In the author’s note to his debut novel, The Copywriter, published by Scribner in February, poet and copywriter Daniel Poppick lists the types of writing that can be found in the work, a compilation of observations, questions, stories, lyrics, lists, fragments, and other forms that together constitute a portrait of contemporary life, language, and ideas, from the perspective of a poet sharing his notebook. “What follows is a work of fiction. But if it makes nothing happen, call it poetry,” writes Poppick. Spend a week keeping a journal or notebook of your own. Jot down bits and pieces of overheard, seen, or invented language as it occurs, allowing yourself the freedom to simply record without worrying too much about context or explication. Then comb through your notes and group your favorite snippets into a more coherent narrative, using recurrent themes or images to paint a portrait of your own life at this moment.
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
Get immediate access to more than 2,000 writing prompts with the tool below:
In “Catfishing in Academe,” part of Lucy Ives’s Negative Utopia series published in the Believer, the author writes about her experience with a student’s AI-fabricated writing assignment in an introductory creative writing course. Ives considers the ways language models “threaten worlds” in the ways they “shave language of its messy connections to community, culture, history, poetry, and living bodies.” Spend some time jotting down notes about your favorite words, phrases, slang, or types of language you use with different people in your life. Then write a personal essay that explores how your own, idiosyncratic use of language has “messy connections” to community, culture, and history. How has your use of language evolved to reflect its particular associations with your own living body and those of others around you?
“I’ve always thought that art should ultimately be personal,” said artist Melvin Edwards in a 2017 interview published in Frieze magazine. “It may be validating for other people to find that your work reminds them of something else, but it’s much more important for me to keep myself alive creatively, to have the point of departure for whatever I develop be personal.” The first Black sculptor to have a solo art exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York with his provocative, abstract steel forms, Edwards died at the age of eighty-eight on March 30, 2026. This week, think about how you can create an abstract piece of writing. How can writing about something personal develop into expressing a theme, or multiple themes, about the world, whether societal or political? In what ways do inspiration and creative vigor begin with a personal point of departure?
Have you fallen for fall and left spring on the backburner? According to a recent New York Times article, spring used to be “a special favorite of poets and musicians, who were moved by the lush reawakening of the natural world to express their feelings of love and wonderment in verse and song,” but recent surveys have shown a preference for autumn. With its cozy colors and social media-worthy sweaters, ciders, leaves, and pumpkin spice lattes, the crisp season has moved up in the ranks of popularity. This week write a personal essay about how you have experienced seasons differently at various times in your life. You might consider the value in having fluctuating phases of energy or enthusiasm throughout the year, or in being able to count on cycles of the natural world.
Frederick Wiseman, the late director renowned for his lengthy documentaries about various American institutions and infrastructures—including Hospital; City Hall; Welfare; Titicut Follies; Near Death; and Belfast, Maine—spoke in a 2015 BOMB magazine interview about how humor is interspersed throughout his films, which are oftentimes incisive exposés of injustice, neglect, and grief. “I think all my films are funny,” said Wiseman. “You find yourself in a lot of situations that are funny. Or sometimes they are both funny and sad. I mean, the best comedy is sad comedy.” Think back to some past experiences that you would characterize as sad or sorrowful and write an essay in which you try to find a thread of humor to draw out. How can sad comedy demonstrate the ways in which human emotions are more complex than at first glance?
In Sam Needleman’s recent interview with essayist and novelist Darryl Pinckney, published in the Paris Review’s Art of Nonfiction series, he is asked about James Baldwin’s singularity. “Baldwin has this unmistakable voice. The appeal is that it’s at once literary and speakerly,” says Pinckney. “I think the writers, the essayists I’m drawn to have that quality.” This week think of a nonfiction writer whose voice strikes you as sounding distinctively original. Write an essay that attempts to investigate how their individuality is expressed through their use of language and specific observations. Can you pinpoint specific nuances about their writerly style? How does their writing communicate in both literary and “speakerly” ways?
In her essay “Creativity as resistance,” published on the Creative Independent, Kemi Ajisekola makes a case for creative work as a powerful tool to instigate transformation within cultures and point out what’s wrong, noting that “creativity isn’t a retreat from reality. It’s one of the ways reality gets reshaped.” Take some time to think up a short list of specific things around you that need to be changed, whether within the systems and structures in your immediate community or society at large. Write a personal essay that points out what’s broken and envisions where a new direction could take us. Can you imagine innovative ways to demonstrate care? How do your personal values come into play for these hopeful plans?
For the past several decades, artist Gordon Henderson, also known as Nib Geebles, has created yearly calendars featuring pen-and-paint illustrations of unremarkable yet distinctive buildings that he and his partner Abira Ali see on their everyday walks around their local Los Angeles neighborhoods. Hand-painted signage, unpolished and derelict storefronts, strip-mall parking lots, powerlines, and graffiti are all celebrated in this year’s “Unknown Landmarks” calendar. Brainstorm and jot down a list of some of your favorite storefronts and facades that make up the landscape where you live or work. Write a lyric essay that details a handful of these sights, reflecting on how they create a vivid portrait of your local atmosphere. What are the small, distinguishing or idiosyncratic features that give these locales an “unknown landmark” status?
Scientists studying chacma baboons in Namibia have recently reported findings that seem to demonstrate young baboons expressing feelings of jealousy, particularly in situations where they encounter their mothers grooming a younger sibling. One researcher observed a jealous baboon’s use of trickery, luring her sister away from her mother by pretending to play with her and then taking her spot in her mother’s arms. Think back to an incident in your own life when you felt jealous because attention was being paid to someone else. Write a personal essay that reflects on your emotions at the time and your relationships with each of the people involved. You might meditate on more general ideas of jealousy as well—are there possible benefits of it from an evolutionary standpoint?
“I sit hunched over an open folder, I peer at Lorraine Hansberry’s cursive script, neat and sharp like the thoughts in her eyes,” writes Tisa Bryant in Residual (Nightboat Books, March 2026), an experimental memoir written in the aftermath of her mother’s death in which she includes works by Black women who haunt her meditations and creative work. Bryant writes toward a “shared Black imaginary” as she moves through reflections on art, loss, and literature. Begin composing a hybrid essay that incorporates elements of memoir and criticism by first brainstorming a list of people who haunt your thinking—you might jot down writers and artists you admire, or figures from fiction and nonfiction works. Write a series of vignettes in which you explore these specters while observing how they have infiltrated your personal life. Allow yourself to delve deep into diaristic details, perhaps even adding drawings or photographs.
In her foreword to a reissue of Audre Lorde’s 1982 book, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography, forthcoming this month from Penguin Classics, Evie Shockley writes about Lorde’s version of writing about the self, in which mythologizing becomes a method to explain the inexplicable. Shockley writes: “What biomythography foregrounds is the way myth is central to her writing of her life, her writing for her life, her writing life, her life writing. A myth is a story that explains the nature or origins of a phenomenon—a story that often involves the supernatural.” Write a personal essay that takes inspiration from Lorde’s form and offers context to a particular event from your past by drawing from the lives and stories of people you have known, both in real life and from works of art. Does a supernatural tone arise from this incorporation of mythology to imbue your narrative with a sense of wonder?
