The Time Is Now

Plant blindness is a term used by botanists and horticulturists to describe contemporary humanity’s general inability to see the plants and trees in our daily environments as more than just decorative background. Many gardening and plant experts and enthusiasts encourage educational courses or casual tree identification walks as activities that can begin influencing the way the majority of people view and value plants. Write a short story in which a character who once had plant blindness develops a new awareness of greenery. What moment or situation provokes the change? Does the change manifest itself in dramatic and monumental ways, or in more subtle shifts of behavior and beliefs?

“Well, I only write about cute boys and snowy streets, so my poems are always in tune with each other. Seriously, though, I find myself returning to the same subjects. I try to vary my approach to these subjects,” poet Chen Chen says in an interview in the Adroit Journal. Select a poem you’ve written in the past and write a new poem that returns to the same subject from a different angle. Has your perspective become more nuanced over time? How does altering your point of view, verse form, or language provide your topic with a refreshed perspective?

Earlier this year scientists published a study in the journal Nature detailing the first time genes with serious disease-causing mutations have been successfully edited in human embryos to produce healthy mutation-free embryos. Write a personal essay about the moral and ethical implications of gene-editing science as it continues to progress. In a hypothetical time when these advances might be a part of routine medical procedures, what decisions would you make for yourself and your family and loved ones? Read National Geographic’s “5 Reasons Gene Editing Is Both Terrific and Terrifying” for more insight.

In the past fifteen years or so, dozens of lighthouses no longer needed by the United States Coast Guard have been auctioned off to the public. Buyers have found a variety of new uses for their lighthouses, such as converting them into hotels or vacation homes, or even a concert venue. Write a short story in which your main character comes into possession of a decommissioned lighthouse. Where is it located and how does she decide to make use of it? Does it end up being a blessing or a burden? How can you play with the metaphorical potential of the lighthouse in an unexpected way?

“Part of the pleasure I take in being a writer and reader of poetry is this instant intimacy. By the first page, we’re practically what one would refer to as family—at this point, I’m comfortable in my nightclothes and headscarf.” In “Vagrant & Vulnerable,” Dawn Lundy Martin’s conversation with Nicole Sealey in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, Sealey talks about feeling comfortable infusing her poems with a naked vulnerability and intimacy. What do you find yourself thinking about when the notion of outside criticism or judgment is not an issue? While envisioning your most comfortable clothing, an outfit you might wear at home with family, write a poem that embodies this level of immediate familiarity, delving into a tightly held or private subject perhaps only known by your closest loved ones. 

Many people associate drinking apple cider with popular fall activities in the northern and eastern United States, such as apple picking and leaf peeping, but few likely know it is New Hampshire’s official beverage. The state approved the official designation in 2010 following a petition submitted by fourth-grade students. In fact, more than half the states in this country have official beverages, a trend started by Ohio, which made tomato juice its official beverage in 1965, and followed by Massachusetts (cranberry juice) and Florida (orange juice). Many other states (Wisconsin, New York, Vermont, and Oregon among them) selected milk. Write a personal essay or manifesto under the premise of petitioning for your own beverage of choice. Support your argument with personal memories, anecdotes, and research.

The campus novel is a work of fiction that revolves primarily around an academic campus, most often a college or university. Some fall into the category of coming-of-age stories, such as Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Marriage Plot and Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, while others are more focused on faculty, such as Mary McCarthy’s The Groves of Academe and Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. Campus novels offer the opportunity to explore characters within the hierarchical structures and pressurized environment of a closed educational system and the contrasting perspectives of teachers and students because of differences in age, power, class, and social and cultural values. Write a short story that focuses on students and/or teachers in a high school or college setting, perhaps integrating elements of comedy and satire like Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim and Jane Smiley’s Moo, science fiction like Jonathan Lethem’s As She Climbed Across the Table, murder mystery like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, sports like Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, or supernatural Gothic horror like Joyce Carol Oates’s The Accursed.

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, / Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— / While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping…” First published almost two hundred years ago, Edgar Allan Poe’s narrative poem “The Raven” was itself partially inspired by the raven in Charles Dickens’s novel Barnaby Rudge and has gone on to spark numerous renditions, homages, and parodies. And the poem’s influence has extended far beyond literature, giving a name to an NFL team (Baltimore Ravens) and providing inspiration for a range of artists, from cartoonists (The Simpsons and Calvin and Hobbes) to musicians (Lou Reed and the Grateful Dead). Write a poem that takes its cue from an element of Poe’s verse that you are especially drawn toward. Consider its themes of loss and devotion; the extensive use of alliteration and rhyme; the “nevermore” refrain; classical, mythological, and biblical references; the question-and-answer sequencing; the symbolism of the raven; or the forebodingly dark atmosphere.

In a New York Times review of three recently reissued books by English-born artist and author Leonora Carrington, Parul Sehgal describes Carrington’s habit of writing in rudimentary Spanish or French, an example of exophony, the practice of writing in a language that is not the writer’s native tongue. Sehgal also recounts Samuel Beckett, who after adopting French, stated in a letter: “More and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the Nothingness) behind it.” Write a short essay about a particularly resonant memory. Then try rewriting the same memory either in another language, even if you only have a basic knowledge of it, or in a style of English that has been “torn apart” and defamiliarized. Do you find this practice freeing or limiting? Which elements of the memory and your storytelling are drastically altered, and what remains consistent throughout both versions?

In “How Deep This Grief: Wrestling With Writing as Therapy” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, Ian Stansel recounts not being able to write about his sister after her death, but realizing that he could write for her and try to write a book that she would love. Part of Stansel’s writing practice involves choosing someone he knows, often a family member, to stand in as the “ideal reader” that he keeps in mind while working on specific projects. Write a short story and use someone you know as an imagined ideal reader. Does having one specific person as your imagined reader inspire you to draw certain ideas, motifs, traits, or themes to the surface?