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“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away”, and so on and so on … A song most of us have probably heard many times in the past … Our own yesterdays can teach us or haunt us, enknowledge us or taunt us. 

Writing about our pasts, exploring history, ours or that of others, can lead to interesting stories. If we refuse to look back to what has already happened, are we going to repeat mistakes of the past? Who can know the answer to that? Well historians can actually …

Historians or writers who aren’t afraid to look back behind to look at what has happened, and considering what it happened. Whether poet, fiction writer, or non-fiction writer, the past is a thing to write about, shape, put our own mark on what has happened in the past, using our thoughts and knowledge. 

We can also put a spin, or twist on actual history, change things, such as considering/imagining, what may have happened, if say Hitler’s Germany won WW2 … Life now would be very different to how it actaully is.

Writers have the power to change these things, write about them, imagine alternate pasts, with different nows. If this kind of writing interests you, go for it, in poetry or prose, and imagine possible present times, and futures, based on alternate pasts … Australian writer John Birmingham is one I know who likes to consider different results from different pasts, and does them well. 

Or you can look at memoir, instead, and write actual real things that have happened to you. All of us have life stories, and at the moment, memoir is popular, we all like to watch other people, and reading memoir is a legitimate way of watching. If you consider you have lived a like and found useful and interesting things happened to you, write about it. Nobody know your story better than you know it. 

Who are, and what you’ve done, can be fascinating to others, write about it, poetry or prose, and bring your past to life, by telling about it, bringing your learned wisdom into your story.

So today is your chance to do a retrospective on your life, look back to consider and reconsider, tell your truth, explore ideas, find answers, share what you know, with steps showing how you learnt them, perhaps.

Enjoy sharing your Yesterday, today! This is the day when YESTERDAY is the writing prompt.

After yesterday’s writing prompt phrase, today we’re back to a single word as the prompt. It was interesting to hear from one of the writers here, indicating they prefer a phrase as a writing prompt, so I’m glad to have other phrases in the mix for the month, a single word, a phrase, an image perhaps, or something.

My own personal opinion about this is that it depends on how I’m feeling, what I’ve been doing, what’s been top of the list of things going on in my world, or in the word of media. Sometimes a random prompt just chimes in my head, and words flow out easily.

Other times, the writing prompt falls flat, no chimes bringing on words, but further thought, and just starting to write something, anything, can get the flow going, and once you’ve finished, you realise you actually had plenty to say about the prompt. The mind is an amazing thing, and we all have much inside our heads, that we may not even realise is there.

I wonder what deep and meaningful thoughts are inside Missy’s canine brain?

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What do you think about writing prompts? I’d love to hear about it, please leave a message, after you read what today’s message is. As I wrote in the first paragraph, today’s writing prompt is a single word, and it could mean a great many things to us all, I’m sure.

And here it is, the writing prompt for this fourth day of writing prompts for February is:

*               NEXT             *

as is, ‘what’ll they think of next?’ ‘you’re next’ ‘next in line’ and so on!

have fun, and I look forward to hearing form you if you have anything to say about this Fabulous month of writing prompts!