The writing prompt that changed everything for me

… a prompt that stirred the imagination …

One morning in a Paris café, after reading David Whyte’s poem “What to Remember When Waking” I closed my notebook and stared out of the window for a long time. I’d been circling around a character’s backstory but not quite getting it.

I read this line in Whyte’s poem:

“To be human is to become visible while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.”

Poet David Whyte is an Anglo-Irish philosopher and previously a marine zoologist influenced by Celtic mythology, nature, and language with a gift for poetic insight.

And then the writing prompt followed: “What are you carrying that is hidden, and a gift to others?”

I didn’t write immediately. I went for a walk after leaving the café. I wandered around the nearby Luxembourg Garden before returning to my apartment where I wrote ideas, like a brain dump, first superficially then deeper. One of the sentences I wrote in response to the prompt was: The way I hold other people’s stories long after they’ve told them.Suddenly, I understood my protagonist in a new way.

That single prompt cracked open the emotional shell of the novel to get into the core of the character. The result was not that it solved the plot, but it reconnected me to the truth beneath it.

Most of us have some hidden brilliance inside us. What if the very thing we keep hidden is our greatest offering? That question – and answers – changed the way I write.

Now, when I sit at a café table with my pen and coffee, I don’t ask, “What do I want to write?” I ask myself, “What have I been hiding? And could it help someone else feel seen?”

Unlike a craft-focused prompt, such as “describe your character’s lifestyle” or “write a scene in the rain,” this hidden-gift prompt goes deeper into the story and the message. It bypasses the performance and process of writing. It reminds me that vulnerability is a strength, not a liability.

If you're in the middle of feeling slightly disconnected from your voice or character in your novel, this might be the question to come back to: “What are you carrying that is hidden, and a gift to others?” The response doesn’t need to be dramatic. Sometimes the gift is simply gentleness, or presence, or the ability to reframe emotions in poetry.

And maybe you’ll see something hidden inside yourself that was waiting to be seen all along.

Can’t see the whole article? Want to view the original article? Want to view more articles? Go to Martina’s Substack: The Stories in You and Me

More Paris articles are in my Paris website The Paris Residences of James Joyce

Rainy Day Healing - gaining ground in life