“To the young there are no degrees of old, just as there are no degrees of dead—either you are, or you are not.”
-Joyce Carol Oates, A Fair Maiden
Welcome to the first LitBowl writing prompt! Our prompts are based off of book quotes that we’ve featured. Today’s comes from Joyce Carol Oates’s book, A Fair Maiden. For more inspiration, get the book below!
Prompt: What’s something that you perceived differently when you were young vs. how you perceive it now? Consider writing two paragraphs about the same object/idea/memory: one from your perspective as a child, and one from your perspective now.
Feel free to respond in the comments below! In the future, we plan to share some of our favorite excerpts from writers like you!
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Time! Time as a child, there was so much of it, to play, sing, dance, make, live and love. Those nights when you were sent to your room, and hour would seem like an eternity.
Time as an Adult, there never seems to be enough, we rush here to there, with or without purpose. A year goes by like a blink of an eye. We try to use it wisely, and with purpose and meaning.
Yet really all we need to do, is see time like a child once more.
Nicole Trimm
Thank you for sharing your writing! 🙂
In my youth, every feeling, every emotion, every experience was weighty and important. Every failure was evidence of your inadequacy and love…love was going to be everlasting and true.
Now I am nearly 40 and I can see life with the perspective that only experience can bestow. I have failed and gotten back up again. I have loved and lost and found love again.
It’s hard to convince yourself that the world is ending when it has been reborn day after day and year after year. Youth carries all the promise of a future not yet realized and maturity is all about the resiliency of experience.
Thanks for sharing!
I never expected to make it this far
A half century
Robert Smith has just been declared an elder statesman of music
And I know I am old
I don’t want to think about my pension –
Or my career
Or my wrinkles tortoisely creeping on my neck
I just want to keep f*cking my lover
Her body like sensory dough
I cannot dent her.
I measure myself against her in hands
Two stretched out sinewy to a forearm
Four across her back
Broad, beautiful
A testament to her strength, her safety.
Don’t Cry Papa
Papa came home today, he had a funny smell. It made my nose crinkle. I don’t remember having smelled it before. But he was in such a good mood! I hope he wants to play Uno, but Mommy says to go in my room. I don’t know what I did wrong.
Papa came home with the beer bottle hidden in his jacket. I know he saw me look at it. He tells me not to tell Mom but she already knows. After I snuck out of my room to try and find a snack, I see him crying alone in the kitchen. So young, I feel my heart break for him. Don’t cry, Papa.