Issue 49: Imagination with Maya Angelou

Each week, we deliver a prompt to help you develop one of your primal powers.

This week's power is Imagination.

 

Curious which primal power can help you the most? Take our diagnostic.

Poet & writer Angelou was born April 4th, 1928.

So starts Maya Angelou's All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, the fifth of seven installments that eventually made up Angelou's autobiography.  

 

Your prompt is to imagine two more sentences. 

 

First, what sentence would you write next? How would you lead us further into the story — as you imagine it?

 

Second, what sentence might come before this opening line. How would you bring us to this breezy night in West Africa?

 

The goal isn't to guess what Angelou might have written, but for you to take a moment to imagine the start of a new story. 

 

If you're happily surprised by what you imagined, please share at the link below. 

It sharpens your imagination, which is your brain's ability to invent new plans, to

improvise effectively and to create strategy.

 

Developing imagination can boost innovation, resilience, decision-making, and leadership.

Last month's prompt was the first line from Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find: “The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida.”

 

In the original, things go south from there. 

 

Friends, we had an overwhelming number of responses, all of which were wonderful. 

 

Here are three, chosen at random:

 

“Virginia sat petting her golden retriever. The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She didn't want to do anything but stay right where she was.” (Mary from the Heartland.)

 

“As soon as Mavis learned that her Grammie had received a debilitating diagnosis of scurvy because of a rare allergy to citrus products, she pounced on the opportunity to fly Grammie to the world famous Sunshine Med Spa in Miami for a cutting edge vitamin C blood transfusion treatment. The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. Mavis had to devise a plan to lull her hemophobic grandmother into getting on that plane because Mavis was dead-set on marrying a rich doctor.” (Lisa Leigh of Los Angeles.)

 

“She was startled when he grasped her by the elbow. The Grandmother did not want to go to Florida. The mother, lover and friend were all making compelling cases, but the grandmother in her was stubbornly pushing back against them all.” (Liam from Australia.)

 

Thank you to all who shared your work! 

 

Missed an issue? They're available in our archive.

 

Next week, Emotion.

 

In the meantime, here's Angelou, who we consider a Storythinking great, discussing All God's Children on Fresh Air back in 1986.