Carl Williams Writing Prompts

Writing is a necessity. Most people see it as such; writing serves a purpose, filling out business letters or grant proposals. Writing is an arduous task, to be loathed as a child and grudgingly learned as a college student churning out research papers. In general, people do not like to write. When I was in kindergarten, I learned how to write. I can remember tracing thick black letters onto dotted paper, using wooden clothespins painted like astronauts to correctly space my words, copying my name over and over until my wobbly lines of graphite curled into legible words. I was so impatient; I was ready to learn how to do things with my letters and write sentences that made sense. So I learned how to write my name and promptly moved on to writing my story. I was too shy to say the things I wanted, so I wrote them instead. Short sentences about lunch time and recess tumbled into short stories printed in Christmas paper-wrapped booklets that my elementary school teachers made for us. The exact art of weaving a story was lost on me as a child, but I did not care whether …show more content…
I used to think it was insane that some people might try to fit into just a few lines the same emotion that could fill hundreds and hundreds of pages. Williams’ poem was short and sweet and entirely mundane in topic and absolutely nothing like simple rhyming poems most of my teachers read to my classes. It was just so cool to me. When my honors teacher asked us to try to write poems, I was eager to learn. It has taken quite some time (and I confess that I am not a master of poetry) but I have learned over time how to pluck my words like pieces of fruit and arrange stanzas into cascades of words that slip together just so. Now, I cannot begin to recall how many hours I have spent staring off into space, brimming with frustration just trying to pick the right word for a