I don’t usually like to write from prompts, but for some reason I’m having trouble coming up with a theme for today’s post. I could talk about how my husband sleep-talks like a robot (I know) and how I dreamed about taking a writing workshop with Neil Gaiman (and it was awesome) but all together that takes up like…yeah, one paragraph.
So, I toddled over to WordPress’ Daily Prompt section to see if they could offer me any brilliant ideas. Happily, I came across this little nugget:
Your home is on fire. Grab five items (assume all people and animals are safe). What did you grab?
On first glance this prompt seems quite banal. Saving five items from a burning house, yawn. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it, and here’s why. Asking someone which five items they would rescue from their burning home is really just a roundabout way of asking someone, “What’s important to you, really?” People and pets are a given, and the question isn’t asking about them. It’s asking, “When you pare down your life to the barest of essentials, what really matters?”