“This letter is likely too oblique, no doubt, too fragmented. It is not in the tradition of the epistle. Perhaps not an offer to correspond. I am no correspondent. Accept this witness as a journal glimpse,” writes Heid E. Erdrich in Literary Hub’s Letter From Minnesota series in response to the national turmoil over recent ICE operations in Minneapolis. “In my mind, our city is a body, alive and coursing through us, even where sacred streams are sluiced under streets.” Write an open letter or a note to yourself that includes bits and pieces of language from recent news events with your personal reflections on ideas revolving around political power and the ways in which communities may break or come together in response. Allow yourself the freedom to circle obliquely around emotions you may feel confused about, and to depart from traditional epistolary form in using fragments and diaristic vignettes.
Advertisements have been ubiquitous from the days of town criers and hand-painted signage, to radio spots and television commercials, and the digital billboards of the twenty-first century. Think back to a memorable ad from your childhood and write a lyrical essay inspired by the words and imagery found within it. How does the slogan resonate with a particular time in your life and your desires at that age? You might include snippets of phrases to consider how those words can take on new meanings when separated from their original context.
“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?
In a recent interview with George Saunders by David Marchese for the New York Times Magazine, the author, whose novel Vigil is forthcoming from Random House this month, talks about examining the concept of death and the afterlife. “Death is the moment when somebody comes and says: You know those three things that you’ve always thought of? They’re not true. You’re not permanent, you’re not the most important thing and you’re not separate,” says Saunders. “I think about it a lot, but I find it a joyful thing, because it’s just a reality check.” Spend some time thinking about what Saunders refers to as a “trio of delusions”—that is, the delusions of one’s permanence, self-importance, and separateness. Jot down any memories or anecdotes in which you recall seeing one or more of these delusions play out. Write an essay that considers how it is that these might actually be fallacies, and why it is that we hold onto these concepts.
In 2024, Pete Wells wrote an essay about moving on from his position of twelve years as the chief restaurant critic for the New York Times, recounting how the demands of eating for his job took a toll on his body, and how colleagues in his profession often experience issues with their health. “We avoid mentioning weight the way actors avoid saying ‘Macbeth,’” writes Wells. “Partly, we do this out of politeness. Mostly, though, we all know that we’re standing on the rim of an endlessly deep hole and that if we look down we might fall in.” This week write a personal essay that examines your own relationship with food and dining out. Perhaps there’s a change you’d like to make or you’ve recently discovered a new sense of contentment with your habits of consumption. What are some memorable meals, good or bad?
“I notice a weird thing about Zoom: In order to give people the impression that you’re making eye contact, you have to look not at them but at the camera lens,” writes Anne Fadiman in her essay “Screen Share,” which appears in her collection Frog: And Other Essays, forthcoming in February from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Their images are lower down. If you look at them, you won’t look as if you’re looking at them.” In the essay, Fadiman recounts shifting from teaching in-person classes to learning a new technology during the pandemic, as well as the social and practical challenges she and her students faced. Write a personal essay about your relationship to a specific technology, whether it be smartphones, apps, navigation systems, chatbots, or streaming media. What is revealed by the technology you choose to use when it comes to your values and relationships?
Do you want to spend time eating in a place that’s been called a “fully immersive postmodern design hellscape-themed dining experience?” Over the years, despite the eclectic interior decor, ambience, and absurdly lengthy menu that has been written about by bewildered yet admiring journalists, the Cheesecake Factory has become a top-ranked casual restaurant chain and a cult favorite amongst celebrities. Think about the interior of a place that you have strong opinions about. Maybe it’s a room in a grandparents’ house from long ago, a particular restaurant, library, or a favorite bookstore. Write a personal essay that describes in detail the various architectural and interior design elements at play. Examine your personal memories in connection to your aesthetic responses to the site to make your descriptions as vivid as possible.
In a recent essay published on Literary Hub, Jean Chen Ho writes about spending an academic year as a visiting assistant professor in upstate New York and the isolation she experienced as an Asian American in a predominantly white neighborhood. Throughout the piece, Ho mixes her reflections about daily activities—visiting a museum, exercise, meeting colleagues, dating, and going to a local bar—with observations of her environmental surroundings and the violence and devastation in Gaza, as well as allusions to Louise Bourgeois, Jane Hirshfield, and Milan Kundera. Write a personal essay that meditates on a time when you have felt particularly alone. Where were you and what were the circumstances that contributed to your feelings of isolation? How did the environment around you, and the art or writing you connected to at the time, reflect your state of mind?
It’s that time of year to send and receive holiday cards, some of which may include a family newsletter with highlights of the past year from friends and family. According to a survey from the Emily Post Institute, a family business promoting etiquette since 1922, 47 percent of respondents don’t like to receive holiday newsletters. The institute’s website suggests this might be because the letters are more of a brag sheet rather than a genuine desire to communicate. Try your hand at composing a holiday newsletter that recounts notable events and milestones from throughout the past year. Take this exercise as an opportunity to reflect on favorite memories and changes, both big and small. Perhaps you’ll decide to subvert conventional expectations and strike a subversively satirical or darkly apocalyptic tone. Have fun with it!
’Tis the season for spending? The end of the year is often associated with spending money on last-minute gifts, groceries for parties, travel and outings with family and friends, and holiday sales for your own treats. This week write a personal essay on your traditions and philosophies around holiday spending. How have they evolved over the years? Do you have memories or anecdotes of extravagant purchases or of thrift-savvy techniques? You might reflect on how seasonal cultural traditions influence spending and how those traditions are maintained, broken, or might even evolve. What are alternatives to conventional modes of consumption and capital?
Lulu Wang’s 2019 film, The Farewell, begins with a group of relatives convening in China on the pretext of a wedding but who are actually there to bid farewell to the family matriarch from whom they are hiding her terminal cancer diagnosis. The protagonist of the film, a woman in her thirties who has lived in the United States for most of her life, struggles with this concept and is told by her uncle that it is their duty to carry the emotional burden of her grandmother’s illness for her. “You think one’s life belongs to oneself,” he says. “But that’s the difference between the East and the West. In the East, a person’s life is part of a whole. Family. Society.” Think back to a time when you have carried a burden for someone else and write an essay that examines your personal experience with this concept. Are there situations in which withholding the truth or keeping something secret feels reasonable, ethical, or even honorable to you?
What’s the story behind the story? Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, the new biopic directed by Scott Cooper, relays a behind-the-music creation story of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 acoustic album Nebraska, which was composed and recorded in a New Jersey bedroom. The album represents the singer’s desire for pure art that is free of the constraints and adornments of being a superstar in the music industry. Think about the story behind one of your own stories, perhaps a personal essay you wrote years ago that sprang from a sense of urgency. Write an essay that recounts the story behind this story describing in detail the emotions that played throughout the creative act, where you worked on it, and how the subject matter dictated the process of its writing.
