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I met a woman on a train to Chicago who gave me the best writing prompt I've ever used
I was on the Amtrak last fall, just staring out the window at the cornfields, trying to think of a story idea and getting nowhere. The woman next to me, maybe in her 60s, saw my notebook and asked if I was a writer. We got talking, and she told me about her job for thirty years as a city clerk, filing old paper records. She said, 'You know, the most interesting thing I ever found was a single, perfect red rose pressed inside a 1978 marriage license application that was never submitted.' She just left it at that, got off at the next stop. That one image, that unfinished story in a file cabinet, has fueled more writing for me than any book of prompts. It's all about the hidden object and the abandoned history for me now. What's the best 'found object' writing prompt someone has ever given you?
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