Write down an anecdote about your birthday (any birthday). An anecdote is a very short account, a wee story: it has a beginning, a middle and an end, and something happens for the narrator, or someone else in the story, or both.
Freewrite for 10 minutes about lunch—any lunch you had during the last week that sticks in your mind. Where were you? Who were you with? What did you eat, or not eat? What else was going on? Maybe you skipped lunch; write about that.
Start with this line by Dionne Brand, from Inventory, a book of poems, then freewrite for 10 minutes: “One year she sat at the television weeping, no reason”
