12 Inspiring Prompts for Writers: Day 2
Turning Disappointments into Resources
Welcome back to twelve days of reflective prompts that will dig deep to inspire and encourage us in the new year! Out of all the prompts, this one is probably the hardest, but then it's smooth sailing from there. New year new you!
Today’s prompt is disappointments! Rahhhhh boooooo. Grab a clean sheet of paper, a word doc, or your cutest journal, and write down a handful of disappointments, failures, and/or unexpected challenges that you faced this year. If you’re anything like me, this will be super easy, lol, so try to keep it to just a few disappointments. Certainly less than five. No need to kick yourself while you’re down. Maybe leave some space after each disappointment, because we’re gonna reflect on them. Oh, and also, each disappointment should be something you could reasonably control, like … submitting a flash piece to markets is something you can control. Winning the Nobel peace prize, less so.
Okay, now that you’ve spilled your guts on what you done messed up this year, satisfy your inner critic by writing just an absolutely mean judgement about yourself regarding the “failure.” Let out your inner Regina George. For example, let’s say you wrote 10K words this year, but you had dreamed you would write 50K words. You could then judge yourself like, “AM I EVEN A REAL WRITER???” or maybe something like “I AM LAZY 😭 😭 “ — whatever feels true to your judgiest self. Write it down.
Now, after that’s done for each disappointment, take that harsh judgement and instead write the real reason you “failed.” This can be complicated—Julie Hedlund describes this reframing as “writing what you know in your heart to be true.”
So, like, for example. Last semester I didn’t do all my homework. My harsh judgement about this? I AM A BAD STUDENT. But what’s the real truth? Well, I’m not numerically a bad student because I got good grades. Perhaps I didn’t prioritize my homework or manage my time well enough, but I do have the rest of my life to read books. And also grad school is supposed to be hard. I found the assignments to be an untenable amount of reading. Someone with a quicker reading speed might’ve felt differently, but we’re not all built the same. Not doing everything 100% perfectly doesn’t make someone a bad student. Also, perhaps this was a learning experience. Maybe I had to have assignments really kick my ass so that I could learn “oh actually I need to manage my time better.” There are a lot of ways I could look at this.
Another Example:
If you want to use one of these handy graphics yourself, there is a template here.
Hopefully looking at disappointments through a more clarifying lens will get your inner critic off your back. Tomorrow, we will focus on reframing our methodology so that we can do even better in 2025!
Ta-ta for now!