Write About: Pennies, Chocolate!, Perspectives

Writing Prompts for the Week of October 13, 2025

I’ve been leading Speak Up for 15 years. First as a homeless-authored magazine that gave a voice and jobs to hundreds of people. Now as a movement of writing communities that bring people together, build social capital, and replace disconnectedness with true friendship.

Social media has created an epidemic of false connections and loneliness.

And our increased national polarization, division-amplifying algorithms, and media siloes have created a sense of Perpetual Division. Not only do we think and believe differently from others, we’re incentivized to suspect that can’t even trust or be in community with them.

But that’s not reality. We’re proving it weekly at Speak Up writing community. Here, people come together across so-called impassable chasms—homeless versus non-homeless, this race versus that race, left versus right, us versus them—and do the deeply human work of creating, writing, sharing together.

Thanks for carrying this vision forward with your readership, financial partnership, and creative partnership.

Enjoy the prompts!

Matt Shaw

Executive Director

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Write freely. Be authentic to you. Use the prompts or don’t use the prompts.

Read aloud and listen. Read your piece if you’d like. No worries if not.

Applaud after each reader. Generally: no feedback. Just gratitude for each voice.

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Writing 1

• Write about your favorite song(s) you could listen to over and over and still love it as if hearing for the first time.

• What’s that chocolate doing?

• Big ideas. Little ideas.

Writing 2

• Write about playing games with people.

• The penny is going away. It’s obsolete. It costs the government more than two cents to make each one. Write about the penny or things becoming obsolete.

• It really annoys me when… OR: I really love it when…

Writing 3

• Write about all or any: hidden things, secrets, mysteries.

• Which food are you?

• Write about first impressions, falling in love at first sight, or judging a book by its cover.

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📓 Remote Writing Workshop Community?

We’re gauging interest for the idea of a video conference-based Speak Up writing community. Using a popular video chat tool like Zoom, this potential weekly gathering will follow the same basic structure laid out above: writing to prompts and sharing with one another.

Please fill out this short form to share your name, email, and availability.

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