Writing can be a real bugger. Sometimes you have no idea what you’d like to write about. You want your writing to be profound and meaningful but your brain only comes up with the sound of crickets. This is a writing prompt about a time you needed to loosen up. You?? Yes. You.

I’m a big fan of writing about the oddness captured in the amber of your ordinary life. Listen. The inspiration you’re seeking is right under your nose. Within the past week, you’ve probably caught yourself getting a little worked up over something that wasn’t as perfect as you wanted it to be. You’ve hit the jackpot. It’s the perfectly imperfect thing to write about.

***

Years ago, I went to visit my lovely but persnickety aunt. She was generous, funny, and kind but she also had an infamous anal-retentive side. (And she was only in her 40s.)

When I brought my suitcase into her front entry way, she hugged me and said:

“Make sure you don’t walk on the carpet. I just vacuumed.”

I stared at her with a smirk. “Andddddddd why can’t I walk on your carpet?”

She looked at me as if I was an idiot. Like I had asked what kind of cheese the moon was made of. Or how far you had to sail the oceans before falling off the edge to your doom.

“Because I like to look at the lines made from the vacuum cleaner.”

I rudely burst out laughing because WTF?? After a moment of watching me doubled over with tears streaming down my cheeks, well, she started reluctantly laughing too.

And then she wiped the tears from her face, grinned and said,

“Okay – you can tiptoe along the edges.”

***

I bet you can be uptight at times. There’s probably a certain way you like the toilet paper roll to be hung. Maybe you don’t like if the bacon on your plate touches the pancakes covered with maple syrup. Or if anyone reads your new magazine before you do? And they take it to the bathroom? Hell hath no fury like someone who has had their new magazine stolen. It can be hard to forgive crimes like that.

But there are gifts in these quirks of ours. So the annoying thing that happened a few days ago?

Be happy it happened. Now you have a writing prompt about a time when you needed to loosen up. You can laugh at yourself which always tends to bring out the best writing. You’re not writing Moby Dick, after all.

And if all else fails?

Go vacuum and enjoy the lines.

*Did you love this? Then check out Scribbly – my quirky writing program that we snail-mail right to your house. We’re persnickety like that.