Daily Creativity Prompt: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It

Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.

There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.   

It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.

How to Submit

Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.

I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.

“Greg Marshall grew up with a limp, thinking it was “tight tendons,” only to find out – well into adulthood – that it was actually cerebral palsy and that his high school secretary knew before he did. While Leg is a memoir about Marshall’s complicated relationship with his most interesting limb, the leg has a lot of competition for top billing among the troop of brash, loud siblings, a dad with ALS and a mother who makes it her decades-long mission to be a star cancer patient. Leg has everything you want in a memoir: plenty of body humor, a little bit of smut, family drama and tons of personality.”

— Samantha Balaban, producer, Weekend Edition