Thank You Notes is a monthly prompt that focuses on expressing our thanks to a particular person, place, or thing — in poems, paragraphs, or pictures. This month we’re crafting thank you’s to notepads.
I keep a notepad in the kitchen by the phone charger/speaker dock. Sometimes I make notes to myself (“finish JC & send”), and sometimes I leave a note for loved ones (“At yoga. Love, Mom”). Most of my notepads come from the Children’s Art Project of the MD Anderson Cancer Center. On what do you write notes? What do you write? Do you use a particular color of pen or do you need the security of an eraser?
Prompt Guidelines and Options
1. Be specific. Think nouns instead of adjectives. If you are crafting a pictorial thanks, show us something unusual or intriguing that we might not have otherwise noticed if we hadn’t seen your picture.
2. Consider fitting the form of your poem, paragraph, or picture to mirror the nature of the person, place, or thing to which you are expressing thanks. A sonnet is different from a villanelle, for instance. Maybe one would be more fitting than the other.
3. Consider playing Taboo and try writing without using the words and phrases thanks, thank you, gratitude, or grateful.
4. Consider doing a little research about your subject: its history, associated words (and their etymologies), music, art, sculpture, architecture, fashion, science, and so on. Look for unusual details.
That’s it! We look forward to your creative thank you notes.
Photo by Erich Ferdinand, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome, author of The Joy of Poetry.
Browse Thank You Notes
- Perspective: The Two, The Only: Calvin and Hobbes - December 16, 2022
- Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
- By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022
Bethany Rohde says
I like your question about the security of an eraser. What a fun prompt, I’m looking forward to reading folks’ poems. One of my favorite presents I received in third grade was this wonderful cube of note paper.
The Gift of a Multicolored Memo Cube
Bring all your confirmations of future
dentist appointments, your aunt’s last-
minute question for Mom about peanut
allergies, and the potluck location. Bring
reminders about Pajama Day, and when
the library books are overdue. Leave them
on the clean-cut cube of pastel note paper.
With 500 sheets, it offers to carry all your
numbers, questions, hearts, and arrows,
one sherbert-colored square at a time.
Megan Willome says
Bethany, yes, I know the cube of which you speak! So glad someone shares my enthusiasm. And your poem is wonderful in the way it brings together all those daily concerns–“numbers, questions, hearts, and arrows, / one sherbet-colored square at a time.”
FYI, I tend to use pen for notes left to loved ones and pencil for the notes to myself.
Bethany R. says
Thank you, Megan. 😉
Katie says
Dear Notepad,
Thank you for reminding me to:
call Beverly
get paper towels
schedule my mammogram
reschedule dentist appointment for Sam
send Tigger an e-mail message
text that picture to Pat
write a grocery list
write a thank you note to Sue & Ted
go to the P. O.
make the deposit at NFCU
get gas at WAWA
get cash from the ATM
check the LFL’s to see if they need
more kid’s books/adult books or both
return library books and CDs to CCPL
try the latest TSP prompt;)
Megan Willome says
Oh, Katie–these acronyms! So good.
Katie says
Thank you, Megan!
Was another fun prompt.
Bethany R. says
Love that last reminder! 😉 Glad you acted on it!
Katie says
Thanks Bethany! Me too:)
Laura Brown says
If only I could upload a photo of these written on four sticky-notes:
Thank you, 3M chemist Spencer Silver, for failing to invent a strong adhesive but coming up with a weak one.
Thank you, his colleague Art Fry, for remembering and applying his idea six years later when your hymnal bookmarks kept falling out.
Thank you, 3M product development team, for using canary-yellow leftover scrap paper for your test batch.
Thank you, notes, for your help in collecting my thoughts and organizing many smalls into one large, time and time again
Katie says
Love this, Laura:)
Megan Willome says
Laura, I knew the first part of the Post-it story but not the next two details. Thank you.
Monica Sharman says
I like the “applying his idea” part. 🙂
Bethany R. says
Enjoyed this, Laura. 🙂
Monica Sharman says
Just came across this teacher’s story of using Post-It notes and thought of this prompt!
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/old-tech-teach-thinking-skills-raleigh-werberger
I liked this part of the article:
“I also started thinking that perhaps one fault of technology is that it brings the world to the student, rather than spurring the student to get up out the chair and go find it. I have noticed personalities in the class that like to work standing up, or who find reasons to walk around while thinking. Could there be a way to restore a kinesthetic element that had begun to disappear from the room with my reliance on web tools?”
Megan Willome says
Monica, I like the kinetic nature of the teacher’s assignment. And it occurs to me that the sticky nature of Post-its does something for ideas that the old standard of index cards does not–it attaches one idea to another. Not every idea/point/detail is sequential; some are sticky.