“The nice thing about writing fiction is that we can put our characters through things we’d never be brave—or foolhardy—enough to do,” writes Larissa Pham in a recent essay published on Literary Hub about how her debut novel, Discipline (Random House, 2026), was inspired by writing about a subject that scared her. “Through our writing, we leap into the unknown.” This week consider some of your greatest fears, anything from creepy crawlies to the loss of loved ones to melodramatic betrayal. Write a short story that revolves around one of these fears, concocting an arc that fluctuates between moments of slow, modulated actions and descriptions of higher tensions. Do you find yourself inclined to take the story to intense extremes or to end things on a simmer?

In “Object Loss,” which appears in her Pulitzer Prize–winning poetry collection, Stag’s Leap (Knopf, 2012), Sharon Olds touches upon the emotions brought up from objects that were formerly tied to a romantic partner—a clock, a chair, a table. These physical items exemplify the metaphysicality of human connection. “As I add to the stash which will go to him,” writes Olds, “I feel as if I’m falling away / from family—as of each ponderous / object had been keeping me afloat. No, they were / the scenery of the play now closing, / lengthy run it had.” Jot down a list of objects that you’ve held on to from people you’ve loved in the past. Compose a poem that incorporates several of those items, taking care to describe their physical attributes. What sentiments did they evoke while in the act of parting, and after?

“A strange thing happens when a monument enters a museum: it becomes a lot less sure of itself,” writes Alex Kitnick in a 4Columns review about the MONUMENTS exhibition currently on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “Separated from their pedestals, museum monuments look lost, wandering, missing their lift.” Taking inspiration from this exhibition, which decontextualizes toppled Confederate memorial statues, pick out a statue or memorial that you find striking. Write an essay about the original intentions of the monument and then think about what it would mean to take it out of its physical and historical context. How does this act connect to your personal experiences?

Aria Aber’s debut novel, Good Girl (Hogarth, 2025), follows the life of a young artist living in Berlin, who grapples with the history and contemporary racial tensions of both the country in which she resides, and her cultural identity as a Muslim woman and the daughter of Afghan refugees. In an interview for the Creative Independent, Aber talks about exploring her relationship to shame and desire through writing the novel, and how desire can be an antidote to shame but also come with a feeling of shame. “To want something is inherently embarrassing and risky,” says Aber. Write a short story with a character who has a deeply buried or previously uninterrogated feeling of shame. What are the roots of this shame? Is it tied to national, global, or cultural expectations?