Is hate ever the answer? In her new book, Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion (Verso Books, 2025), translated from the German by Jackie de Pont, journalist and author Seyda Kurt reimagines hatred and proposes the use of something she calls “strategic hate” that can be deployed to fight against systems of oppression for a more just and equitable society. This week consider your own relationship to hatred—whether as a fleeting emotion or a simmering state of mind—and write a two-part personal essay. In the first section, describe a time in your life, or a specific situation, in which you felt hatred or a desire for vengeance. Then, write about your perspective on the possibility of channeling that hatred into a more positive direction. How can this corrosive emotion be pointed toward the purposes of more tenderness and care?
What ever happened to opening a bar tab? A New York Times article from earlier this year reported on a trend of Gen Z bargoers opting to pay for each drink separately instead of opening a tab even if they’re ordering multiple drinks throughout the night, a phenomenon that can result in higher credit card fees paid by the bar, wasted time on a busy night of cocktail concocting, and a diminished sense of camaraderie when friends each pay for a drink separately instead of taking turns buying rounds. Write a personal essay that examines a social behavior that has dissolved over the years and reflect on the wider ripple effects. Consider how you’ve participated in or avoided certain types of etiquette and why you may have followed the trend in the past.
Take a pivotal moment from your own life and reimagine it through the lens of a specific genre or style. You might frame it as a ghost story, a myth, a detective case, or even a surreal fairy tale. Pay attention to how the conventions of that genre shape the reader’s perception of your experience and the ways that tension, suspense, and exaggeration can illuminate truth in unexpected ways. Consider what the shift in perspective reveals about how you remember this moment, the trajectory of your emotions, and the narrative you tell yourself about what occurred.
Kate Zambreno’s Animal Stories, published by Transit Books in September, is divided into two sections: “Zoo Studies” and “My Kafka System.” The first section includes essays that meld accounts of various zoo visits with meditations on animals, ideas about enclosure and captivity, and familial relationships and motherhood for human and nonhuman animals alike. The second section examines various aspects of the life and work of the famed author whose stories have centered around an ape, a mouse, a dog, hybrid creatures, and, of course, a giant insect. Taking your cue from Zambreno’s wide-ranging pieces, write a series of short reflections on animals that progresses with associative logic. Allow yourself permission to go down any rabbit holes, as deeply as you wish. Take inspiration from the realms of science and other artistic mediums to include intriguing anecdotes and historical facts.
Findings from a study in Peru, published earlier this year in the journal Ecosphere, reported that for the first time single individuals of ocelot and opossum were “associating and moving together in the rainforest”—two species generally occupying positions of predator and prey instead choosing to spend time hanging out together. Scientists aren’t quite certain about the reason but have conjectured that there might be something symbiotic about the cooperation that benefits both animals as they hunt for other prey. Write a personal essay that examines the experiences you’ve had with a friend with whom the relationship might seem unexpected or inexplicable. How did you meet and what were the factors that drew you together despite your differences?
The Gilded Age, the HBO television series created by Julian Fellowes, chronicles the lives of a cast of characters living in 1880s New York City, including servants and maids living and working in the garden-level quarters of brownstone mansions, wealthy inhabitants of Manhattan from both old and new money, and Black families living in Brooklyn who reach levels of affluence in the post-Reconstruction period. Together, the characters create a layered portrait of a city where diverse classes come into often conflicted interaction. Write a personal essay that examines your own class status, reflecting on how it manifests in your encounters in society with friends, coworkers, family, and others. How have financial matters evolved through past generations in your family to bring you to where you are today?
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley is a documentary directed by Amy J. Berg about the musician who died suddenly at the age of thirty in 1997, having only released one studio album, of which the single “Hallelujah,” a cover of Leonard Cohen’s song, was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. Buckley’s biological father, a folk musician who rose to fame in the 1960s, died at the age of twenty-eight, and Berg explores the enduring status and mythos created around artists’ lives cut short, the idea of a suspended perfection mixed with the incomplete feeling of never enough. Think of an artist who seems to exist in a mythical state, perhaps because their popularity was short-lived or due to a mysterious or debated circumstance in their life. Write an essay that examines your interest in your chosen subject and reflect on the stories surrounding their life that perpetuates its mystery.
In the new thriller miniseries Black Rabbit, created by Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, Jude Law plays a restaurateur whose life is turned upside down with the sudden return of his brother, played by Jason Bateman. Their historically fraught bond spins into a vortex of the consequences of past betrayals and catastrophes, and the violence of the criminal underworld. Write a personal essay that explores your relationship with a sibling or someone with whom you share a close, long-standing relationship that may have similar elements of inextricable intimacy and rivalry. Incorporate memories of the experiences that have tied you together, as well as circumstances that have been challenging because of your closeness. What are the differences in your personalities that might have, at varied times, created complementary, synergistic energy and also been the root cause of clashes?
In “Is Mary Oliver Embarrassing?,” an essay by Maggie Millner, senior editor at Yale Review, she writes about omitting the poet from her list of early influences when asked in professional settings, despite the fact that “Oliver’s poems marked [her] permanently.” Millner writes: “It seemed clear that my disavowal of Oliver was more about my own shame and snobbery than about the merit of the work itself.” Think about an artist whose work you find value in but feel conflicted or embarrassed about, perhaps because you associate their work with your childhood when you had less discerning tastes or because of the opinions of peers in your field. Write a personal essay that explores the roots of your affinity and your feelings of conflict. Then revisit the artist in question and explore how you feel when you encounter their work without embarrassment.
Write an essay about something in your daily life that has quietly broken down but remains in use. Perhaps it’s a favorite chair with a wobbling leg, a jacket with a missing button, or a smartphone with a cracked screen. Begin with the object itself, describing its flaws in detail, then follow the thread outward: What does your continued reliance on it reveal about your habits, your history with broken things, and your relationship to loss? Consider how the imperfect object serves as a stand-in for resilience, denial, or attachment. Let the essay move between the object’s material reality and the emotional truths it props up.
In an essay in the New York Review of Architecture, Elvia Wilk writes about light pollution and the extensive effects and detriments of artificial lighting. “Everyone suffers, from bats—which are essential pollinators, predators, and fertilizers—to birds, to coral reefs, to orchids. The disruption occurs not only on the scale of the day, but on the scale of the season,” writes Wilk. “In cities, trees positioned next to streetlamps wait to shed their fall leaves for three weeks longer than trees unlit by lamps.” Write a personal essay that reflects on your own relationship to the various types of lighting around you, both artificial and natural. Describe the way sunlight affects you throughout the seasons and explore how lamps, overhead lighting, and streetlights shape your days and nights.
