DAY 25: A PROMPT BY VICKY MORRIS WITH A POEM BY CAROLE BROMLEY

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, 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.”

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DAY 25: VICKY MORRIS

Writing about what you know… or don’t!

It’s often said in creative writing that writers should write about what you know. Although this is debatable (and regularly contested with good reason), focusing on writing about what we know can be a great jumping off exercise to generation ideas and details for both poetry and fiction.

With this in mind, below you’ll find the poem ‘1955’ by Carole Bromley to inspire a free write. As I said, this can work for fiction too. For example, a first-person monologue piece where someone is talking about what they know about a particular event, person, altercation etc.

Which brings me onto the obvious – you can also do this same free write about the details you don’t know. Carole does this brilliantly in her poem 1955. In stanza one, it’s what the child speaker knows at that time in her life. In stanza two, what she doesn’t know. This focus on knowing and not knowing works brilliant for the innocence of the speaker’s voice, and the world she’s trying to make sense of as she grows. The choices for her lists also reflect the preoccupations of a young girl in England in the 1950s.

1955

by Carole Bromley

I know I hate stewed apple, cold bananas and custard,

tapioca and Mrs Stainforth, that Lonnie Donegan

is top of the hit parade, that I like watching the Interludes,

that my dad has an office and a secretary who gives us

barley sugar sticks. I know I love my cocker spaniel pup

and that I will never want to be friends with the sort of girls

my mother would have over the doorstep, that my new sandals

are the colour of ripe conkers and have little flowers stamped

out of the toes, that I want to be a vet and that I’m scared

of spiders, of big boys with sticks and of jumping crackers.

I don’t know how happy my mother is or whether Churchill

is still alive or how my father bought this house or why

Mark Stevenson chose me to be his girlfriend, or if it’s true

that it’s safe to eat hawthorn leaves. I don’t know if grandma

misses us or how I’ll cope when Miss Russling moves to Goole,

if dad really likes his new job or why Mr Johnson next door

won’t let us wash the car in the drive. I don’t know the Latin name

for Old Man’s Beard, or why Mr Davey spits on the path. I don’t know

what’s wrong with bringing Sandra home or how mum can be sure

it was her who gave me worms, or which cheek to kiss people on.

(Thanks, Carole, for letting us reproduce this poem from A Guided Tour of the Ice House.)

You could also use this knowing and not knowing as a free write to build an interesting character profile for fiction. E.g. Tracey knows she doesn’t like cold cornflakes. She’ll only eat them when they’ve had a minute in the microwave. Tracey knows she doesn’t like rainbows, but she doesn’t know what the sky looks like in…. you get the idea. Also consider zooming into one subject (abstract or concrete) to go deeper, e.g. Everything I know about the Children’s Hospital. What I know of sadness.

Have fun in your writing about knowing and not knowing!

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Please consider donating to a charity providing medical aid in Gaza. We recommend UNICEF’s Appeal for Children in Gaza, but other charities include:

Medical Aid for Palestinians

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund

The World Food Programme

Doctors Without Borders