Writing Exercises Based on a Specific Prompt ©Sherry Quan Lee, June 2025-June 2026 (little to no edits) (more will be added over time)
Prompt: I Am
I am Septuagenarian Quan Lee; once that man’s wife, then another,
and then another, and another BUT always me. Even when I didn’t understand
who I was, I was a map to who I am now.
I come from chow mein and Egg rolls, mahjong and canasta. I come from
baseball in the street and Captain May I.
I am the first in my family to earn a Bachelor of Art degree and the only one to
earn a master’s degree. I was 48 years old-a mother, a wife, and a student.
I am from South Minneapolis, Our Redeemer Lutheran church, Sibley Park dances,
and Roosevelt High School where we painted the bleachers maroon and gold and
I couldn’t wear pants to school and short skirts were frowned upon.
I am from Minnesota Nice but have temporarily resided in Massachusetts,
Colorado, Illinois, and Washington. Outside of the U.S. of A. I have
only visited Mexico, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Now I enjoy, especially short,
road trips: Michigan in the Fall, Colorado any time, the North Shore, and Lake City.
I met a guy, online, when I turned 70. Love was in the air. He grew up in Lake City.
Now Lake Pepin is my next fav lake to Lake Superior. But now that I live
In Prior Lake, Spring Lake, which I can sit by and walk by because Three Rivers
Park District made it possible, is my fav lake because it’s my neighbor.
I earned a MFA, a master’s in fine arts degree focusing on Creative Writing.
I was 48 years old. Everyone said, “what are you going to do with a degree in poetry.”
I said, “I’m going to believe in myself.”
And I did.
Prompt: write about food
I come from loaves and fishes. One pound of not so lean ground beef fed a neighborhood of girls
-and one boy, my brother.
I am my mother’s youngest daughter, the daughter too young to remember the father; except, by his absence.
Living on Aid to Dependent Children (AFDC), that’s what they called the “handout” in the 50’s. Back then it was more generous than it is now. We were allowed to keep our house. A stucco house with a hill in front, a choke cherry tree and a maple tree in the back. In the winter we had an ice pond in the back yard because Mother kept us at home, kept us sheltered. Kept us a secret. (Father also provided a small amount of child support. He drove up the alley once a week, honked his horn, and one of us kids ran out to get the $7 check.)
The neighbors were kind. Mothers had coffee get togethers, almost daily. Hills Brothers Coffee. Percolator on a gas stove. My coffee was in a tiny cup that something came in. It was more milk than coffee. But it was nice to sit with the women as they smoked and drank and gossiped. But what did they talk about?
Vi made the best chocolate drop cookies, with chocolate frosting, and a walnut on top. These were special. But thanks to Vi’s husband who worked at Wonder Bread Bakery, we were often gifted with Hostess Cupcakes, Snowballs, and Twinkies. We reciprocated with Nankin chow Mein, egg foo young, and white rice; but that’s a story for another time.
After dad left, we made trips to stand in line and get government food handouts (this was before the cheese). Mother didn’t make us drink the powder milk, she used it for baking: angel food cakes, Boston cream pies,
banana cream pies, and so much more.
I don’t bake. When my teenage sons decided they had enough sugar, enough Captain Crunch, they said no to anything sugary. So, I had no reason to bake like my mother did. Mom was heavy from her own love of sweet things.
How was a pound of hamburger enough for a neighborhood of kids, when today doesn’t it take a Big Mac and a large fry and a Coke to fill us up? Even if it even does, is it food we are craving or something else that we can’t name.
Prompt: write about a photo or item you have brought with you
Ethan
What are your eyes telling us? Every photo from the time you were born says to me:
Grandma, look at me, see me, know me. But can you know me? Probably not. Not now, maybe never.
I have my father’s eyes, his nose, his dark complexion. But Mom’s here too. I have her mouth. Funny, mom likes to talk. Jabber jabber blah blah. I love her verbosity because, well, I can only speak with my eyes.
It’s a mischievous look, and I am a handful. But give me a ball to bounce and I will stop hitting and biting-you.
Dad, why aren’t you bouncing balls? Hit them hard. Get out all your frustrations, your sadness. If we knew back when you were a child, you too might be diagnosed as autistic. We are more alike than just brown eyes. Our eyes want to tell a story. Telling yours might ease your pain.
I am 16 now, but age is just a number. I am who I am and my grandma loves me.
Prompt: letter writing
Dear Martha,
I loved a poem once. It was wrapped inside a purple felt cover. Maybe 2 inches wide, 2 ½ inches in length.
Tribes. The paper: was it handmade, hand stitched?
Here it is, on my shelf of books, with the few I have yet to give away. It is tattered. Faded. Like I left it out in the rain.
Martha Courtot, because of your words:
“It is not time to be together. It is a time to be separate, to learn what it means to be alone.”
