Have you had your best year ever? What was it like? When did it happen? What made that year the best? What did you do to get there? How did that year impact you? What happened as a result? Did other people know it was a great year for you?
If you’re still working towards your goals and haven’t quite had that breakthrough year yet, that’s fine too. Tell about what your best year ever would be like if you met some of your major goals and accomplished some of those elusive items on your list.
How would you feel? What would be different for you? What would you do next? Also share about what is holding you back or standing in the way of having that best year ever. What would you need to do to have the best year ever?Share you Best Year Ever posts using the link below. Remember, everyone who submits their writing prompt responses gets entered into a drawing for a free online coaching video!
Share you Best Year Ever posts in the comments below. Remember, everyone who submits their writing prompt responses gets entered into a drawing for a free online coaching video!
6 Comments
Judi Graham
The minute I saw this prompt, I knew the answer. My best year ever was 1966, in particular, October 2. It was on this day that my first child was born. I had several miscarriages, so a live birth was both wonderful and exciting! I was finally a Mom! It was a boy a beautiful 6 pound baby boy. I felt my life was complete, my world was perfect! But then, wait a minute…
Maybe that wasn’t my best year. Maybe the best year was 1968. I had the second beautiful baby that year, another boy, and while my first child did everything as Dr.Spock said he would, my second child had obviously not read the book. He got teeth early, he walked early (9 months), and was pretty damn independent. But maybe that wasn’t it either…
Maybe it was1969, when I had another baby, his time a beautiful baby girl. She was born with gobs and gobs of dark brown hair and eyes like little marbles in her perfectly round face. She was the apple of her daddy’s eye, but her brothers were confused. She was not a boy – what can we do with her? Now my family was complete, with two little boys and a sweet little girl. Or wait…
Maybe it was 1970, when we sold our home and packed up to move to Florida. The reason for the move was so that our second son could out-live his allergies. Our pediatrician assured us he would not live past his teen years if we didn’t get him somewhere warmer. In Florida, his allergies were all but non-existent; it saved his life. Maybe that wasn’t it either…
Maybe it was 1974 when our second daughter was born. She was small and pink, with blond hair and the older children loved her. She had the privilege of being raised by all of us. But maybe that wasn’t it either…
Maybe it is this year, while I am still living and breathing, though it be with the aid of an oxygen concentrater. Maybe this is my best year because I wake up every morning grateful to see the sun, hear the birds and go on with my life. Yes, I’m sure of it now. This is my best year ever!
Patricia
Judi, thank you for sharing your best year(s) with all of us. Those certainly sound like defining years. I enjoyed the details you wove into your story. One suggestion regarding technique would be to vary the introduction to your paragraphs a bit. For example, using other transition words or phrases such as perhaps, I wonder, but then again, yet. You get the idea. Great work on your story!
Judi
I see your point, and I agree. I’m on it, boss!
Beverly
Judi! You’re a winner. I love your “best year.” Thank you for posting your heart in words.
Diane Gosheff
Happy New Year, Judi. Great way to write this essay and you are so right. We make it “the best year ever”, don’t we. Glad you are pleased with each do-no matter what. I, too, have that attitude.
Idalia Rosa Martinez
Patricia thank you for the opportunity to put my thoughts into words with your January 2019 writing prompt. I’ve written my answer in this fictional story of what my Best Year Ever would look like. Happy Writing everyone.
Idalia Rosa-Martinez
January 15, 2019@4:38pm
Writing Your Life Prompt – Best Year Ever
My neighbor and commercial pilot Ron looked behind him reassuring the four of us had buckled our seatbelts as instructed. Doors locked and we ascended in route from Orlando, Florida to Paris, France.
I had made lunch reservation for the five of us at the Paris en Seine days earlier in celebration of my forth book release. The online book sales had brought in a million dollar profit two weeks before its hard cover release. The limousine awaiting our arrival at the runway near the helicopter pad Issy Lex Moulineaux would make our commute only ten minutes to the restaurant. While at lunch we’d admire the Eifel Tower in vision. This New Year couldn’t have started any better.
I hadn’t celebrated prior book sales outside of a toast with my husband and immediate family near home. Honestly, fear it was all a dream kept me humbled and working for hours at the computer. It was hard to believe writing books could provide the kind of life I had only seen in magazines and television shows.
Writing had been a passion since childhood. High school classmates even ordered my poems right before Valentines to share with the one they wanted to impress. Poems grew into short stories and short stores developed into novels and movie scripts written late into the night after an eight-hour shift as a local hotel cleaning crew. The job offered the steady salary needed to help raise four kids and put them through college. I insisted they go to college and not end up like me.
My stories remained trapped in my computer until the day the last child threw her graduation cap into the air. Then my courage rose in a way I had never imagined. I decided it was time to release the characters that had kept me company doing life. The many stories of painful events rewritten as triumphs that had made their way onto the pages screamed for an audience. They were tired of hiding like I hid all my failures.
So I did it. I put my name on the list to meet with the Harper Collins agent and editor at the very first writers conference I had the money to attend. The first sixty pages of a manuscript, written twenty years earlier, were sent in for editing with the conference application and fee.
Arriving at the conference, I looked nervously at the board searching for the time to meet the agent. Expecting to see red marks all over my sixty pages and get some writing pointers, I sat at the meeting table assigned.
The agent walked in with a second person and both sat introducing themselves most courteously. Next a packet of typed papers was placed in front of me but there were no red marks. My nerves took restraining waiting to understand why my novel had not even been worth marking up.
“We’d like to see more of your manuscript. Have you written others like it?”
“Yes. I do have the rest of the novel with me. I brought it in case you needed proof I had completed the novel.”
“We’re prepared to offer you a contract for this first novel and an advance on the future novel providing it matches what we’ve read to date.”
Celebrating in Paris with my kids and husband was a statement of gratefulness I needed to share with them. And if all of it were gone tomorrow I’d stand in satisfaction knowing that I stepped out and tried when the time was right. I wanted to leave them that message as my legacy. This has been my best year yet.