In I Deliver Parcels in Beijing, translated from the Chinese by Jack Hargreaves and forthcoming in October from Astra House, Hu Anyan collects essays he began writing while feeling stuck and unfulfilled in the many short-term jobs he moved through as a young man. Turning to reading and writing for solace, he began sharing his stories and connecting with readers. “Supposing work is something we are compelled to do, a concession of our personal will,” writes Hu, “then the other parts of life—those that remain true to our desires, that we choose to pursue, in whatever form they take—might be called freedom.” Compose a series of vignettes that look back on several past jobs you’ve had. What do they say about your work-life balance?
Think of an ordinary object you see almost every day: a chipped coffee mug, a frayed doormat, or the traffic light you always catch red. Write an essay that treats this object as if it were a silent witness to one chapter of your life. Give this object a voice and allow it to narrate this portion of your history in fragments, in terms of what it has seen you gain, what it has seen you lose, and the small, private moments it holds for you. Allow the object’s “voice” to reveal something about you that you rarely admit to others.
The Freaky Friday franchise, including the recently released film Freakier Friday, consists of film and theater productions revolving around the premise of a contentious parent-child relationship and a subsequent body swap, through which each character gains understanding and sympathy for the other as they are forced to live in each other’s shoes, and their relationship is strengthened. This week write a personal essay that considers how you would respond if given the fantastic ability to switch places—and bodies—with someone you are close to in your life. Perhaps begin by thinking about friends and family members whom you wish you understood better. Provide illustrative examples of the specific elements of this person’s life for which you seek clarification and understanding, and ultimately, a closer connection.
In a recently published article in T Magazine, artists, including John Waters, Andres Serrano, Karen Finley, Khaled Hosseini, Geraldine Brooks, Art Spiegelman, Kate Bornstein, and Dread Scott, were interviewed about how censorship changed their work and lives. “The censorship does the opposite of what it wants to do,” said playwright and director Moisés Kaufman. “It makes people really think: ‘What are the issues in the play? Whose stories get to be told?’” This week write a personal essay that focuses on either a work of art, literature, or performance that has endured censorship at some point. Describe the work and the themes within the work that provoked censorship. How did this banning affect your ideas of the role of an artist?
“The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe. I wandered the halls seeking its spirits, dead or alive,” writes Patti Smith in her award-winning 2010 memoir, Just Kids, recounting her time living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York City during the golden, gritty chaos of her youth. Inspired by this image, write an essay about returning to a place that once held deep meaning for you. It might be a childhood home, a first apartment, a rehearsal space, or a street corner that once felt like the center of your world. Explore what it feels like to stand in a space that is both familiar and changed. How does memory overlay reality? Do ghosts of your former self or others linger in the corners?
What might someone whom you’ve just encountered for the first time never guess about you? What do you think your loved ones associate most with you? Consider these questions and write a lyric essay that consists of two parts: a speculative section with your own musings about how your outward appearance or demeanor might drive people to assume certain characteristics about you, and how those expectations might be subverted. And a second part in which you either choose one person who knows you well and consider the ways they would describe your most distinctive propensities, or meditate on a number of people who are close to you and create a chorus of their lasting impressions of you. Do these two parts make a whole?
The rate at which the Earth rotates has been gaining speed, and as a result, days have been slowly getting shorter over the last ten years, according to a recent New York Times article. Yet, for many millennia before, the days were gradually growing longer, with a T. rex living through days that were only about twenty-three and a half hours long. Though these incremental changes in time are too tiny in scale for us to register, time can certainly feel like it moves at different rates. Write a personal essay that recounts a situation from your past that took place either over a seemingly expanded or contracted span of time. Experiment with how you speed up or slow down your retelling, either mimicking or contradicting the essay’s pacing with how the experience felt.
In a recent New Yorker article about the past, present, and future of Brooklyn’s popular Green-Wood Cemetery, Paige Williams writes about a tour guide who “urged her audience not to leave a decision as important as eternity to others” and a cemetery employee who has already decided the guest list, what beverages to serve, and the playlist for his future funeral. Write a personal essay that meditates on your thoughts about your own post-death wishes. Whether it’s something you’ve thought about and planned meticulously already or something you mostly avoid, take the time to consider rituals, traditions, and funerals you’ve attended, as well as the array of options to choose from as technology and trends evolve. How do you envision your eternal send-off and resting place?
“Their romance has started in earnest this summer, but the prologue took up the whole previous year,” writes Susan Choi in the beginning of her 2019 award-winning novel, Trust Exercise, in which two high school freshmen fall in love and experience an intense love affair until they return to their performing arts school the next fall. When other classmates and teachers get involved, the outlines of their burgeoning relationship begin to seem less clear as the realities and complexities of group social dynamics come into play. Write a personal essay that chronicles the subtle or dramatic shifts of a relationship you’ve had in which your dynamic with the other person encountered some sort of transformation when the setting or surroundings of your relationship changed. Did issues of power, control, or social expectations have an effect? What questions arise when considering performance of the self in private versus in public?
In Zhang Yueran’s novel Women, Seated, translated from the Chinese by Jeremy Tiang and forthcoming in August from Riverhead Books, the protagonist Yu Ling works as a nanny for a wealthy couple and their young son in China, after initially taking on duties assisting in the art studio of her employer, Qin Wen. In a flashback, Yu Ling recalls a remark by Qin Wen about an artist she admires: “Do you know why Alice Neel liked drawing mothers and children so much? It’s because she abandoned her own child.” Compose a pair of short lyrical essays, one that originates from loss and one that begins with a thing achieved or acquired. You might start with your instinctive responses to personal losses and gains, whether physical or more abstract. Do your attendant essays mirror each other or diverge?
In award-winning Palestinian American poet and novelist Hala Alyan’s debut memoir, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home (Avid Reader Press, 2025), she explores themes of loss and exile in conjunction with her experience preparing for the arrival of a new baby through surrogacy after years of struggling with infertility and miscarriages. While looking forward to the birth of her daughter, Alyan reflects on her family’s history with immigration and her childhood moving around Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, the UAE, Texas, and Oklahoma, and examines the roles of heritage and matriarchal storytelling. Write a personal essay that looks to the role of storytelling in your own family and childhood. What stories were told to you by parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and elders in your community? How are these stories and myths connected to your cultural inheritance and your formation as a writer and storyteller?
In the comedic documentary series The Rehearsal, Nathan Fielder helps ordinary people rehearse difficult conversations they may be dreading by creating precisely replicated environments and hiring actors to prepare for each scenario. The elaborate sets include a fully functioning bar with patrons, a household with a child actor, and an exact reproduction of a Houston airport terminal. Compose a personal essay about a necessary conversation that has been weighing on you and write out several vignettes exploring potential ways the exchange might play out given your knowledge of your own mindset as well as the person you’re confronting. Consider incorporating thoughts about how some reactions or behaviors may be impossible to predict. How might this rehearsal of sorts help calm your nerves or provide an understanding of your own social tendencies?
