Tag Archives: Writing Challenge

Writing Challenge: One-Sentence Memoirs for the New Year

The One-sentence Memoir Challenge


This challenge is open until February 1.

I challenge you to write as many one-sentence memoirs as you can in 15 minutes, and then share them with us in the comments below.

Here are mine:

My 4-year-older sister says that she can’t remember ever thinking of me as a baby but always thought of me as an equal.

It was a year after my husband’s death that I found the pictures he had taken of me looking at his sculptures at that art show I had gone to before we ever met.

When he said that he only drank on vacation, I didn’t realize that he meant he ONLY drank on vacation.

My youngest stepson called me his wicker stepmother, which might or might not have been due to my basket collection.

“There’s a big black scorpion on the wall beside the toilet in my bathroom and it’s wagging it’s tail at me!”

My parents’ bedroom contained many secrets, including my father’s gallstones in a small pink cardboard box and a mysterious cap-shaped rubber object in a white plastic case that smelled of talcum and sometimes changed positions in my mother’s bottom drawer, otherwise used for mainly incidental or forgotten items.

I was 13 on that summer that I decided my father was planning on murdering us all. 

When I asked it to prove that it was really a flying saucer, it suddenly lifted into the air and zigzagged from barrow pit to barrow pit in the road behind me.

My sister told her children not to believe anything I ever told them.

My mother is a bottom drawer. In her I keep my past down low, disorganized, how I can stand it.

One by one, they climbed over the wall and ascended the steps up to the upper story of my house, swarming up over its high dome, where they danced.

When I asked her if she’d like to hear the real story of my 15 months in Africa, my mother said, “I never told my mother anything that would make her feel bad!’

 

I look forward to your sharing your one-sentence memoirs!!! (If you want to cheat and take longer, go ahead. Just try to be spontaneous and not to mull too long over each one. Let the thoughts come freely.) This was an exercise that Judy Reeves had us do in our Wild Woman Retreat. Please link your answers to this site: https://judydykstrabrown.com/2020/01/01/one-sentence-memoirs-for-the-new-year/

A Bio Challenge

The Prompt: Flash Talk—You’re about to enter a room full of strangers, where you will have exactly four minutes to tell a story that would convey who you really are. What’s your story?

A Bio Challenge

My name is Judy. I live alone.
I love computers but hate the phone.
I’m addicted to the Internet
and the literary set.

I’m allergic to dogs. They make me wheeze,
but I still have two to make me sneeze.
(Along with a cat who comes to eat
but spends the day across the street.)

I like to write and do my art.
I’m not very pretty, but I’m sorta smart.
I live on a mountain all up and down
above a little Mexican town.

When I wake up, before I stray,
I write a poem every day.
Upon my back, I tap with zest
with my computer on my chest,

for I believe without a doubt
that when I move, ideas fall out
before I get them to the screen.
If I leave bed, they’re never seen.

I dance sometimes, and volunteer,
but spend too much time on my rear.
I’m a member of four writing groups
that keep me jumping through their hoops.

I write a blog to please myself
but my novel sits there on the shelf,
three chapters long, not any more.
When November comes, I’ll start on four!

So about me, I think I’m through.
I want to come read about you!
Please use my “comments” box to show
some things about you I don’t know.

One fact or two, (they needn’t rhyme)
would make me feel more than sublime.
If sixty people read this post,
then sixty comments I hope to boast.

And I promise that I’ll reply to
each person, be there lots or few.
I’ll write a separate rhyme for each
that won’t pontificate or preach.

The more unusual your fact,
the odder with be my “react.”
A mere two-liner for each one—
Please comment now and join the fun!