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.”
DAY 31: EMILY TRAHAIR
Meeting Your Neighbourhood
Since the pandemic it’s still common to feel rather estranged from those around us, dissociated even from those within our own communities. For the greater good we had to absorb the idea that proximity to others is something to recoil from, and interactions with strangers often still can’t quite unfurl as fully as they once did. While lockdown is long over, its after-effects are sometimes subtly present, in ways we’re not always wholly aware of. In that same period we have often spent too long online, where attentiveness to others’ perspectives dissolves and distrust festers; where so much of the spark, wit, vulnerability and beautifully weird diversions in dialogue are lost, and where we often cocoon ourselves in the company of those whose thoughts align most comfortably with ours.
What does this mean for writers, who need to narrate the lives of those around them in all their jostling awkwardness? In these conditions solipsism flourishes and forms of writing most conducive to empathy and reflecting the plurality of society – or meaningfully reflecting disagreement and discord – often can’t be given the space to breathe.
If this resonates for you, consider taking a bus journey within your neighbourhood. Indulge the time-honoured habit of a writer by eavesdropping on conversations, if you rather not start your own. If everyone is staring blankly into their phone or their rain-fogged reflections, instead try to imagine what your travel companions could be thinking. If need be you could deepen the thought experiment further to reset yourself post-pandemic and reconnect with those around you: imagine that instead of losing touch while staying put, you have just returned home from a long and life-changing journey many miles away that you embarked upon in March 2020. What does your neighbourhood seem like now?
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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