From the Bookshelf

January 2025

Dear Writers,

Welcome to the January installment of my series From the Bookshelf, in which I create a prompt based on an excerpt of a book I pull from my shelves. The excerpt is presented without context intentionally. The monthly prompts may be for flash fiction or nonfiction, and they may be inspired by all kinds of books: a travel guide, a book of essays, poems, or fiction, a dictionary, a biography . . .

I love writing prompts, and I hope you have fun with these. They are free for anyone and everyone.

This Month’s Prompt
The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, by Lewis Hyde (New York: Vintage, 2007)

This new year is a gift, even though many of us may feel otherwise. And as artists, we are all creating gifts when we write stories—to ourselves and to others—even the little stories you write from these prompts. This is why I was drawn instantly to this title today. I opened to Hyde’s quick summary of a story found in a 19th-century collection of English fairy tales.

[The story] tells of a Devonshire man to whom the fairies had given an inexhaustible barrel of ale. Year after year the liquor ran freely. Then one day the man’s maid, curious to know the cause of this extraordinary power, removed the cork from the bung hole and looked into the cask; it was full of cobwebs. When the spigot next was turned, the ale ceased to flow.

A writer needs to nurture the art of forgetting while writing, to let go of being hyperconscious. This is one of the reasons hermit crab flash, in which you borrow an existing form to tell a story (a recipe, a museum label, etc.), works so well. You’re forgetting you’re telling a story while focusing on the structure. So, let’s be sneaky and let our subconscious roam around. Write a hermit crab that borrows the structure of a folk tale, using all the traditional elements, including characters without names (perhaps they’re called by their role in society), nature, riches, a pursuit of an adventurous goal, and magic. Here are some words you might use, just to give you a jumpstart:

Copper

Gold

Straw

Fisherman/woman

Child

String

Rock

Mountain

Boat

Sapling

Take this wherever it leads, and have fun!

P.S. Hyde also mentions a story involving riches from fairies that turn to gold when given, but as soon as the riches are counted, they turn to coals and wood shavings. As we head into a new year, this is a good reminder that you do not need to count everything and be uberproductive. It is not a contest!

Wishing you all a year of flowing creativity and joy!

Cheryl