Among the thousands of structures that were destroyed in the devastating Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year was one home in Altadena. The house had been slated for renovations to become a foundation and residency honoring the late author and critic Gary Indiana, who died in October 2024. A shipment of hundreds of books constituting the writer’s personal library arrived at the home hours before the Eaton Fire, the entirety of which is now lost. Along with the library was an irreplaceable record of the authors who inspired Indiana’s work. In an act of reparative imagination, write a personal essay about a literary hero of yours and reflect on what might drive their creativity. If there are interviews and other materials available in which your subject reveals their muses, allow yourself the freedom to focus on your own speculations and connections.
Writing Prompts & Exercises
The Time Is Now
The Time Is Now offers three new and original writing prompts each week to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. We also curate a list of essential books on writing—both the newly published and the classics—that we recommend for guidance and inspiration. Whether you’re struggling with writer’s block, looking for a fresh topic, or just starting to write, our archive of writing prompts has what you need. Need a starter pack? Check out our Writing Prompts for Beginners.
Tuesdays: Poetry prompts
Wednesdays: Fiction prompts
Thursdays: Creative nonfiction prompts
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“The difficulty of living through long minutes is a central concern of Cléo From 5 to 7, a film set in real time and real space, which follows an aspiring young pop star as she endures time—the real running time of the film—waiting for the results of a biopsy,” writes Laura McLean-Ferris about Agnès Varda’s 1962 film in an essay published in frieze magazine. “Subjective time periodically bloating and stretching in confusion and loneliness, while objective time ticks on.” Unlike with a film or play, the reader of a story sets the timing of their engagement with the work by their reading pace, on their starts and stops. But the writer, too, has many tools to bloat and stretch time within the confines of a story. Write a short story that moves slowly and in “long minutes” to allow certain moments to stretch or contract according to your main character’s state of mind.
April is National Humor Month, which means it’s the perfect time to be reminded that everyone has a funny bone. The annual observance was conceived to heighten public awareness of the therapeutic value of humor, laughter, and joy. This week, consider what others have said about your sense of humor over the years. Does it lean toward puns or dad jokes? Is it witty or dark, laconic or bizarre, goofy or lighthearted? Write a short series of poems that showcases your specific sensibility around amusement and how you value humor and joy in your life. You might find it helpful to recount recent experiences and images that made you chuckle or guffaw and try to manifest in your poem what specifically made you laugh out loud.
Directed Boris Lojkine, the award-winning French drama film Souleymane’s Story follows a young immigrant from Guinea who prepares for his interview to seek asylum refugee status in Paris. In the harrowing forty-eight hours prior to his interview, Souleymane careens through the streets as a bike courier for a food delivery app account he rents for a hefty fee from a fellow immigrant, tries to memorize falsified stories about political imprisonment another immigrant coaches him on for a fee, and rushes to find a bed each night in a homeless shelter. Write a personal essay that recounts a momentous event from your life and begins forty-eight hours before the climactic scene. Try playing with focused descriptions of your surroundings and the style of your prose to reflect the pacing and dramatic moments of your story.
What kind of effect can a casual, offhand compliment have on a stranger? According to social psychology research, compliments benefit both the giver and receiver, spread positive emotions, and are usually more welcome than expected. This week write a short story in which the bestowing of a compliment has a ripple effect and transforms, in slight or significant ways, the lives of both the giver and the receiver. Spend some time considering how you wish to set up the trajectory of each character before the compliment is given and what compels this exchange to occur. Is the admirer moved to say something in the moment or is this something they’ve been wanting to say for a long time?
In a 2023 BOMB Magazine interview by Wendy Xu, she asks Emily Lee Luan about the cinematic, image-specific aesthetic of the poems in her collection 回 / Return (Nightboat Books, 2023). “I think my poems try to understand internal emotional change through the external world—that might be why image and scene are so central,” says Luan. “If you look at something for long enough, then you might be able to understand what’s happening within you.” Take inspiration from this juxtaposition between interiority and externality, and the notion of finding understanding and connection through prolonged observation, and write a poem that uses extensive imagery to reflect the speaker’s internal emotional state. In lieu of expository description, how does imagistic expression lend a different kind of dynamism to your work?
How much creative work do you do in a day? When Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei was asked this question for the New York Times Style Magazine’s Artist’s Questionnaire series, he said, “My work is trying to break the boundary of what is normally called ‘creative.’ I avoid trying to be creative. I try to push myself into normal life and bring the integrity of a normal life into the so-called art world.” Take inspiration from the idea of breaking down these boundaries and consider all the different ways your creative identity potentially bleeds over into your daily tasks and vice versa. Write a personal essay that begins with an exploration of how your relationship to language, craft, or aesthetics has affected your general outlook. Then expand on how this artistic perspective manifests in your day-to-day habits, actions, and interactions.