“The price of the ride was listening to people talk.” This sentiment is expressed by the young narrator of Joe Westmoreland’s 2001 coming-of-age autofictional book, Tramps Like Us, reissued this week by MCD, to describe his hitchhiking adventures in search of queer belonging and identity. The novel portrays a wide range of characters Joe comes across, befriends, works with, sleeps with, and sometimes loses on the road and in various cities. Compose a memoiristic piece that recounts a cast of characters you’ve met in the past, perhaps only briefly as you traveled from one place to another, who had colorful tales about lives very different from your own. Incorporate snippets of dialogue, trying as best as possible to recall any idiosyncrasies in their speech or vocabulary. Reflect on what you learned from listening and why these stories have stayed with you through the years.
In the 1997 film Face/Off, an FBI agent survives an assassination attempt that kills his young son and is out for vengeance and justice. To foil this criminal’s next plot to bomb the city, the agent undergoes a secret surgery to replace his face with that of the criminal, only to have him surgically don the agent’s face, effectively creating a mirrored switch in physical identities and an epic showdown. Notable for its flabbergasting premise, another aspect of the film’s cult popularity is director John Woo’s signature style and trademark motifs: balletic action sequences, doves and churches, deadlocked gunfights, and coats blowing in slow motion in the wind. Write an essay about a dramatic situation from your past in which you insert small details and observations of physical description that complement the tone of your piece. How might you translate a slow-motion effect in cinema to a slow-motion moment in your storytelling?
In her latest book, In the Rhododendrons: A Memoir With Appearances by Virginia Woolf (Algonquin, 2025), poet Heather Christle explores her past and her relationship with her mother through the life and work of Virginia Woolf. Christle reflects on the difficult, and sometimes painful, writing process for the book in an essay published on Literary Hub: “There’s a line from a Tony Tost poem I often think about: ‘I don’t know how to talk about my biological father, so I’m going to describe the lake.’ I had so many lakes. I began the process of draining them.” Spend some time jotting down a wide-ranging list of inspiring works of art, geographical locations, and cultural touchstones that are of interest to you. Then, begin an essay by describing something from your list that is seemingly disconnected from a difficult subject matter from your life, and inch your way toward it.
Four Seasons is a new comedy drama miniseries based on the 1981 film of the same name with an ensemble cast of middle-aged characters who are lifelong friends. Over the course of one year, the three couples take four group vacations together and reflect on the dynamics of their relationships, and in particular, the evolving circumstances after one couple’s divorce. Choose a significant relationship in your life and compose a four-part personal essay that relays an anecdote for each season of one year. You might turn back to old journals, photographs, e-mail messages, or planners for ideas and choose incidents not necessarily filled with drama, but that might reveal illuminating details about your bond with this person. Consider incorporating seasonal details to supplement the atmosphere of each section and add a sense of the passing of time through those twelve months.
When asked how he fills his days, in a 2019 Paris Review interview by Patrick Cottrell, author Jesse Ball talks about a household rule of not speaking in the morning and waiting until lunchtime to interact. “That leaves the morning for thinking,” says Ball. Write a personal essay about a routine or rule you have created to accommodate coexisting with another person, whether a parent, child, romantic partner, or roommate. How did you negotiate a compromise for your individual priorities? Were there any unexpected outcomes to the arrangement? Consider how the balance played out between what you sacrificed and what was gained with the cohabitation.
In a New Yorker interview about her short story “Marseille,” Ayşegül Savaş comments on a realization she made when putting together her story collection Long Distance, forthcoming from Bloomsbury in July: “Even though friendships are very important to my own life, I would still place marriage, or parents, or children at the center of my preoccupations. Then why do I write so much about friends?” Take a look through some of your past writing and try to locate any patterns of concerns that recur throughout different pieces, thus revealing your thematic priorities. Write an essay that muses on why these are primary concerns for you to explore creatively. How do your subjects influence your writing form and vice versa? Have themes evolved or shifted in big or small ways over the years?
In the introduction to his translation of Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz’s I Found Myself…the Last Dreams, forthcoming in June from New Directions, Hisham Matar writes: “It is clear that Mahfouz, the professed realist, admired dreams, coveted their agile and wandering narratives, their convincing and often unsettling psychological and emotional power, and, perhaps most of all, their economy: how, in an instant, a world is evoked that is—no matter how unlikely or strange—convincingly compelling.” Matar goes on to describe the book’s short vignettes in which Mahfouz recorded his dreams in the last decade of his life. “Almost each starts with ‘I saw myself’ or ‘I found myself.’ And isn’t that the case, that we find or see ourselves in dreams…?” Try your hand at recording your own dreams for a stretch of time, perhaps beginning each entry with “I found myself…” Experiment with arranging them in an order that makes sense to you, through any type of thematic, narrative, or dream logic.
Considering the record-high cost of eggs due to shortages, a recent USA Today article suggests a list of alternatives for the traditional Easter activity of dyeing eggs. A few of the creative contenders include dyeing potatoes or marshmallows, and painting Easter rocks. Think back to a time when you’ve had to alter a long-held tradition because of circumstances outside of your control. Write a personal essay that recounts the emotional trajectory you experienced, beginning with the backstory and memories of your relationship to the tradition. Were you able to preserve the core importance of the tradition? What was lost or gained?
In her memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in May, Yiyun Li writes about the loss of her two teenage sons. After her son Vincent’s death, Li wrote a book for him “in which a mother and a dead child continue their conversation across the border of life and death.” However, she finds that her son James’s character and their relationship evade her desire to write a book for him and in composing this memoir, Li embarks on a project to find a new alphabet, a new language, and a new way of storytelling. Taking inspiration from Li, write a lyrical essay about someone you have lost in a style that reflects their personality and your relationship, in all its complexities. Allow yourself to be experimental with structure and chronology.
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.
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.
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.
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?
“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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
The science fiction thriller television series Severance, created by Dan Erickson, is centered around a group of characters who work on a classified project at a corporation and undergo a “severance” procedure, in which their nine-to-five workday selves have compartmentalized memories, separate from their outside-world selves, in effect creating two entirely differentiated lived experiences. In the pilot episode, it’s revealed that the main character Mark underwent the procedure after he lost his wife to a car accident, and in his grief was unable to continue with his job as a college history professor. Write a nonfiction piece that explores this idea of severance, speculating on a certain portion or element of your life that you would consider “severing” from your day-to-day consciousness. Though there might be gains, would they outweigh the losses?
Mati Diop’s 2024 hybrid documentary, Dahomey, chronicles the repatriation of twenty-six cultural treasures—including sculptures and a throne plundered during France’s colonial rule over the Kingdom of Dahomey—following them from the Musée du quai Branly in Paris back to the present-day Republic of Benin. Diop intersperses her footage with poetic voice-over narration representing the sentiments of a statue of a king, and uses cameras placed in the perspective of the looted artifacts while they’re in transit, the screen going dark when the crates are sealed and shipped. Think of an artwork, artifact, or other personally significant object that, due to its location in time or geography, has existed during a tumultuous period. Write a lyrical essay that gives the item voice and expression, using imaginative language to animate the inanimate with the capability of experience or witnessing.
