August 2025 Bamboo Shoots Writing Winner & September Writing Prompts

Aloha, and a very Happy September to you in this month of the Aloha Festivals.  Congratulations to Sarahzh.728.  You’ve won the much coveted 10 Bamboo Bucks to spend in the BRP online store.  Send a message to

[email protected]

and they’ll send you a code to use when you check out of the store.

For this month’s prompt, we’ll go exactly 100 words, or exactly 200 words, or exactly 300 words.

Wherever you’re sitting right now, take a look around you.  I’m at my desk.  I see Garfield and Odie sitting on top of my screen.  They’ve been there for thirty years or so.  They’re the ones with the suction cups, the kind folks used to stick to their car windows.  I found them at the Goodwill store in Kaimuki.

I also see a painting that was being given away by my qi gong group when they moved offices.  The scene is a window opening onto a meadow of wild flowers.

There’s a tiffany-style desk lamp and one of my Alexa devices.  There are photos of my godchildren, of an Aloha Week float I helped build, and of me doing yard work up at the Volcano area home of Commander Ralph Williams taken by the Commander himself.  There’s also a photo of me and the legendary Wildman of Hubei province in China — a Big Foot type character.

All of these trigger memories for me.  What I want to do is choose one and then write some kind of piece triggered by those memories.

Choose something from right around where you’re sitting and do the same exercise.  Go wherever the writing takes you.

And no worries.  You’re always welcome to write about anything you choose.  And we invite pieces in any language with no need to provide a translation — although doing so my allow you to reach a wider audience.

100 words exactly, 200 words exactly, or 300 words exactly.

Okay, everybody, let’s write.

By participating in the Bamboo Shoots community, you agree to the following rules:

1. We reserve the right to remove content that promotes hate or gratuitous violence. Be respectful and courteous to others.
2. All contest challenge entries must be submitted by the designated
3. Enter as many times as you like using a trigger/prompt (this page).
4. Contest Challenge entries can be prose (including short stories, nonfiction essays, or whatever you write), poetry, or plays -- or any type of hybrid writing you dream up.
5. Every entry must have a title -- unless you choose to enter a haiku, in which case you can simply enter the word haiku in the title section.
6. All content/entries should be original work. You retain ownership of your entries; however, we may ask to use them elsewhere on the site or on social media to help promote Bamboo Ridge and/or the Bamboo Shoots online writing community.
7. Winners will be announced with all possible speed after the end of each month. Winners receive 10 Bamboo Bucks credit to spend in the BRP online bookstore. Bamboo Bucks have no monetary value outside of the online store.
8. Entries may also be selected for publication in the regular Bamboo Ridge Journal. If your piece is chosen, the editors will contact you via the email address on file.
9. Please note that you need not enter the contest challenge in order to post on Bamboo Shoots. You may post other writing if you choose. We welcome that here:  Click this link to go to Shoot da Breeze.