In Matt Spicer’s 2017 dark comedy film Ingrid Goes West, Aubrey Plaza stars as a woman obsessed with social media who moves to Los Angeles after a brief stint in a psychiatric ward and attempts to befriend her influencer idol which eventually leads to chaos. The satire makes clear the extent to which the use of social media can be a type of performance and the potential destruction that may result from mistaking artifice for truth. Write a short story in which one of your main characters interacts with social media in a way that has dramatic repercussions due to their excessive trust in digital personas and confusion between reality and life online. You might play around with describing and presenting social media posts, language, and imagery in an innovative way.
Over the course of Rita Dove’s three-stanza prose poem “Prose in a Small Space,” the speaker meanders through a sequence of questions, observations, and digressions, periodically returning to the functionality of the prose poem form itself. “Prose likes to hear itself talk; prose is development and denouement, anticipation hovering near the canapés, lust rampant in the antipasta,” writes Dove. This week, forgo the options of line breaks and nonstandard grammar of more conventional poetry, and compose a series of short prose poems that take greater advantage of other poetry elements—rhythm, prosody, diction, pacing, and sensory details. Allow your prose to “hear itself talk,” develop, and conclude.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Five years later, it may all feel like a distant dream (or nightmare) or completely forgotten, but there’s no denying that the pandemic created irrevocable changes in our world, both big and small. Write a personal essay that reflects on how your life has transformed in the last five years. You might trace certain hopes, fears, or expectations as they evolved over the course of each year and consider where you are today. What have been the biggest shifts in your mindset regarding relationships with family and friends, socializing, health, finances, and travel?
In Bye Bye I Love You: The Story of Our First and Last Words (The MIT Press, 2025), linguist and author Michael Erard examines the beginnings of language in infancy and the endings in aging and death from a range of angles: common and idiosyncratic utterances, perspectives on their importance, and the beliefs and practices underpinning first words and last words from different eras, cultures, and religions. Write a short story that revolves around either someone’s first or final words—perhaps a sentence, phrase, or fragment that could be interpreted in multiple ways or is somehow cryptic. How do the other characters respond? Are there disagreements about the significance or meaning of these words?
Can a poem calm the nerves? Whether it’s reading, listening to music, meditating, taking a walk, or observing the natural environment, consider the activities and sensory experiences that bring you some peace of mind. Compose a poem with diction, rhythm, imagery, and sentiments that evoke a state of tranquility. You might prepare by initially jotting down a list of words, phrases, and tidbits of sensory details, including specific sounds and types of words that align with your serene tone. Be open and allow yourself to be honest—and even playful—about what calms you down.
“There’s so much more to a book than just the reading; there is a sensuousness,” author and illustrator Maurice Sendak once said in a 1970 interview. Contrary to the growing demand of audiobooks and e-books, the tactile and tangible presence of a printed book is still regarded by antiquarian and rare book collectors, as well as bookstore lovers. Write a personal essay that examines your own book collecting philosophies, whether you dabble in digital editions or hold onto print books from certain periods of your life. As a reader and a writer, how do you perceive the value and enjoyment of a book as an object—the tactile delights, the smell, the sound of the pages, the craftsmanship, the wear and tear, the inscriptions found in used tomes? What does this say about your artistic pursuits and how they have evolved over time?
At the 2025 Oscars, there were many memorable moments and heartfelt speeches, including when Zoe Saldaña accepted the award for best supporting actress for her performance in Jacques Audiard’s film Emilia Pérez. “I am a proud child of immigrant parents,” said Saldaña. “The fact that I am getting an award for a role where I got to sing and speak in Spanish—my grandmother, if she were here, she would be so delighted.” This week write a short story set at a significant, social gathering in which one of your main characters is put on the spot to make an acceptance speech for an award. Do they express gratitude that appears sincere or are they focused on strategizing for a larger cause given the public platform? What is revealed about your character’s priorities and values as they speak?
Australian author Gerald Murnane talks about being drawn to the “bewildering and at the same time satisfying feeling” of getting lost in familiar places in an interview in the Winter 2024 issue of the Paris Review. “I can very readily get myself lost in strange country towns or on back roads,” Murnane says, “knowing all the time where I am, that there’s no threat to my safety, that I can navigate myself home eventually.” Write a poem that explores the state of being lost, whether from a memory of a childhood incident, visiting a town, walking a new route, or perhaps from simply feeling lost in a chaotic or difficult situation. Amidst the bewilderment, are you able to find something you enjoy about being lost?
Have you ever conducted an oral history interview? There are many reasons for recording one, from documenting family stories to reporting the experiences of survivors of tragedies and storing knowledge and perspectives of a particular region or culture. Try your hand at documenting personal reflections by turning to a friend, acquaintance, or family member and conduct a short interview with them, selecting a particular element of their life that you would be curious to know more about and that they wouldn’t mind sharing. You might browse your local library’s oral history projects, maps, and photographs for ideas. Afterward, write a personal essay about the experience. How did preparing the questions and asking someone to share their stories affect the dynamic of your relationship?