During a time of year when many people are taking stock of the previous twelve months and preparing for new resolutions and fresh starts, take a brief contrarian turn and compose a personal essay that focuses on the well-trodden: old habits, die-hard routines, and tried-and-true tendencies. What are some things that you’d passionately never want to give up? Perhaps your essay is a compilation of a list of objects, behaviors, people, or traditions that have proven their worth over an extended period of time; or you might concentrate your essay on one specific subject, something dear you vow to hold onto. Are there trade-offs, sacrifices, or curiosities about the costs of keeping the old? How do you weigh any misgivings against your convictions?
In a recent New York Times article about New Year’s resolutions, Holly Burns describes the value of creating resolutions that are connected to other people. Burns cites Stephanie Harrison, author of New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That’s Got It Wrong (TarcherPerigee, 2024), who says: “Our society has treated happiness as a highly individualistic pursuit—the idea being that it’s something that you make for yourself, that you get for yourself, and you do it all alone,” and yet, research shows that interpersonal relationships contribute to a significant portion of people’s happiness. Inspired by the idea of creating resolutions for the year (or beyond) that involve spending time with others, write a personal essay that reflects on times when you have discovered joy when helping or being helped by another person, perhaps unexpectedly. How might you incorporate this into future habits?
In the documentary No Other Land, made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four directors over the course of five years, a group of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank is overrun by the Israeli military as they raid and bulldoze homes while families are forced to witness the destruction. At a recent screening in New York, the filmmakers shared their thoughts in a written statement: “We as young activists offer this film to the world, which is both a document of a war crime happening now in the occupied West Bank, and a plea for a different future.” Write a personal essay that begins with recounting a recent significant event that you witnessed, noting as much granular detail as possible. If available, you might refer to photos or a paper trail to help you remember specifics. In addition to the event itself, reflect on your outlook after the event, documenting both for posterity’s sake.
These cold and dark winter months, coupled with holiday get-togethers catching up with old friends and spending time with family, make for a good time to revisit cozy, old favorites: beloved books and movies enjoyed on repeat that bring back memories. But how do these nostalgic works hold up? As cultural norms, perspectives, and language evolve around us, what once seemed hilarious, edgy, insightful, shocking, or relevant may no longer seem that way. Revisit a favorite childhood book or film, or simply one that you’ve encountered many times, and write an essay that reflects on how the work has, or has not, held up. Include any sociocultural norms that have evolved and the parts of you that have changed to offer a new perspective.
In National Lampoon’s Vacation comedy film series from the 1980s—comprising of a cross-country road trip, a tour through Europe, and a Christmas holiday gathering, as well as several offshoots—much of the humor stems from the discrepancy between Clark Griswold’s expectations of a “perfect” family time with his wife and two children, and the madcap mishaps, accidents, and disasters that occur while attempting to fulfill obligations. Write a memoiristic essay that recounts a family trip or occasion when not everything went as planned. Did one moment cause everything to go off the rails, or was it something more gradual? Reflect on your expectations or standards and how reevaluating this incident might contribute to a more expansive idea of how a family functions.
The act of presidential pardons is in the news again, and not just for pardoning Thanksgiving turkeys. Public interest in this presidential power granted by the U.S. Constitution, and inspired by an early English law granting kings “the prerogative of mercy,” has peaked due to the sitting president’s recent decision to pardon his son. If you had the power to pardon someone you love for their offenses, would you? Write a personal essay revolving around this thought experiment, reflecting on your own ideas about forgiveness, punishment, and justice. Choose someone you have had a close relationship with at some point in your life as the subject of your pardon, and feel free to openly interpret what constitutes an offense. Imagine how this act of mercy and power could transform both of your lives.
“As a Palestinian, I have been brought up on stories and storytelling. It’s both selfish and treacherous to keep a story to yourself—stories are meant to be told and retold,” writes the late Refaat Alareer in his collection of poetry and prose, If I Must Die, out now from OR Books. “If I allowed a story to stop, I would be betraying my legacy, my mother, my grandmother, and my homeland.” Taking inspiration from Alareer’s words about the power of storytelling, reflect on a story from your own life that is “meant to be told.” Write a memoiristic piece that uses evocative imagery and dynamic pacing, paying particular attention to elements that might facilitate its oral retelling.
In Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper and the ant, the grasshopper spends the summer playing music, singing, and dancing, while the ants spend all their time working to store up food for the winter. Traditionally, the moral of the story is about the importance of preparation and hard work, as once winter arrives, the grasshopper finds himself hungry and begs the ants for food. The children’s book The Ant or the Grasshopper? (Scribner, 2014) written by Toni Morrison and her son Slade Morrison complicates the conventional reading of the fable and questions the overlapping roles of art, labor, and value. The grasshopper Foxy G asks his ant friend Kid A, “How can you say I never worked a day? ART is WORK. It just looks like play.” Inspired by this spin, write an essay that reflects on how you see the role of the artist functioning in contemporary society. How do writers fit into our culture’s value systems?
What happens when language fails? Writers are always in search of the mot juste, the perfect turn of poetic phrase, the best sequence of sentences for a story or essay. But in real life, communicating is not always about the most creative arrangement of words, and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time can hurt someone you love, especially when it’s in writing. This week consider writing a personal essay that reflects on memories of past experiences, situations, or encounters in which something went awry in the process of expressing yourself in words—perhaps due to crossed wires around usage, tone, or context. What forces were underlying the discrepancy or distance between intended and perceived sentiment? How does looking closely at this incident transform your understanding of language and its consequences?
Spend some time jotting down notes or a list of things you have had a strong aversion to or found extremely disagreeable, allowing yourself to think generally, but honestly, about issues revolving around contemporary politics, ethics, or culture. In James Baldwin’s 1963 book The Fire Next Time, he wrote: “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.” Can you relate? Write an essay that examines the various components that form the basis for your grievances, where or from whom they might have originated, and how they may have been reinforced over time. Reflect on the pain beneath it all, if you were to reckon with this clinging to hate.
A situationship, as defined by the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, is “a romantic relationship in which the couple are not official partners.” The validity of situationships has become the center of discussions, from Reddit posts to the list of finalists for Oxford Languages 2023 word of the year. In a recent Electric Literature piece, author Christine Ma-Kellams argues that situationships make for great stories, including within novels by Elif Batuman, Rachel Cusk, and Jennifer Egan. Write a personal essay on your understanding of situationships. Have you ever found yourself in one? Was there a mutual agreement or were there unsaid uncertainties in the relationship? Consider how you would define a situationship and what that means to you.
In the 1990 film Arachnophobia directed by Frank Marshall, a family doctor, his wife, and their two young children move from San Francisco to a small town in rural California that is soon overtaken by deadly spiders. Dr. Ross Jennings suffers from arachnophobia, an overwhelmingly intense fear of spiders, stemming from a traumatic childhood incident when he witnessed a spider crawling up his bed and over his body and was too paralyzed with terror to move. Write a personal essay that examines the origins of one of your own fears—either serious, silly, or somewhere in-between. Are there elements of your reaction to this object of fear that seem reasonable or irrational? How have you countered, enabled, or worked to coexist with this fear?
