Poetry Prompt: "Wishes"

Paid subscribers have access to this poetry prompt.

Although most of my poetry prompts are available only in The Magic Words (TarcherPerigee, 2024), I am offering my paid subscribers access to this prompt, which is not available anywhere else online. These prompts are designed to help people of all ages unlock their creativity, especially when struggling with getting started (or started again!) in the writing process. As this material is copyright protected, you are asked not to share this prompt with others (students, etc.) Please use it for your own creative journey!

Now, let’s introduce the prompt:

The Nobel Prize-winning writer Albert Camus once wrote an essay about Sisyphus, a mythological figure who was condemned to roll a heavy rock up a hill again and again, with no apparent meaning; that was his punishment. Camus asked if everyone’s life at times seems as absurd as Sisyphus’s: we look around and ask what we are doing with our lives, and why. We wish to be elsewhere, or even to be someone else. And yet Camus understood that there is one greatest kind of wish: the wish to be exactly where you are.

Prompt below: