This November Brave and Reckless, Go Dog Go Café, and Heretics, Lovers, and Madmen are teaming up to host An Unquiet Mind Writing Prompt Challenge. At the beginning of each week, we will provide daily writing prompts inspired by titles of memoirs and novels that explore life with mental illness.

We will also provide the Goodread links for the book prompts if you would like to explore any of the titles in greater depth.

Although these prompts are designed to inspire you to write a poem, prose piece, piece of flash fiction, or art in 30 minutes or less, we realize these prompts may be difficult for some readers. We sincerely apologize if any of the prompts are triggering for you.

The only rule is that you use the book title as your piece title OR integrate all the words in the title into your piece somehow.   

If you would like to have your piece considered for publication, please email your prompt-inspired pieces to Christine at her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.com.

You are also welcome to share your response pieces in the comments below.

Polarity – Max Bemis

The Museum of Intangible Things – Wendy Wunder

Made You Up – Francesca Zappia

The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides

Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng

The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – David J. Morris

It’s Kind of a Funny Story – Ned Vizzini