In a 2019 New York Times essay revisiting Alexander Payne’s 1999 film, Election—based on Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name about a high school student-body election showdown between overachiever Tracy Flick and a social studies teacher—critic A.O. Scott reconsiders his understanding of the movie’s hero and villain twenty years later. “Payne’s film exposes the casual misogyny baked into the structures of civic and scholastic life,” writes Scott. “How despicably does a man have to behave before he forfeits our sympathy? How much does a woman—a teenage girl—have to suffer before she earns it?” Look back on previous presidential election years and reflect on major events that may have occurred in your personal life during those times. Were there heroes and villains who you might cast in a different light now?
From 2006 to 2010, and again from 2020 to 2022, filmmaker David Lynch recorded daily morning weather reports that were broadcast from Los Angeles-based radio stations, his own website, and on YouTube. In some episodes, the weather report included just the date, temperature, and a couple of words describing what Lynch saw out of his window. Other times, reports included short observations or thoughts about his or others’ creative projects, and what he planned on having for lunch later in the day. “It’s a Saturday. Here in L.A., a sunny morning, a pretty strong breeze blowing right now. 52 degrees Fahrenheit, around 11 degrees Celsius,” says Lynch in a 2022 entry. Write a personal essay that begins with a weather report and then launches into what you’ve been thinking about recently, perhaps in conjunction with a book, film, or other piece of art you’ve encountered. How does a weather report set the tone?
Francis Ford Coppola’s new film, Megalopolis, takes some of its characters, relationships, political intrigue, and set and costume design from historic events that occurred around 63 BCE during the decline of the Roman Republic. Mashed up with this historical aspect is a setting that gestures to both contemporary cities, such as New York City, and futuristic science fiction elements, such as building materials with magical properties. Compose an essay that revisits a pivotal experience from your past and incorporates a speculative element by taking metaphors and the act of imagining beyond their usual boundaries. How do you balance details grounded in the reality you remember with the more ambiguous elements of emotions and imagination?
In the 2022 film Showing Up directed and cowritten by Kelly Reichardt, a sculptor who works as an administrative assistant at her alma mater art school in Oregon prepares for her art show opening while contending with troubles and complications of varying degrees involving her landlord neighbor, and artist rival, as well as her mother, father, brother, pet cat, and a feral pigeon. When asked about the meaning of the film’s title in an interview published in Slant Magazine, Reichardt prefers to leave it up to interpretation, but mentions it can mean, “showing up to work. Showing up for your friends, your family. It’s all the ways.” Write a personal essay that revisits different examples from your past of “showing up.” How have you shown up for others and how have others shown up for you? In what ways do you show up for your own creative work?
Vinyl records, audiocassette tapes, videocassettes, CDs, DVDs, hard-copy books, print editions of newspapers and magazines. Whether these tangible forms of media conjure up personal memories or seem like vintage vestiges from a time before you were born, there’s no denying that physical media undergoes continual waves of resurgence among both serious collectors and pop culture trend followers. Write an essay that revolves around your experiences with physical media, including encounters or stories from older family members or friends. Reflect on the differences in using various types of media and ideas about convenience, possession, and preservation.
“A herd of beautiful wild / ponies running free / across the plains.” Aristilde Kirby’s poem “Daria Ukiyo-e,” published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, begins with an epigraph of a quote from the animated MTV series Daria, which premiered in the late nineties. Select a quotation from a favorite television series that has stayed with you and compose a personal essay that revolves around themes and emotions that the reference calls up. Give yourself the freedom to choose inspiring lines from unexpected and surprising sources, and diverge from the context of the original scene to take it in a direction that resonates with your own life.
In the 2023 horror film No One Will Save You, written and directed by Brian Duffield, a young woman named Brynn finds herself fighting off aliens who have invaded her home. In the course of the movie’s entire ninety-three minutes, Brynn speaks only five words. Instead of relying on dialogue, the building tension in the story is propelled by the facial expressions and body language of actor Kaitlyn Dever and the physical constraints of the premise—the lonely and isolated protagonist, shunned by the locals, needs to stay quiet as she confronts the alien invaders. Taking a cue from this concept, write a lyric essay that looks back on a stressful or tense event from your past. Focus on observations of actions, objects, surroundings, and people—including facial expressions and perceived emotions—and try to forgo inner monologue. What can you accomplish with primarily physical descriptions?
Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings, cream-colored ponies, crisp apple strudels, wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings. These are a few, mundane yet specific, favorite things the protagonist from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music sings about as an uplifting way to buoy the characters’ spirits in moments of sorrow and distress. This week write a series of short nonfiction vignettes, each one titled with one of your favorite things. Reflect on how each favorite originated, your memories associated with the items, and how they make you feel.
“The writing comes not with the then and then and then of narrative time driven by the hierarchy of information that plot demands, but with the and and and and and of parataxis. Everything is equal all together and all at once,” writes Jennifer Kabat in her debut memoir, The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion (Milkweed Editions, 2024), which combines the author’s musings on her relocation to the rural Catskills in New York with historical documents and research about the Anti-Rent War between tenant farmers and landowners that took place in the region in the early nineteenth century. Take a deep dive into a historical event that took place where you live and write an essay that attempts to bridge your own experiences and memories of your locale with the past. Inspired by Kabat, experiment with alternating back and forth through different time periods, point of view, and verb tense for a sense of simultaneity.
How do best pals become worst enemies? In the television fantasy drama series House of the Dragon, created by Ryan Condal and George R. R. Martin, childhood best friends Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower become mortal enemies, each at the head of a household vying for the power to rule the Seven Kingdoms. Compose a personal essay that ruminates on a complicated friendship or relationship you’ve had that has transformed significantly over time. Was there one catalyzing incident or many gradual shifts that caused your relationship to change direction? Consider the ways in which the relationship changed in parallel, or in contradiction, to how each of you have evolved as individuals.
In Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind, published by W. W. Norton in June, author and journalist Annalee Newitz chronicles the ways storytelling can be wielded as a manipulative tool to further political agendas and steer cultural perspective, through advertising, influence campaigns, and mass media. In the first chapter Newitz discusses how Sigmund Freud’s theories help sell products: “Advertisers began to study psychology to figure out ways to manipulate the unconscious minds of consumers,” she writes. “They would lure consumers in with emotional appeals or by associating a product with some political ideal like freedom.” Write a personal essay about a time when you were persuaded by a narrative—whether it be a story told to you by a friend, foe, colleague, family member, or even an advertisement. Were you able to separate from your unconscious mind and gain a fuller perspective on the situation?
