Fiction/All-Genre Prompt
I Remember
Kathy Fish
Nearly twenty years ago, in one of my earliest generative writing workshops, I introduced what remains my most enduring and effective prompt: the deceptively simple phrase “I remember . . .” I’ve noticed that participants often enter my workshops anxious and creatively blocked, convinced they’ve lost touch with their imaginations. This prompt gently but firmly guides them back to their creativity through the doorway of memory. I have more complex and involved writing prompts, but none get students to the page as quickly and effectively as this one.
I devised this prompt believing strongly that each writer carries a universe of material within their lived experiences—personal histories, sensory impressions, joys, heartbreaks, and seemingly mundane moments rich with potential. The prompt asks writers to begin sentences with “I remember . . .” and to follow wherever that opening leads, diving deeply into their sensory recollections. They’re encouraged to freely blend truth and imagination, to blur the lines between lived experience and fictional possibility.