Because of your words I understood why I was alone (but not so much why I was lonely.
I held on to your promise that when our work is done, we would come together.
“We are waiting until it is safe” you said.
Have we ever been safe?
I am 78 years old. Time brings me closer to my past, closer to my future; days seem insignificant.
I remind myself I can’t get time back. Do it today. Make that phone call. Go out for a walk. Write that poem. Take that nap. Yet most of my days pass by, lost. Like the friends that I meet, then they disappear. We come and we go. We run into each other or we don’t.
Martha, I have wandered and waited but now I need my friends.
My friends are my poems. I read poems, I identify with them, I live by them, sometimes I criticize them. One day I read a poem, your poem. I read it over and over again. It sustained me from the first time I met it.
I heard the singing and the music and I thank you. But today, my words/my stories will risk not being safe.
Prompt: the body
Ode to my Heart
My heart is like a hand knocking at my door. A rhythm, not always in tune with the music I love. The blues. Medication blocks the calcium, whatever that means, don’t block the singer, the song, the dance. What if my heart stops momentarily? Or forever. Will I have given love? Will I have let love in? Will I be dancing-alone, or with a partner? If my heart breaks, the music will stop. Will it start again?
Prompt: what is it you have learned
“There’s something I have learned from what I’ve lived”
Ataol Behramoğlu
For Pat
Searching for love is love is the routine of making the bed
each morning, is opening the blinds and seeing the hostas
flower, the grass grow. I am love, or else looking for love
is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I can’t find
what I don’t already have.
I should have kept at least one childhood friend
tucked under my arm, and carried her across decades
because I can’t retrieve what I didn’t have. I’ve had friends;
they’ve come and gone, faded like photos
diminishing my past.
Sunshine is worth waking early, it warms the ghosts
that haunt me; but the rain, the rain I can hear.
A rhythm that rocks me or terrifies me. I need both;
quiet and storm.
Love is the journey. When I stop traveling what might be
a difficult road, a rocky road, it is not love, but it’s not fear
either. I name it lazy. I name it forgiveness.
It is temporary. A breach of time.
Self-doubt.
Choice is what keeps me moving in and out
wavering like a chicken with its head cut off.
Sometimes my choice to go North or go South
is the wrong choice.
But a wrong choice is better than indecision.
Choice is freedom.
I lie. I exaggerate. I talk talk talk. When no one is listening
I write. I have learned no one can give me love. No one
can love me the way I demand that they love me.
I can only talk to myself in the way I want to
be talked to. I can only love myself, the way I want
to be loved.
I once was a child. I had childhood friends.
Sometimes they return.
Prompt: writing about place
My place is in this room. Sun light streaming in on four tables. Six writers. Community. There is a back and forth. Communication. Connections. We want to talk. We need to talk. And we listen. People are respectful.
Our stories are familiar. Individual stories, but like the childhood game of telephone one story leads to another story. The last story emerges from all the others. And there is quiet.
Just the tapping of keys on a computer or pens rolling across notebooks. Here. At the senior center there is a small world laughing and crying. Writing furiously. Because we only have one hour.
Prompt: a newsworthy event
Covid. I hadn’t known my guy friend for even a year when panic caused by a pandemic forced us together more quickly than a relationship would usually come together. Here we were two people in our 70s. Two very different people. City girl. Rural guy. Hiker vs walker. Vegetable gardener vs Farmers’ Market shopper. Nonfiction writer vs fiction writer. Rock and Roll vs Jazz. Vegetarian vs meat lover. Always hot vs always cold. One grandchild vs seven grandchildren. Comfortable financially vs. just getting by. I ate what he cooked. He read what I wrote. We both became Lynx fans. Covid threw us together. We were safe at the farm. We played cards. We played Scrabble. Friendly games, but competitive. Despite all our differences we have been together for seven years.
Prompt: dichos/idioms
Don’t go near the water you might drown. Aha! It wasn’t just the water. Mom was afraid for us (and I was afraid of everything). Keep me safe, keep me pure. Keep me locked up in a house on a hill. Don’t venture out. Don’t try anything new. Be afraid. Fear will keep me safe. What was she afraid of? What was she not telling me? Secrets. Mother’s fear for me didn’t keep me safe. Didn’t keep me locked up. I was a risk taker! I am a risk taker. I jump in headfirst. The water might be cold, or warm, or sizzling. I bounce back. Farther, farther out of my comfort zone. Fear taunting me. Phobias. Anxiety. Doesn’t matter. I come back swinging. I come back stronger than ever. I can swim. Joy Harjo wrote about fear, I need to look up that poem. I need to not let fear be in control. I am sorry, Mother, that you were afraid for me, for yourself.
Church said “fear God.” I did, while at the same time loving her.
