Join me for The Writing Ritual May — a month-long writing practice and accountability group. This ritual is designed to help you look for stories in everyday life, discover new ideas & show up your practice.
Identify and set an intention for your writing goals
Receive a daily prompt every weekday morning (20 prompts total)
Stay accountable with a supportive & creative group (on WhatsApp)
Participate in weekly hour-long workshops — every Monday from 5:00PM-6:00PM EST (Google Meet)
Share your work and receive feedback on stories
Tap into your inner voice and sense of creativity
Location: Wherever you write
Who’s invited: Everyone in the whole entire world! All skill levels welcome.
My grandpa is a vibrant storyteller: charismatic, vivid in his details, animated. For as long as I can remember, one of his great gifts has been sitting down and retelling colorful memories of his youth. I’ve heard about his studies abroad in London where he met his first wife, the various peaks of fatherhood and moving to an apartment in Manhattan in his 8th decade, among the many others that I keep close to my heart.
He rarely leaves out descriptive markers; one of his other gifts is recalling the exact street corners where birthday dinners were held in NYC throughout the years, the names of jazz clubs he frequented in decades past, and intimate conversations shared with his late wife. Sometimes he tells the same stories, but that just comes along with being 93 years old. Because of all this — and not just because he is my Grandpa — I love sitting across the table from him at a family gathering. He’s one of the best dinner party guests.
All that said, I wish my Grandfather had written more throughout his life. His stories mostly live in his memory unless they’ve been passed on in the recounting of them. His four children had always encouraged him to start writing seriously, especially after his wife passed, but for some reason or another he never did. He never felt the call to sit down and just start. Life always seemed to get in the way.
Until recently, when I told him about The Writing Ritual. A few weeks ago approaching his birthday, I biked to his apartment in Prospect Heights, pulled up a chair on the opposite side of the room, and exchanged stories for hours through masks. I asked him if he would consider writing something for my newsletter: offer the wisdom of elders of why we should never give up on our passion, share motivation to begin writing when you’re young, the power of reading and writing to enrich our lives. And for the first time in decades, he felt the call. He sat down and he started writing.
For the first story, he penned me a 500 word fiction piece about a bar fight, and the second about Yom Kippur services in Fort Dodge. Who knew he had these ideas in him and that they were the first stories he wanted to tell.
I suppose that’s what The Writing Ritual is all about. No matter how old you are or your motivation for writing, we all have stories waiting to be unearthed. And sometimes all we need is the encouragement to share them.
The interactions with my Grandfather as of late has me thinking about the value of storytelling—particularly written stories—not only as a creative channel or spiritual pursuit but as a gift we give the ones we love and the world. With the case of my Grandfather, his stories are an inheritance, a way to preserve his legacy. They are a cultural keepsake. They are a mirror of time, revealing who he was at a specific moment in his life.
For those we leave behind, the written word can paint a vivid picture of the moments that make up one’s life: youth, love, children, marriage, divorce, death, wisdom. So perhaps you don’t feel like picking up the pen right in this moment, or even this month or year. But I hope this serves as a subtle reminder that written stories are bigger than ourselves, and those who read them will surely gain something in the process. Your readers will feel closer to you, and one day, they will remember you through them, too.
Today I offer two prompts. Remember to turn your phone on airplane mode and freewrite for 15 minutes:
1. Begin a story with either of the following phases: My Grandfather…or My Grandmother…
2. Write a story about the word inheritance.
Happy writing! If you feel called, share your story on IG. Tag me @constantwanderings and #thewritingritual — I’d love to see what you create.