen minutes to write whatever we wanted using the prompt or not.

I prepared a paper pad the night before to be ready for the exercise. Before the meeting, I opened a word document to type just in case. When it was time to write, I looked at the pad and the screen. My hands typed automatically as my thoughts connected faster to the keyboard than to the paper pad. The last time I wrote in a group was more than three years ago. I ignored the pressure and ran with the first idea that came to my mind. I built a chain of paragraphs hanging from it. I stopped a few times to correct some typos and confusing sentences. I was in my writing zone when the facilitator announced we had a minute to finish. I wrote the last paragraph that magically landed in my head.

The exercise helped me restart my speed writing skills. The fifteen minutes flew by, and I discovered that I could write 300 words in fifteen minutes. Later, when I wrote another story in the night, I noticed that my ideas flowed faster than in previous days. I did not set a time limit. I wrote 600 words more quickly than other times in a pretty good story. It needed some grammatical fixes when I reviewed it with Grammarly. After all, the…