In a recent interview published on the Creative Independent, author and editor Naomi Falk talks about the importance of ritual and her daily morning habits of cooking, meditation, walking, and dream journaling. “I adore the morning time,” she says. “Between the hours of six and nine, everything that I do is just for myself.” Write a personal essay that takes a look at how you like to start and end your day, including the type of atmosphere and activities that help you ease into the morning and how you like your night to wrap up. Where might spirituality or dreams come into play? Does exercise or body movement contribute to a sense of warming up or cooling down before and after the day’s events? Consider how your relationship to patterns and repetitive habits say something about where you are in your life.

In The Invite, a recent film directed by Olivia Wilde with a screenplay by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, an unhappily married couple invite their upstairs neighbors over to their apartment for dinner and the evening leads to unexpected revelations after a risqué proposition. Taking inspiration from the contained setting of an apartment and the ripe ingredients for drama and comedy of mysterious neighbors and an awkward proposal, write a short story in which members of a household—a couple, multi-generational family members, or housemates—invite neighbors they don’t really know over for a gathering and a surprising idea or proposition is brought up. How does this closed space open up a multitude of possibilities in terms of what might go wrong or right, and how the characters end up learning from one another?

What do you think of when you hear the word clown? In a 2022 Los Angeles Times article by Jake Kroeger about the contemporary state of clowning in the arts and its growing popularity, clown teacher and performer Jet Eveleth defines the word as “a celebration of the physical and vulnerable side of the human experience.” Eveleth points out how the actions of a clown, whether it be falling down or falling in love, are “poking fun at the human condition.” This week write a “clown” poem, allowing yourself to explore whatever the word brings up for you. Perhaps it is children’s birthday parties, horror movie villains, campy decor, circus hijinks, or something that lives in the contradiction of simultaneous joy and sorrow. How do the paradoxes of a clown—both happy and sad, silly and sinister—reveal truths about the human condition?

Ships and boats, clocks, bird cages, Black dolls, antlers, and masks. Artist Betye Saar, who passed away last month at the age of ninety-nine, was renowned for her assemblage works created with found objects that she gathered in her studio over the course of decades, objects she used to explore social issues of racism, stereotypes, femininity, and spirituality. “I’ve always felt that old objects hold a power,” Saar stated in a 2024 New York Times interview. “They’ve survived, and they have a sense of the previous owner. They have a spirit.” What objects have you collected over the years? Jot down a list of old objects, perhaps the types of everyday items you might find at a garage sale or antique collectibles shop. Then, write a lyric essay with short reflections, experimenting with how to put the objects in play with one another thematically when you consider their spirit and who owned them previously.

A plane delay, whether of fifteen minutes or five hours, can set off an unexpected series of consequences as travelers often have plans with people awaiting them upon arrival at the other end. It may involve gatherings with family and friends, business meetings, vacation activities, restaurant reservations, show tickets, or connecting flights to catch. This week, write a short story that launches with a character experiencing a short or long flight delay, unfurling a chain reaction that affects an important relationship in their life. You might choose to stay with one character throughout the entirety of the story or cobble together a narrative that weaves together the stories of multiple characters affected by the fallout of the same delayed flight. How do differing characters’ responses reveal something about their personality and priorities?

“Down valley a smoke haze / Three days heat, after five days rain,” writes Gary Snyder in his poem “Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout,” first published in his 1959 collection Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems, as the speaker looks out from a mountaintop to describe the scene below before briefly moving on. In the second stanza, more interiority is revealed: “I cannot remember things I once read / A few friends, but they are in cities….” Inspired by Snyder’s verse, write a short poem consisting of two five-line stanzas about a memorable mid-August from your life. Start with a few evocative details that paint a picture of the scene, including what this particular moment looks, feels, sounds, and smells like. In your second stanza, allow your mind to wander toward more philosophical or existential musings.

In her 2024 memoir, I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris, published by Penguin Life, Glynnis MacNicol lists the items in her suitcase when packing to live in Paris for a year and reveals that Joan Didion was a source of inspiration. “In The White Album, Joan Didion famously wrote down her packing list, radical at the time—Tampax!— and revealing in its intimacy and simplicity,” writes MacNicol. “As a storytelling device, it was admirable in what it told the reader about the writer, about her life, and about what it meant to be a woman in the world, without seeming to say much.” Write a personal essay anchored by a list of your belongings—whether it be from a suitcase, grocery tote, or any other bag. Consider using certain items as entry points into memories and experiences, using them like pieces of a portrait, each adding another layer to you in that moment.

In the film Obsession, directed by Curry Barker, protagonist and hopeless romantic Bear finds a supernatural toy that grants his wish for his friend Nikki to fall madly in love with him. The consequences of his wish are soon revealed when Nikki becomes terrifyingly attached and devoted to him, and it becomes harder to decipher her true self. Write a short story from the point of view of someone under a love spell. Show the process of your character transforming as they grow deeper in their fixation. You might explore the darker facets of this obsession and loss of autonomy through an internal monologue. How can you incorporate glimpses of reality within a story told behind rose-tinted glasses?

In a recent installment of our Ten Questions series, Maya C. Popa talks about how her palindrome poem “One Way or Another” became the opening poem of her collection If You Love That Lady (Norton, 2026) and the first one she remembers writing for it. “Its back-and-forth, snake-swallowing-its-own-tail quality would end up being emblematic of both those years and my experience assembling the manuscript,” she says. This week, write a palindrome poem in which the last half mirrors the first half. You may choose to adhere strictly to a set of lines, reversing the order halfway through the piece with no alterations, or choose to divert from this structure while keeping the halves of the poem a reflection, be it structural or figurative. How might symmetry serve as an embodiment of your poem’s themes?

“My essay on tigers started with the question of whether Blake, when he wrote ‘The Tyger,’ had ever seen a real tiger,” says Eliot Weinberger in an interview by Srikanth Reddy for the Paris Review’s “Art of the Essay” series. “That got me looking into the mythology and image of the tiger in the West.” Stemming from a deceptively simple question, Weinberger’s celebrated essay “Paper Tigers” investigates the complex history of tiger iconography and fascination with the wild animal. Write an essay that begins with a simple question and draws from a piece of mythos, whether cultural or private, that is present in your life. What associations and symbolisms does your subject conjure for you?