First things, first. As I post this, Muslims on the other side of the world are waking up and celebrating the end of Ramadan. Eid Sa‘eed!
If you are celebrating the Eid, I hope you have a blessed day. I also hope (if you’ve been following this blog for the past month), you’re able to take fifteen minutes to write. That goes for all of you who are not celebrating the Eid, too!
Indonesian Muslim children in a parade celebrating Eid al-Fitr in Jakarta. Photo credit Dita Alangkara/AP
OK, time to change the topic and think about writing.
I live in a rural, poor area that has been hit incredibly hard by the last couple of years. I find myself thinking about poverty, and its causes and effects, a lot. One of the frustrating things about the state of literature (at least in the United States) is that it is largely a product of the middle or upper class. Working people; farmers, carpenters, factory workers – not to mention the chronically unemployed generally have bigger issues to deal with than “My Muse is being a bitch and won’t talk to me.”
Maybe this doesn’t frustrate you. But it frustrates the hell out of me. Hence, today’s prompt.
Ready… If you need some hard numbers to help you think about the class structure in America, check this out. Or read about what America’s economic crisis looks like from England.
Set… “I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” Richard Wright
Today’s prompt: Either write about your character coming in contact (and/or conflict) with someone who is from a different economic class than he is, or write about your own class experience. Can you remember the first time you realized that some people have more money than others? Class differences can spark strong emotions, but we are often taught to suppress these feelings and to guard our behavior in these situations. The strong emotional currents this creates provides the writer with a wealth (ahem) of material.
OR
Write about what you don’t know about a social or economic class, or a lifestyle that is completely different than yours.
Scribble… Scribble… Scribble…