For Your Journal: Writing Prompt

Do you keep a journal – or wish you could get one started? Literary Mama wants to help.

Three times a month, I’ll post a writing prompt. Open a notebook and write for 10 minutes. Don’t worry about grammar or punctuation – just write. Then let the writing simmer and your mind wander for awhile.

And who knows? Maybe you’ll discover a character for your next short story or a theme for a narrative essay. Or maybe you’ll use the idea to create a special holiday card or photo album for someone in your family. However you decide to use your journal entry, I know you’ll enjoy re-reading it months–and years–down the road.
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In a 1959 interview with Peter Bunzel of Life magazine, Theodor Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) insisted he didn’t think about a book’s moral when he started writing the story: “Kids can see a moral coming a mile off and they gag at it. But there’s an inherent moral in any story.”

“Except in Green Eggs and Ham,” he said in a 1986 interview with U.S. New & World Report: “People write essays and deliver lectures about the meaning of that book. The only meaning was that Bennett Cerf, my publisher, bet me 50 bucks I couldn’t write a book using only 50 words. I did it to show I could.”

No matter what his intentions, it’s hard not to learn something from the Sneetches, the Lorax, the Yooks and Zooks, the Zax, Thing 1 and Thing 2, the Grinch, and Horton. Each has a story to tell.

But, it’s even harder not to laugh. Remember this one from Fox in Socks?

“When a fox is
in the bottle where
the tweetle beetles battle
with their paddles
in a puddle on a
noodle-eating poodle,
THIS is what they call …
… a tweetle beetle
noodle poodle bottled
paddled muddled duddled
fuddled wuddled
fox in socks, sir!”

Read more about Dr. Seuss at his official website or in this book of essays.

Journal Entry: Create a word. Draw it. Then, list 10 words that rhyme with it. What story does that word want to tell?