Simple Writing Exercises – Janet Eriksson

February 23, 2026

Writing Prompt: A Quiet Love

February is a time to celebrate love. With Valentine’s Day and anticipation of spring, it’s easy to carry love in our hearts.

Love appears in a variety of ways: love for a spouse, child, parent, sibling, friend, neighbor, pet, place, hobby, way of life. Love shows up in big and small ways. Sometimes it’s in the smallest moments when you notice and remember love the most.

For this month’s writing prompt, focus on a quiet way someone loved you. Not a big way, but something meaningful yet easily overlooked.

*Write about a simple memory of being loved. Photo by CGabriel at Unsplash*

It might be the memory of a caregiver’s routine, a meal someone made, a habit that made you feel safe, a time that made you feel noticed in a loving way.

Whatever comes to mind, set your timer for 15 minutes and write freely. If the topic shifts, that’s okay. Just write. Pour your heart onto the page. Follow your ideas wherever they go. Don’t edit or second guess. Just write.

A writing prompt like this may inspire an idea for your writing project. Or it may be simply a time to feel creative and practice writing. Either way, it’s a great way to remember feeling loved.

September 29, 2025September 29, 2025

Messy Beats the Blank Screen

Writers often struggle when facing a blank screen. How should they begin writing? What are the right opening words? How should they tell a story?

The blank screen seems like a roadblock. How do you get around it or move through it?

There is one simple way that works every time: Write messy.

September 22, 2025September 15, 2025

Try a Photo Writing Prompt

Whether you’ve started writing a book or are preparing to start soon, you might find writing prompts a helpful exercise. You can do journal prompts, where you write in response to a phrase. You can do memory prompts, where you describe a particular memory. You can also write in response to a photo prompt, which is what we will try this week.

September 15, 2025September 2, 2025

Show, Don’t Tell: A Writing Technique that Immerses Your Reader in the Story

With the fall school season underway, this seems like a good time to learn or practice a writing and self-editing skill. You may have heard the phrase, Show, don’t tell. It’s a helpful technique for strengthening your writing and engaging your reader. Let’s take a look.

August 25, 2025August 19, 2025

Writing Prompt: Back-to-School Letter for Future Generations

One of the fun things about writing family history is you can experiment with different writing formats. You can tell a family story by writing a poem or a song, describing a photo, sharing a recipe and the story behind it, creating a diary-style note, or writing a letter.

Today, we’ll look at a writing prompt for a seasonal letter you can write. This letter is partly an encouragement to future generations of your family, and it’s partly a way to share your own memories.

June 16, 2025July 5, 2025

A Summer Rhythm of Writing: Slower, Lighter, Inspiring

Scenes of summer: slower mornings, iced coffee on the patio, lots of sunshine, the sound of kids home from school. Summer has its own rhythm.

If you’ve been diligently working on a writing project, summer has a way of disrupting routines. Yet summer is still a great time for writing. You just need to adjust your pace and expectations.