Daily writing prompt

What’s a promise you made to yourself that you’ve actually kept?

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I promised myself that every time WordPress asks a dumb question, I’m going to hold it accountable.

So far, I have kept that promise with the dedication of a watchdog, the persistence of a bill collector and the mild irritation of an English teacher reading an essay that begins, “In today’s society…”

Today’s question asks about a promise I’ve “actually” kept.

Actually?

That one word suggests WordPress has been quietly monitoring my life, keeping detailed records of abandoned diets, neglected exercise plans and household projects that have been waiting six years for one final trip to Home Depot.

Apparently, the prompt writer reviewed the evidence and decided that discovering a promise I had kept would require a full investigation, several sworn affidavits and perhaps a team from Unsolved Mysteries.

But fine. I’ll play along.

The most important promise I made to myself was that I would finish Tumbleweeds.

The idea began with a story my Uncle Dwight told me when I was a young man, probably during a hunting trip. For years afterward, I would ask him to tell it again. The story itself was entertaining, but the retelling was part of the fun.

Dwight had run away from home, and my grandfather paired my Dad with a deputy to go find him. They never did. By the time my Dad caught up with Dwight, his runaway brother was already back at the house.

At one DeBolt family reunion, I got Dwight and my Dad on camera telling the story together. They kept interrupting and correcting each other, each one certain that the other had gotten some important detail wrong.

I still have that tape, and I need to find someone who can transfer it to digital before time does anything else to it.

That family story became the seed of Tumbleweeds. It stayed in my head for years, along with the opening line, before I finally sat down and began turning it into a novel.

I started writing in June 2024.

Once I began, I worked like a dog. I wrote every day, pushing myself because I wanted to have the manuscript finished before school began. I missed that deadline by a couple of weeks, but I kept going until the story was done.

There was another deadline that mattered far more.

I desperately wanted my Dad to see the book before he died.

At the DeBolt family reunion in September 2024, I was able to put a printed copy of Tumbleweeds into his hands.

He died that December.

I don’t know how much of the manuscript he was able to read or exactly what he thought of every chapter. But he held the book. He saw my name on it. He knew that a story he had lived, helped tell and helped preserve had become something real.

That mattered to me then. It matters even more now.

Tumbleweeds still has another journey ahead of it. Finishing a manuscript is not the same as publishing one, and there is still editing, polishing and decision-making to do.

But I kept the promise that mattered most.

I finished the book, and my Dad got to hold it.

So yes, WordPress, I have “actually” kept a promise to myself.

You may close the investigation.

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Copyright © 2026 Doug DeBolt.