Monday prompt
Hello writers! I hope those of you in the US are enjoying your holiday weekend. But maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re experiencing FOMO, i.e. fear of missing out. Maybe it feels like everyone else is out hiking, waterskiing, having parties and barbeques, and enjoying the fresh air. Summer holidays—and the summer itself—often make me feel some form of FOMO, as I imagine they do for many folks with chronic illness or disability.
I was thinking the other day of Joni Mitchell, and her iconic song Woodstock (which you are probably more familiar with as it’s sung by Crosby, Stills, and Nash). Woodstock was perhaps the most famous musical event of the 1960’s, and epitomized the era’s free-wheeling sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, wrapped up in a idealized, hippy, love and peace consciousness, at least on the surface. In other words, it was THE party of the summer. And Joni’s friends were going without her.
But instead of wallowing in her FOMO, Joni, watching on TV, used her imagination to picture herself there. And her imagination and story-telling ability were both so good that, hundreds of miles away, she ended up writing an iconic song that perfectly captured the spirit of both Woodstock and the 1960’s.
She tells the story here:
Isn’t her version exquisite?
So I thought for a writing prompt this week, we could write about FOMO. Write about a time that you, or your character if you are writing fiction, experienced FOMO. What were you missing out on? What caused you to miss out? How did it feel? And did your feelings match what was actually happening, or was the current situation touching on an older wound of left-outedness? If you want, you can write a redemptive ending into your story, some way of making art and beauty of it, the way Joni did. Or you can leave it with you or your character alone, having to sit with their discomfort, with or without hope that in the future it will be better.
(As always, please be sensitive to writing about things that could be triggers for yourself. I would much rather you be okay and safe than complete something I assign! If you find that what you start writing about is too heavy or triggering, maybe switch to fiction, or write about some smaller experience of FOMO, or one that quickly turned into an experience of inclusion.)
Okay, writers, let’s write!