When you picture sea otters, you might think immediately of the many photos and videos of fuzzy otters holding hands while floating in the water, but do these images of cuddly creatures represent their true character? In a 2013 Slate article titled “Sea Otters Are Jerks. So Are Dolphins, Penguins, and Other Adorable Animals,” the violent behavior of these animals and their instinctive modes in the wild are described in detail and contradict the cute and cuddly depictions humans often project onto them. Write a personal essay that explores the theme of deceptive appearances, perhaps drawing on experiences you’ve had in which you misjudged someone and found your first impression contradicted other facts. Or you might think back to a time when someone else made assumptions about you based on superficial traits. What social conditions or cultural expectations contributed to those first impressions?
“When I say I have written from the beginning, I mean that all real writers write from the beginning, that the vocation, the obsession, is already there, and that the obsession derives from an intensity of feeling which normal life cannot accommodate,” said the late Irish author Edna O’Brien in a 1984 interview for the Paris Review’s Art of Fiction series. O’Brien, who died last Saturday at the age of ninety-three, was the author of a series of novels beginning with The Country Girls, which were internationally acclaimed but banned in Ireland. Her work included memoirs, biographies, and plays, many of which revolved around intimate stories of women’s experiences of love and loss. Write a lyric essay that responds to O’Brien’s sentiment about being drawn to writing from “an intensity of feeling.” Does writing serve in some sense as an outlet for expressing something that seemingly can’t fit into the strictures of normal life?
Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker, who made her feature film directorial debut with the coming-of-age drama Janet Planet, recently shared her inspirations for the film with the New York Times through a mood board. The artistic influences included fin-de-siècle painter Édouard Vuillard’s portraits of his mother; Maurice Pialat’s 1968 film about a foster child, L’enfance Nue; literature by Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke; and an album by Canadian jazz musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Write a lyric essay composed of short descriptions of creative works—perhaps similarly spanning visual and performing arts, music, and literature—that have served as inspiration to you over the years. What is special about each one, and what are the elements that draw them together?
“I have known brilliant writers who could size people up in minutes with alarming accuracy.... And yet for all their ability to understand people, to see them, to capture them as characters, these writers could not see themselves,” writes Literary Hub editor-in-chief Jonny Diamond in a piece reflecting on a recent op-ed written by the daughter of Nobel laureate Alice Munro, Andrea Skinner, about her mother’s failure to protect her from sexual abuse by her stepfather. Write a personal essay that traces your self-awareness through several phases of your life, contemplating on how your understanding and perception of yourself has transformed through the years. Can you reconcile the differing points of view that various people in your life hold about you? Are there blind spots that, even if you can’t or don’t want to articulate, you wish to acknowledge?
In “The Bear IRL: My Manic Day in a Michelin-Starred Kitchen,” Vice writer Nick Thompson visits a Michelin-starred restaurant in London for a day to capture a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes operations of a high-level kitchen, like the ones portrayed on the popular TV series The Bear. Thompson speaks to one chef who echoes the repercussions of sacrificing a social life that are depicted in the award-winning show, mentioning missing out on birthdays and special occasions because of long hours and weekend work schedules. “It’s more like a sports team, where you’re trying to achieve something. That’s what drives you forward,” says the chef. Write an essay about a time in your past when you had to make a sacrifice in your personal life because of your job. Was there a payoff? What were the factors that ultimately pushed you to choose your job over your social life?
In an interview by Margaret Ross for the Art of Nonfiction series published in the Summer 2024 issue of the Paris Review, author and Harvard University professor Elaine Scarry says, “I see my writing on imagination and on war as continuous. Or rather, the two subjects are essentially locked in combat, because the act of inflicting injury or pain is really a willful aping of imagination, turning it upside down and appropriating it.” Write a lyric essay that braids together two subjects: Use the imagination or the artistic process as one topic, and then choose another subject that may seem “locked in combat” with your ideas around creativity, perhaps one more adjacent to pain or distress. What kind of truth can be coaxed to the surface when you think about the connections between them?
Are you shoe obsessed? Do you prioritize fashion over comfort, seeking out the latest trends, or do you hold tight to a long-held personal style? This week, look through old photos and your closet to jot down notes about the shoes you’ve worn over the years—sneakers, slip-ons, boots, flats, heels, flip-flops—and how the elements of texture, color, and function have impacted your choices. Write a personal essay that traces how your shoe priorities have evolved over the years, perhaps connecting some favorite past pairs to certain phases of your life—places you’ve lived, fads you’ve endured, jobs or hobbies you’ve had. Unpack the specific memories associated with how you were shoed.
This year’s summer solstice arrives in the Northern Hemisphere on June 20, marking it the longest day, and shortest night, of the year. And yet, no matter the exact number of daylight or nighttime hours measured out, any day can feel like a very long day, just as any night can end in the blink of an eye. Write a two-part lyric essay in which the first part details one long summer day you’ve experienced, and the second part focuses on one short summer night. For the day that seemed to last forever, did it drag on and on, producing exasperation, or did the hours ooze dreamily and pleasurably? For the night that whizzed by, was there nonstop action that was over before you knew it?
A Question of Belonging: Crónicas (Archipelago Books, 2024) by the Argentine writer Hebe Uhart, who died in 2018, translated from the Spanish by Anna Vilner, contains over two dozen crónicas—a form of narrative journalism popularized in Latin America that is characterized by short, informal musings about everyday topics and observations. In her introduction to the book, Mariana Enríquez notes Uhart’s lack of pretension in her chosen subjects, from what she observed around her to the locals with whom she conversed. “Her fascination with language is not limited to the spoken: She roams around cities and towns taking note of shop names, ads, and graffiti.…” Jot down intriguing or amusing fragments of language you see and hear as you go about your day, perhaps during your commute or while watching your favorite TV show. Write a series of short musings based on your observations, noting any humor or insights gleaned from contemporary language and what it reveals about our current times.
Nearly fifty years ago, the writer George Perec spent three days sitting behind a café window in Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris recording everything he saw. In his short book, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, his observations of mundane occurrences and objects often considered unnoteworthy—passersby, cars, buses, pigeons, signs, and slogans—are documented. This week situate yourself in one spot, perhaps in your home or workplace, or in a public space like a park, busy crossroad, commercial area, library, or café. Then, jot down the objects and behavior you see, and the snippets of conversation you hear. Write a lyric essay composed of these notes, trying to avoid interpretations or analysis. Taken together, how do your observations create a portrayal of a specific time or place? Pay particular attention to how one observation might lead to another, and to potential rhythms and repetitions.
The maintenance or restoration of native plant and animal species has long been at the heart of many ecological and conservation projects, and has historically been a focus of land and environmental stewardship principles held by native and first peoples all over the world. But what if a beloved plant or animal is considered invasive, like the palm trees of Los Angeles or the cattle of Texas? What are the effects or consequences of centuries of existence with this invasive species in a particular locale? This week reflect on the notion of belonging—what are various places and times when you have felt a strong sense of belonging, and situations when you did not feel you belonged? Consider your own perspectives and responses when you encounter someone or something else that seems invasive or does not belong.