Creative Writing Prompt: Wish You Were Here

Creative Writing Prompt #26
Wish You Were Here

Loss is something that every single one of us has experienced – or will experience – in life. Whether someone is lost because of a death or because they’ve moved away, whether they’ve been forcibly taken out of your life or they’ve left by choice, people leave – and it’s not always easy to accept. But accept it we must.

Write about a time when you have felt loss. It doesn’t have to be a sad poem. You can reframe the idea of the loss in your mind to see the goodness of it. Or, you can focus on the melancholy of the situation as a type of catharsis.

Challenge yourself to be a poet in this writing – don’t allow yourself to get melodramatic. Sometimes, when we write about things that are incredibly emotional or raw, we have a tendency to embellish, to get carried away, to use cliches because the emotions are so overwhelming it’s hard to put them into words. And that is not always to the betterment of the writing. So if you do feel yourself “indulging” a bit too much, there’s no need to stop… but do put the poem away for a time afterward and let the pain or sadness settle a bit. Go back to the poem when your feelings are not in such a heightened state.

See all of our National Poetry Month posts