Heart Maps

A Writing Mind Map Prompt

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I found an old heart map writing mind map today in a journal.

This is a prompt I have used with adult writers and students. You draw a large heart on your journal page. The things you list in the middle are the most important to you and then as you move to the outer edges of the heart you put things you like.

The idea is to have a heart in the front of your notebook to log the things you love and are obsessed with. It helps to think about something to write when you are stuck.

For example, my family is in the center of my heart. Close friends are near them but I little farther out in the heart. On the outer edge are things like coffee, pens, and notebooks.

Here are what I wrote on this heart in 2016:

• live fierce study deeply
• coffee
• family
• running
• 100 word stories
• poetry
• letters
• Hawaii
• LA
• writing
• pens
• notebooks
• books
• sweaters out of the dryer
• more research on short stories