WRITING PROMPTS TO BENEFIT CHILDREN IN GAZA
UNICEF reports that in Gaza, “hundreds of thousands of children and families are caught in a catastrophic situation” and that, ongoing as of November 14th 2023 onwards, over 4200 children have been killed and more than 7000 have been injured “due to unrelenting attacks”, while over 1300 others are missing. According to the World Health Organization, one child is killed in Gaza every 10 minutes. Outlining the charity’s Appeal for Children in Gaza, UNICEF spokesman James Elder explains: “Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else.” Elder has also called for “children held hostage in Gaza [to] be immediately reunited with their families and loved ones”. Recent updates state that “hundreds of thousands of children … remain trapped in a war zone with little or no access to food, water, electricity, medicine or medical care”.
For the duration of NaNoWriMo, we will be posting a writing prompt every day and in doing so, we are hoping to encourage our community to donate to charities providing medical aid to children in desperate need in this unprecedented crisis.
These prompts have been created by writers from Wales or with a connection to Wales and its magazines and presses. The prompts are on all kinds of subjects, but many are related to anti-violence and the work of empathy, and they are offered with the simple hope that they might encourage people to donate in support of medical aid in Gaza. We include a list of suggested charities to donate to below, highlighting the Appeal to Children in Gaza.
UNICEF “continues to call for an immediate ceasefire as 1.1 million people — nearly half of them children — in northern Gaza have been warned to move out of the way of a widescale military assault, but with nowhere safe for them to go”. Elder concludes: “The humanitarian situation has reached lethal lows, and yet all reports point to further attacks. Compassion – and international law – must prevail.”
DAY 23: SO MAYER
Disturbing Words
This prompt might result in a poem, fiction, creative non-fiction, theatre or audio work, or years of obsession. It’s a kind of sketching or collaging: a way of turning over and treating the materials of writing.
That is, words.
*
Since 2016, I’ve been writing a newsletter called Disturbing Words, a series of meditations that go long and deep on a single titular word. Why disturbing? It describes both the way I choose my subjects: words that disturb me (provoke me, unsettle me, challenge me, haunt me); and my process: disturbing the received meaning of words by unpacking their public histories and private associations. I’ve written about centre, fit, it, mad, on: no word is truly small; often, the smaller-seeming the word, the more weight of the world it carries.
So my prompt for you is: choose your word(s) wisely.
- What’s the word on the tip of your tongue that you find unsayable?
- What’s a word that makes you spit every time you hear it (mis)used?
- Which word earworms you, echoing in your mind until it feels meaningless?
Once you’ve chosen your word, what do you do? Two options that converge:
| Look It Up | Set It Down |
| Look up your word in a dictionary that offers etymology (word history). * Follow the thread and cross-reference: Are there usages that surprise you? Related words that compel you? Disagreements between sources? | Mindmap your own associations: these could be poetic (alliterative, rhyming, metaphorical, quotations); vernacular usage (adages, slang, localisms, lyrics); places that the word shows up in your life. |
| To borrow Harryette Mullen’s phrase as inspiration, we’re ‘sleeping with the dictionary’: dreaming or fucking with. Beware. Dictionaries are disturbing: they are repressed histories of conquest and theft. We can undo them. | You’re going to need a bigger map (or some Post-its): what personal and political thoughts, memories or images do these word associations prompt? Beware. Words can open us up just as we open them up. Go carefully. |
| You now have an idiosyncratic idiomatic inter-relatable take on a word. Where does your mindmap cross over with the external brain of the dictionary? Where are you tempted to ask questions or make your own connections and conjectures? What leaps between? | |
Keep following the threads and reweaving them. Let go of linear expectations. This is ‘carrier bag’ work: see how forms emerge from the associative process. Track intensities of feeling (rage, grief, desire) as a possible shape.
Choose a different word. Start again.
*For English, Oxford (library card), Chambers, Merriam-Webster (US), Wiktionary. For Welsh/Cymraeg, Geriadur Ar-lein / Online Dictionary. The OED’s Word History blog shows the workings of etymology as conjectural/colonial history.
Please consider donating to a charity providing medical aid in Gaza. We recommend UNICEF’s Appeal for Children in Gaza, but other charities include:
Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
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