The Time Is Now

Something Something Soup Something is a video game, or “interactive thought experiment,” created by Dr. Stefano Gualeni, a philosopher and video game designer at the University of Malta. In the game, you are presented with an image and a list of ingredients, and are simply asked to decide “Soup” or “Not Soup.” For example: “Rocks with flies and a candy cane served in a hat with a fork.” Taking this question as inspiration, try writing a scene that begins with a bowl of soup. Perhaps the scene focuses on the senses involved in creating and tasting the soup, or an absurd bit of dialogue debating the definition of soup. Let the strangeness of this thought experiment guide your story out of the ordinary.

Celebrities are often used as subjects in contemporary poetry, from movie stars to athletes, to singers and reality TV stars. In his poem “Marilyn Monroe,” Frank Bidart considers Monroe through a symbolic, almost metaphysical lens. In her poem “Beyoncé in Third Person,” Morgan Parker presents Beyoncé as a point of contrast for reflecting upon her own life. This week, try zeroing in on a celebrity that fascinates you. Start with a few notes on why this celebrity is iconic and build upon these points for your own poem.

Cultures around the world have always developed rituals and traditions to act as guides through all types and stages of interpersonal relationships. Taking inspiration from “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” the title story from the 2001 collection by Alice Munro, choose one of these words and think of a personal habit, routine, or ritual you have developed or participated in as part of a relationship. You might think about or research historical or modern friendship rituals involving bracelets and necklaces, or secret passwords and handshakes. You might find inspiration in considering romance and courtship traditions involving chastity belts, love potions, gentlemen callers—even arranged marriages. Write a short personal essay that delves deep into your experiences and memories, exploring the social conventions and restrictions involved in your navigation of that relationship. 

Many traditional symbols of the winter holiday season bring with them associations of playfulness, innocence, togetherness, and celebration. Jo Nesbø’s crime novel The Snowman, however, turns one such symbol on its head, following a detective as he tracks a serial killer whose victims are always found after winter’s first snowfall, with a snowman nearby. Many other authors have experimented with the ominous side of holiday symbolism, such as Terry Pratchett in his fantasy novel Hogfather (a twist on Father Christmas); Christopher Moore in the satirical The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror; and Nick Hornby in his darkly humorous A Long Way Down, in which four strangers coincidentally decide to jump off the roof of the same high-rise building on New Year’s Eve. Write a short story in which you subvert an expectation that arises with a holiday of your choice, imbuing one of the symbols surrounding the occasion with a new layer of meaning. Why might holiday cheer and sentimentality inspire stories of the opposite?

Plaid flannel shirt, leather pants, polo shirt, hoodie, Levi’s 501 jeans, fanny pack, Dr. Martens, red lipstick. The exhibit “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” organized by Paola Antonelli and Michelle Millar Fisher, curators at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, explores 111 iconic clothing pieces that have transformed fashion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, interweaving research and responses from designers and engineers on politics, cultural identity, labor, technology, aesthetics, and economics. Many contemporary poems that revolve around clothing also focus on basic and iconic items, such as Ruth Fainlight’s “Handbag,” Lynda Hull’s “Red Velvet Jacket,” Michael Longley’s “The Pattern,” “Harryette Mullen’s “Black Nikes,” and Sean O’Brien’s “Cousin Coat,” and investigate the intimacies of creation, nostalgia, transformation, and appearance. Write a poem that excavates the memories associated with one of your favorite everyday clothing items, then move on to provide a personal point of view of the item’s wider historical and functional roles. 

“Yet where else besides windows can we perceive the thin boundaries between our inner and outer realities?” Justin Hocking’s essay “Diving Through Windows” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine is a series of vignettes, quotations, anecdotes, and observations that all revolve literally or metaphorically around windows. Hocking discusses windows in the context of creative perspective, architecture, literature, politics, linguistics, and nature. Choose a symbolic object, perhaps an architectural element, and write an essay comprised of short vignettes that explore a variety of topics currently on your mind.

Of the nearly seventy thousand passenger elevators in New York City, there are likely less than a hundred left that are holdovers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, manually run by full-time elevator operators. This week, write a scene for a short story that takes place in a manually operated elevator. Do the passengers feel a sense of wonder, anxiety, or accustomed indifference in the old-fashioned space with its noisy and rickety movements? What kind of conversation or other interaction might take place between passengers and the operator?

“The happiest places incubate happiness for their people,” writes Dan Buettner in National Geographic about findings from the annual World Happiness Report that revealed that three-quarters of human happiness is driven by six factors. These include: strong economic growth, healthy life expectancy, quality social relationships, generosity, trust, and freedom to live the life that’s right for you. Write a poem that examines how your personal happiness is connected to your location and environment. How does living in your home, neighborhood, city, state, or country affect your general feelings of contentment or joy? Think of specific memories of happiness, and explore how a particular location might have contributed in direct or indirect ways to your feelings.

As writers, we tend to put up a wall between our creative writing (poems, stories, essays) and our more ordinary writing (to-do lists, e-mails). This week, try poking a hole in that wall. Think back and reflect upon an e-mail you received recently that startled you, that brought you unexpected happiness or unexpected pain. Or reflect on a recent to-do list you’ve written for yourself. Write an essay that feels as immediate as these messages or lists. Think about where you were physically and emotionally when you read or wrote these words. What does this say about you in this moment in time? 

In her new photography series titled “Home,” Gohar Dashti explores the interiors of houses in her native Iran that have been abandoned and reclaimed by nature. The images create an ambiguous effect; an old bedroom overrun with wildflowers is lovely in one sense, but also hints at a darker history. What happened in these houses and why did the people who once lived in them leave? This week, imagine what it would look, sound, and smell like, and how it would feel to have your childhood home overtaken by nature. Try using this eerie space as the setting for a short story.