The Time Is Now

What kind of story would you write for someone reading it one hundred years from now? For Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library project, which started in 2014, she has commissioned Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell, Elif Shafak, Sjón, and Han Kang to write manuscripts that will remain unread in storage in an Oslo library until 2114. The texts will then be printed on paper made from one thousand trees planted in a Norwegian forest when the project began. Write a short story with the notion that it won’t be read for one hundred years. While imagining a future generation of readers, explore themes involving time, eternity, and mortality.

“This place in which I dream the new body — whole & abiding — // I am reaching for the boy now as warden to both the living / & the afterliving…” Khaty Xiong’s poem “On Visiting the Franklin Park Conservatory & Botanical Gardens” is the basis for an interactive installation currently on view at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. Visitors can write poems and messages exploring grief on paper cutouts of plants and animals which are then displayed in the gallery. Draw or cut out a paper template in the form of something from nature, and write a poem within its frame addressing or dedicated to a lost loved one. Does your poem, and the emotions contained within it, take shape in different ways according to the shape of your paper?

Can you remember the last time you handwrote a lengthy text? The Magic of Handwriting, an exhibit currently on view at the Morgan Library in New York City, showcases a collection of handwritten documents and autographs acquired by Brazilian author and publisher Pedro Corrêa do Lago. The exhibition includes intimate inscriptions by Jorge Luis Borges, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Emily Dickinson, Allen Ginsberg, Marcel Proust, and Oscar Wilde, among others. Write a personal essay about how your own handwriting has changed from childhood, through adolescence and adulthood. What memories are brought to mind when looking at your old handwriting? Perhaps try handwriting the first draft of your essay to help connect back into this practice.

Imagine a town with no Wi-Fi, no cell phones or cordless phones, where microwaves are kept in metal cages, and only 1950s and diesel engine cars are allowed on the road. All of these are real restrictions in Green Bank, a tiny West Virginia town situated inside a designated National Radio Quiet Zone, where data collection by astronomers at the observatory can be disrupted by the presence of electronic interference. Write a short story in which your main character resides in a town with similar restrictions. Is living off the grid a choice? How do the daily tasks and communication of your character differ without the convenience of the tools and technology we often take for granted?

Gardens, forests, hills, fields, wild pink flowers, a farmhouse, a writer’s shed, birds. There is much inspiration to be found at Edna St. Vincent Millay’s former home in Austerlitz, New York, which is open to the public. Visitors can even peek into Millay’s wardrobe to see her shoes, hats, purses, makeup, dresses, and hunting jacket. In “Saving Millay’s Home” by Adrienne Raphel in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, she writes about Millay’s house and other writers’ homes in the region including the Emily Dickinson Museum, Edith Wharton’s estate, the Mark Twain House, Herman Melville’s home, and several of Robert Frost’s homes. Browse through writers’ homes in our Literary Places database for one of your favorites, or simply one whose photographs capture your imagination. Write a poem that draws on images you find, the writer’s work and milieu, and themes of home, geography, and legacy.

“One of the most surprising responses to my book came from my mother. She said above all what the poems illustrated to her is that anyone can be a monster to any number of people—even if they don’t intend to act in ways that harm,” writes Diana Arterian in an essay on the Poetry Foundation’s blog, Harriet. Write an essay about a time when you were caught off guard by a surprising or unusual response to your creative writing, perhaps by someone close to you. How did this unexpected, or unintended, reaction offer a new perspective into your own work? 

How did your neighborhood get its name? Was it christened by long-ago settlers or spread slowly by local gossipers or journalists? Or might it have been cartographers at Google Maps, which often lists neighborhood names with seemingly no recognizable origin or historical basis, such as East Cut in San Francisco, Fishkorn in Detroit (a typographical error from what was formerly known as Fiskhorn), Midtown South Central in New York City, or Silver Lake Heights in Los Angeles. Invent a descriptive name for a fictional town. Then, write a short story based around the origin of this name. Does the geography or a consequential event play a part in the name and story?

In “Why Songs of the Summer Sound the Same,” a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, Sahil Chinoy and Jessia Ma break down summer hit songs from years past into several key shared elements: danceability, energy, loudness, valence (cheerfulness), and acousticness (use of acoustic instruments). This week, write a poem about your summer that incorporates some of these hit song elements. Can you induce danceability in verse form? How might you play around with typography, punctuation, spacing, or diction to create a sense of loudness or acousticness? 

As part of its 2018 exhibition season focused on the future, the Rubin museum in New York City has a program for visitors to write a letter to an incoming museumgoer. The letter may provide directions or insights that could potentially transform the future visitor’s own museum experience. This week, after completing an activity such as going to an art show, watching a movie, or eating at a restaurant, write a letter to a hypothetical follower in your footsteps. Include your emotional responses and personal memories, and any suggestions or recommendations that might offer guidance for the experience.

“When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote of the hotel he often frequented with F. Scott Fitzgerald. The hotel is used in his novel The Sun Also Rises, and is also the setting of his story “A Room on the Garden Side,” written in 1956 and published for the first time in this summer’s issue of the Strand magazine. Think of a short story you’ve written in which the setting plays a significant role, and write a new story that uses the same locale. How do different characters’ perceptions of the same setting add new dimension to the space?