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From the Bookshelf

 From the Bookshelf

A black bookshelf filled with books. On top is a lamp and some branch decorations.

June 2026

Dear Writers,

Welcome to the June 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 . . .

These prompts are free for anyone and everyone. Enjoy.

This Month’s Prompt
“The Circular Ruins,” in Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges (New York: Grove Press, 1962)


It’s June. It’s not even hot—not even warm—and yet I’m overcome by laziness. I looked at a few books for this month’s prompt and felt nothing. Then I picked up Borges, and suddenly language sprang alive again:

With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.

I luxuriate in all the commas in this short sentence. The first three in the anaphoric phrase (with///) serve as a slow buildup to the realization at the end, which is put off a beat more with the fourth comma after “illusion.” The wonderful concept of being dreamt by someone else is reserved for the very last beat. It’s a good reminder to leave your most significant idea until the end of your sentences (and your stories). We’re left there, dangling, ready to ponder what it means. What a gift.

You might play with sentence structure in the same way for this prompt, but I think it might be more inspiring to go with the concept given here instead: Write a story in which a person’s is a dream of another. Interpret this any way you wish, as long as it’s a character dreaming another character (who is not a writer, obviously).

Wishing you wild writing,

Cheryl