“To translate a book is to enter into a relationship with it, to approach and accompany it, to know it intimately, word by word, and to enjoy the comfort of its company in return,” says Jhumpa Lahiri in her 2021 Sebald Lecture “In Praise of Echo.” In the lecture, Lahiri invites readers to think of translation in broad terms, as not simply restating something in another language, but as a “miraculous transformation in which specific traits and elements are shed and others are newly obtained.” Spend time with this idea of translation as transformation and write a personal essay about an experience in which you metamorphosed an experience, an emotion, or yourself into a different “language.” This language might be a visual art form, music, a different genre of literature, or another form of expression.

In a 1981 interview published in the Paris Review, Gabriel García Márquez tells Peter Stone how his grandmother inspired the narrative voice in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, which tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family and presents its fantastical elements with utter naturalness. Márquez wanted to write the novel’s magical narratives “with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.” Write a short story that incorporates mystical or supernatural elements while maintaining a tone based in reality, in which these elements are considered commonplace. What themes and truths about your characters are easier to express in this imagined world? As you write, consider what Márquez says about storytelling: “A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe it.”

In an interview published in Poetry Northwest, C. E. Janecek speaks with Asa Drake, author of Maybe the Body (Tin House, 2026), about language and its imprecision, and when it’s best to leave things unsaid. “In customer service one avoids negation because it often points to a conflict,” says Drake. “For example I might say ‘walk please’ instead of ‘no running’ and replace a rule with a directive. I’m really interested in why the command is less offensive than the rule.” Write a poem in which the speaker gives instructions to prohibit an act or behavior. Begin each stanza with an imperative verb and try avoiding negative words such as “don’t,” “no,” “never,” or “not.” How can you portray what is forbidden to a reader without explicitly naming the rules?

Music often has the ability to evoke a strong sense of nostalgia, whether it’s favorite songs played over and over during a certain phase of life or heard on the radio for a season. Songs can be introduced or recommended by loved ones, and lyrics might remind us of a particular person. Music could have even been sung along to during childhood road trips with family or become the perfect soundtrack for a specific town or city you’ve visited or lived in. Jot down a list of several songs that bring you back to a certain someone, someplace, or sometime. Write a personal essay composed of a series of vignettes about each song and the sense of nostalgia and associated memories that arise when you listen to the music. As you write, you might want to listen to the songs and incorporate lyrics into your essay.

This week compose a short story arising out of a two-part exercise that illuminates a new side of the old “show, don’t tell” strategy. First, imagine that your main character has just experienced a significant change in their life, maybe something unexpected or even shocking: a sudden relationship breakup, news about a family member’s health getting worse, winning the lottery, or running into a long-lost love. Then write a short story that takes place the day after this revelation as they go about their day—whether looking out a window on a bus commute, walking in the neighborhood, or preparing a meal—but refrain from mentioning anything about what happened the day before. Instead, focus on how your character’s observations and feelings about their immediate surroundings might be colored by their current state of mind.

If familects are the unique words and phrases that are created within a family from inside jokes, shared experiences, and specific needs, then we can think of friendlects as the parallel for private languages created between close friends. These specific, social dialects bond a family and friend unit. What happens when the two languages meet? Write a poem that incorporates a word or phrase that is only used within your family and one that was created with a friend. In your poem, you might find yourself exploring themes of intimacy and the powers and shortcomings of language as a mode of expression and communication. You could also consider how communal bonds are built, ideas around belonging and unbelonging, and being an insider or an outsider. How do you bond with others through language?

In Steven Soderbergh’s dark comedy film The Christophers, a young Black artist takes on an assignment to forge a series of paintings by an elderly, white, formerly renowned painter, whose earlier works are worth millions. The older painter’s grown children hope that the eventual sales of these forged earlier works will provide them with an influx of wealth as the painter has not produced noteworthy pieces in decades and has since been “canceled.” Initially an antagonistic relationship between an older artist and his supposedly hired-out-of-nowhere assistant, the two eventually warm toward each other and develop a bond through their exchanges about the value and legacy of art. Write a personal essay about an instance when you forged an unusual bond with an unlikely stranger or acquaintance, despite significant differences in age, identity, and temperament. What conversations and ideas brought you two together?

As recent studies reveal the dangers of social media addiction, particularly with younger people, there has been an increase in bans on cell phones in high schools around the nation and worldwide, which in turn has prompted debate about the limits of restrictions, parental concerns, and the effectiveness of bans when many teenagers often resort to using burner phones. This week, write a short story that revolves around a recently imposed ban on cell phones at a high school and the ripple effects. When a formerly used mode of communication is disrupted, what kind of miscommunications might occur? Explore various characters’ viewpoints, including students, teachers, administration, parents, and groups of teen friends. Are there potential upsides? You might even find yourself incorporating elements of a comedy of errors or a mystery.

“Summer grass aches and whispers. // It wants something; it calls and sings; it pours / out wishes to the overhead stars.” In Carl Sandburg’s three-stanza poem “Summer Grass,” originally published in his 1928 collection Good Morning, America, the poet explores sentiments of longing and transition, capturing the spiky heat and dryness of summer through a personification of grass straining for cool, nourishing hydration, and then the deliverance of rain. As summer slowly transitions into autumn, compose a series of short poems that manifest both the physical sensations and the emotional elements you might associate with two consecutive seasons, moving from one to the other. How can you play with rhythm and line breaks, sound and space, to express movement and energy?

In Amy Gallo’s essay, “Forever Faithful to a Single Story: An Ode to Monogamous Writing,” published on Literary Hub, the author writes about her decades-long commitment to a single manuscript and how she adamantly avoided juggling multiple writing projects in the process of publishing her first book. “I couldn’t move on because I was still spoken for, I suppose, my consciousness occupied by the single story closest to my heart,” writes Gallo. Write a personal essay reflecting on your commitment to an essay or manuscript you’ve been working on. Do you tend to focus on one project at a time or do you enjoy taking breaks with something new?