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Thank You Notes: Notepads

By Megan Willome 15 Comments


Thank You Notes is a monthly prompt that focuses on expressing our thanks to a particular person, place, or thing — in poems, paragraphs, or pictures. This month we’re crafting thank you’s to notepads.

I keep a notepad in the kitchen by the phone charger/speaker dock. Sometimes I make notes to myself (“finish JC & send”), and sometimes I leave a note for loved ones (“At yoga. Love, Mom”). Most of my notepads come from the Children’s Art Project of the MD Anderson Cancer Center. On what do you write notes? What do you write? Do you use a particular color of pen or do you need the security of an eraser?

Prompt Guidelines and Options

1. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives. If you are crafting a pictorial thanks, show us something unusual or intriguing that we might not have otherwise noticed if we hadn’t seen your picture.

2. Consider fitting the form of your poem, paragraph, or picture to mirror the nature of the person, place, or thing to which you are expressing thanks. A sonnet is different from a villanelle, for instance. Maybe one would be more fitting than the other.

3. Consider playing Taboo and try writing without using the words and phrases thanks, thank you, gratitude, or grateful.

4. Consider doing a little research about your subject: its history, associated words (and their etymologies), music, art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, science, and so on. Look for unusual details.

That’s it! We look forward to your creative thank you notes.

 

Photo by Erich Ferdinand, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.

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Megan Willome
Megan Willome
Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.
Megan Willome
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Filed Under: Blog, Thank You Notes, writing prompt, writing prompts

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About Megan Willome

Megan Willome is a writer, editor, and author of The Joy of Poetry: How to Keep, Save & Make Your Life With Poems and Rainbow Crow: poems in and out of form. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, and a walk in the dark.

Comments

  1. Bethany Rohde says

    August 25, 2017 at 12:37 pm

    I like your question about the security of an eraser. What a fun prompt, I’m looking forward to reading folks’ poems. One of my favorite presents I received in third grade was this wonderful cube of note paper.

    The Gift of a Multicolored Memo Cube

    Bring all your confirmations of future
    dentist appointments, your aunt’s last-
    minute question for Mom about peanut
    allergies, and the potluck location. Bring
    reminders about Pajama Day, and when
    the library books are overdue. Leave them
    on the clean-cut cube of pastel note paper.
    With 500 sheets, it offers to carry all your
    numbers, questions, hearts, and arrows,
    one sherbert-colored square at a time.

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      August 25, 2017 at 1:49 pm

      Bethany, yes, I know the cube of which you speak! So glad someone shares my enthusiasm. And your poem is wonderful in the way it brings together all those daily concerns–“numbers, questions, hearts, and arrows, / one sherbet-colored square at a time.”

      FYI, I tend to use pen for notes left to loved ones and pencil for the notes to myself.

      Reply
      • Bethany R. says

        August 30, 2017 at 5:29 pm

        Thank you, Megan. 😉

        Reply
  2. Katie says

    August 25, 2017 at 9:38 pm

    Dear Notepad,
    Thank you for reminding me to:
    call Beverly
    get paper towels
    schedule my mammogram
    reschedule dentist appointment for Sam
    send Tigger an e-mail message
    text that picture to Pat
    write a grocery list
    write a thank you note to Sue & Ted
    go to the P. O.
    make the deposit at NFCU
    get gas at WAWA
    get cash from the ATM
    check the LFL’s to see if they need
    more kid’s books/adult books or both
    return library books and CDs to CCPL
    try the latest TSP prompt;)

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      August 26, 2017 at 11:23 am

      Oh, Katie–these acronyms! So good.

      Reply
      • Katie says

        August 26, 2017 at 1:37 pm

        Thank you, Megan!
        Was another fun prompt.

        Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      August 30, 2017 at 4:56 pm

      Love that last reminder! 😉 Glad you acted on it!

      Reply
      • Katie says

        September 1, 2017 at 9:13 pm

        Thanks Bethany! Me too:)

        Reply
  3. Laura Brown says

    August 26, 2017 at 12:49 pm

    If only I could upload a photo of these written on four sticky-notes:

    Thank you, 3M chemist Spencer Silver, for failing to invent a strong adhesive but coming up with a weak one.

    Thank you, his colleague Art Fry, for remembering and applying his idea six years later when your hymnal bookmarks kept falling out.

    Thank you, 3M product development team, for using canary-yellow leftover scrap paper for your test batch.

    Thank you, notes, for your help in collecting my thoughts and organizing many smalls into one large, time and time again

    Reply
    • Katie says

      August 26, 2017 at 1:38 pm

      Love this, Laura:)

      Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      August 26, 2017 at 3:47 pm

      Laura, I knew the first part of the Post-it story but not the next two details. Thank you.

      Reply
    • Monica Sharman says

      August 30, 2017 at 12:11 am

      I like the “applying his idea” part. 🙂

      Reply
    • Bethany R. says

      August 30, 2017 at 4:57 pm

      Enjoyed this, Laura. 🙂

      Reply
  4. Monica Sharman says

    August 31, 2017 at 4:28 pm

    Just came across this teacher’s story of using Post-It notes and thought of this prompt!
    https://www.edutopia.org/blog/old-tech-teach-thinking-skills-raleigh-werberger

    I liked this part of the article:
    “I also started thinking that perhaps one fault of technology is that it brings the world to the student, rather than spurring the student to get up out the chair and go find it. I have noticed personalities in the class that like to work standing up, or who find reasons to walk around while thinking. Could there be a way to restore a kinesthetic element that had begun to disappear from the room with my reliance on web tools?”

    Reply
    • Megan Willome says

      August 31, 2017 at 5:44 pm

      Monica, I like the kinetic nature of the teacher’s assignment. And it occurs to me that the sticky nature of Post-its does something for ideas that the old standard of index cards does not–it attaches one idea to another. Not every idea/point/detail is sequential; some are sticky.

      Reply

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