The phrase “for love nor money” is used when referring to an impossibility of persuading someone to do something, that they will not even do it for love or money. This week take inspiration from this idea of ineffective incentives and write a short story in which your main character insists there is something they would never do. Consider your character’s past and what has led them to this conviction. What happens if the circumstances shift for your character and love or money hangs in the balance? Do they hold true to their stance and resist all temptation?
According to the Oxford English Corpus, a text corpus of twenty-first-century English with over two billion words collected from online and print sources produced by Anglophone countries, time, person, year, way, and day are the top five most common nouns in the English language. Browse through lists of the most common words, whether nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, pronouns, or articles. Instead of making use of unusual language, write a poem that revolves around playing with the most common ones. Experiment with how you might be able to manipulate unconventional repetition, syntax, spacing, or grammar to express fresh and unexpected meanings.
In “Eat, Memory,” an essay published by Harper’s Magazine in 2017, author David Wong Louie, who passed away a year after its publication, wrote about his experiences enduring years of treatment for throat cancer. Radiation, chemotherapy, a gastrostomy feeding tube, and laryngectomy surgery all affected his lifelong love for eating food and drinking, and he discovered how his memories of time spent with family and friends were deeply tied to communal dining. Write a lyric essay composed of short vignettes of memories you have that are tied to food—whether preparing and cooking meals, celebrating while eating out at a restaurant, buying produce at the market, or recalling phases of favorite snacks shared with friends. Taken together, how do these memories reveal a larger portrait of how you’ve enjoyed or been nourished by time spent around food?
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote English Liberal historian and moralist Lord Acton in an 1887 letter to scholar and ecclesiastic Mandell Creighton about his concerns for political and religious leaders. This week write a short story that chronicles a character’s turn toward corruption after gaining a degree of power. You might decide to revolve the narrative around a lighthearted scenario with some humor, in which the corruption that results has relatively inconsequential stakes. Or you might set up a situation in which your character gains access or control over a significant position of authority, resulting in criminal behavior with far-reaching ripple effects. How do other characters respond to the newfound power of your main character?
In a recent video, Maggie Millner, Yale Review senior editor and author of Couplets: A Love Story (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), speaks about her favorite love poems, including June Jordan’s short poem “Resolution #1,003,” which she says “illustrates the way that love between two people can inspire a politics, a kind of political vision.” Spend some time thinking about the relationships in your life and who might inspire in you a sort of political vision. Write a poem that captures how to “love who loves me” and “stay indifferent to indifference,” as Jordan writes in her poem. How might the circumstances, breadth, and boundaries of your adoration for someone be political?
In a recent New York Times Magazine interview, Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford psychiatrist who studies a variety of addictions from substance abuse to social media, talks about her speculative theory about contemporary society and narcissism. “Our culture is demanding that we focus on ourselves so much that what it’s creating is this deep need to escape ourselves,” she says. Take a break from self-actualization and write an essay that focuses on a close friend or loved one to create a lyrical profile of sorts. If you instinctively relate your observations and memories back to yourself, correct course and try to place the focus as much as possible on someone else. What emerges as a result?
“I don’t like you, but I love you / Seems that I’m always thinking of you” begins the 1962 hit song “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” written by Smokey Robinson and performed by The Miracles. What does the speaker mean by this seemingly contradictory sentiment of loving, but not liking? Write a short story in which the narrative revolves around a character who feels similarly—loving, but not liking another character. It may be a childhood friend with a deep, lifelong bond whom the protagonist is on the outs with or a romantic interest who isn’t measuring up in some way. Depending on the story’s point of view, you might experiment with inner monologue, dialogue, or pay close attention to the physical communication between your characters to gesture toward the emotions at play.
Did you know that the word robust comes from the Latin word robur meaning “oak tree?” Merriam-Webster’s “12 Words Whose History Will Surprise You” provides the fascinating etymological history of words such as boudoir, phlegm, amethyst, and assassin, essentially mini lessons demonstrating an English word’s linguistic origins from an assortment of languages, including Medieval Latin, Greek, Arabic, French, and Middle English. Jot down a list of some of your favorite nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and look up their origin stories. (Tip: Merriam-Webster often lists a word’s etymology in the “Word History” section.) Write a poem inspired by this newly discovered and intriguing story behind the language, incorporating past iterations of the word into your verse.
Written around 2000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia, “The Love Song of Shu-Sin” holds the record as the oldest known love poem. Forty centuries later, love poetry continues to be written, in times of joy and sorrow, for all different types of occasions in as many different styles as there are writers. Choose a favorite love poem and spend some time considering the people and things you’ve loved. Write a personal essay that reflects on the elements of the poem that most deeply resonate with you, whether it be the diction, imagery, or sentiments expressed. In what ways does this poem remind you of meaningful relationships in your life? How do these words reflect a message about love?