Collective Sparks, Volume I
Bi-weekly writing prompt roundup!
**This publication has moved to The Forge: Fiction by Liora.**
I started giving writing prompts in my subscriber chat last week. Hope you all love writing to prompts as much as I do!
Prompts:
1️⃣ The Ordinary Miracle
Write about something that seems ordinary on the surface but is extraordinary when you really see it.
2️⃣ Doorways
Describe a doorway you’ve walked through (literal or metaphorical) that changed you.
3️⃣ Cats Know Things
Imagine a cat is narrating your story. What do they say about you?
Sometimes the simplest takes carry the most punch. Joakim proves that with these three snapshots of ordinary made extraordinary.
From Joakim Blytt:
Prompt nr.1 tickled me a bit, thought of 3 of them;
Shoelaces. Just strings until you realize they’ve carried your entire weight for years. Ordinary knot, extraordinary trust.
The kitchen table. Flat wood, nothing special. But it has held arguments, birthdays, unpaid bills. Ordinary furniture, extraordinary witness.
Dust. Barely visible. But it’s made of us - skin, hair, whole histories breaking down into particles. Ordinary mess, extraordinary evidence we were here.
*Added with author’s consent on 9/13/25*
Rowan also took on Ordinary Miracle, but from the opposite angle: what looks extraordinary at first glance but, when you peel it back, maybe isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The result? A sharp, playful rumination on pâté.
From Rowan Mercer:
Pâté - I will not belittle the joy of good food, nor dismiss the care it takes to prepare the organ in question. As Julia Child once said, “People who love to eat are always the best people.” And of course, one can’t simply pluck a liver from any random creature and toss it in a blender - not unless parasites are part of the recipe.
So yes, I respect the devotion required to chase ground-giblet nirvana. De gustibus non est disputandum.
However - even when it’s crafted with perfection, even when diners pay $50–$80 a pound for this butter-soft delicacy, at the end of the day… it’s still just liver..
From small details, we move into a heavier doorway: loss and memory, painted in stark lines. Tangled Words offers words of remembrance.
From Tangled Words:
Sometimes loss is
memory locked away.
Splintered door frame
sticking out of debris.
Foundation crumbled.
Only brick dust and ash
where they use to stand.
The way back
that can never be unlatched.
Truth is we don't need a key.
People linger long after
photos fade.
Their spirits the portal
to who we use to be.
Where one doorway closes in ashes, another opens to belonging. Kristin shows that though the road may be difficult, the future can be quite brilliant.
From Kristin Meadows:
🚪 A doorway I walked through that changed my life was literal and metaphorical. I walked through the door of my foster home and unlike many others, I found a home (after 6 others) and a family that wanted to see me succeed. I went from what many considered a problem child to a scholar athlete that barely missed school, never really got in trouble, had a job. Truly life changing and all because someone just cared.
Not every doorway is found for us; sometimes we must choose it ourselves. AFD takes us there with heart.
From Almost Full Disclosure:
A few years ago, I opened a door that I was planning on for decades but finally decided to open it up and walk right in with no hesitation but full of eagerness and determination. I needed to walk through in order to channel that part of me that was long neglected. The more artistic side. That side of my brain with great imagination just waiting to be written down. That door I entered was the doorway to being a writer.
Doorways can be literal, personal, or even whole rooms of energy—quiet or bustling. Outtamydamnmind captures that duality beautifully.
From Outtamydamnmind:
Doorways 🚪 have been on my mind a lot.
When I opened The Inner Room, it felt like stepping through a doorway into a quieter place. A space to sit with another writer, face to face, and look in the mirror together. Not just at the work, but at the life and stories that shaped it. That doorway led me inward toward honesty, reflection, and conversation that felt almost sacred.
Now I’m standing at another doorway: The Gathering Room. This one is wide open, loud with laughter, clattering with pots and pans. It’s the kind of doorway you walk through into a kitchen where recipes, family stories, and even a little drama get swapped as freely as the food. It’s lighter, but still layered with memory and meaning.
Doorways change us because they don’t just open into new rooms they open into new ways of being together. And I’m ready to step through this one. ✨
And because I can’t resist stepping through the prompt myself, here’s the doorway that changed me, through the eyes of a cat.
*Heavily edited because I wrote too much!
Figment (of my imagination)
Content warning: This piece touches on animal loss and grief briefly; please take care of yourself.
For this prompt, I chose Doorways and Cats Know Things. This is the story of my Figgy, a stray from before I became a colony manager who lost his mama young.
His mother was a beautiful black and white kitty. I remember her face, bright green eyes and a black chin. So guarded, she ran so hard the first few times she saw me. I’d go inside, bring out food, then leave. No expectations.
The door in her mind cracked just a bit.
Never comfortable with being too close, she grew to tolerate me from a distance. Progress.
We fell into a rhythm, I would come out in the morning with food, and she would lurk nearby. She’d gift me with her presence: see how glorious I am? No touch!
Then, one day, she started bringing her young kitten with her. He was still tiny and all black. His eyes were too big for his face. Sweet little alien.
The door cracked wider.
His mom had taught him well: stranger danger! But she chose to show him to me. I had become a form of safety I doubt she ever knew before. She braved being nearer and displayed steadiness to him, when I’d come out with the food. She wouldn’t run away anymore; would instead wait patiently a few feet away from me, exuding calm.
He mimicked his mother’s actions at first, but his guard dropped even more, and he took to running around me in circles, pure excitement. He’d leap like a gazelle onto the stucco post, eyes wide with abandon. Mom watching calmly from nearby.
Her steady gaze never wavered.
Then, one day, she wouldn’t come through the fence. She was scared again. But there was little man, running to the food dish.
That was the last time I saw her.
My heart ached for her.
He started coming around on his own. Grieving and alone, but resilient. Wary, but grateful. Slowly, his guard dropped more, and I was able to pet him.
I tried once to pick him up and he panicked, launching away from me as if he’d been scalded. Looked at me like I was a cat-napper!
One evening, I stepped out to call one of my cats who had gotten out. Suddenly, there was a black blur, racing across the park, beelining for me.
Little man. I got him more food and stayed with him as he ate. After, I drug a twig around and he started to play.
The door kept inching further open.
A few nights later, I went out to freezing rain, but there he was, waiting patiently.
I huddled over him as he ate, trying to shelter him from the rain.
Then something shifted and I acted on the impulse: I scooped him and his food bowl up and walked through my door, now wide and welcoming.
He just blinked his huge eyes at me, no protest.
He slept in my hands that night.
And every night since, he’s been my little prince: dashing into shadow whenever anyone else comes around. Back by my side once they’re gone.
Sometimes I think cats carry truths we humans overlook: the simplicity of love, safety, food, and warmth. Figgy’s story reminds me that trust is built in the smallest steps, and that home isn’t a place you’re given, it’s a place you claim. He’s five this year, and while he still remains aloof to all but me, he is thriving. And no, he’s not just a figment of my imagination.💜
What strikes me most reading through all of these is the range. A doorway can be a threshold into grief or survival, into belonging, into creativity, into community. An ordinary thing can reveal itself as extraordinary. And sometimes, the truest doorway is the one a cat leads us through.
Each response here carries its own weight, yet together they remind me why I started offering prompts in the first place: to create sparks, to see what happens when different voices take the same seed and grow something only they could.
Thank you to everyone who contributed so generously this week. Your words are doorways too, and I’m grateful you chose to open them here.💜
Feel like joining in? This week’s prompts are in my subscriber chat! Three new prompts to tickle your imagination. I’d love to see what you make of them!
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