“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.
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 the dystopian world of Hon Lai Chu’s novel Mending Bodies (Two Lines Press, 2025), translated from the Chinese by Jacqueline Leung, a Conjoinment Act has been passed by the government wherein people are encouraged to have their bodies surgically joined to another person, creating couples who purportedly become more fulfilled beings while providing improvements for economic and environmental states. The novel’s structure alternates between sections detailing the narrator’s struggles with her own thinking and decision-making around “conjoining” and sections of her dissertation on the program’s history, including case studies and the origins of bodily “conjoinment.” Taking inspiration from this format, create a dystopian premise in which a society’s government has instituted an optional, controversial policy. Write a short story which intersperses bits of fictionalized research within the in-scene action for a touch of surrealism.
Asked where great poems come from, Alice Notley, who passed away last month, responded in a 2024 interview for the Paris Review’s Art of Poetry series: “I think the real answer has to do with suffering, and how you perceive things after suffering. You might just freeze, but if you don’t, other worlds open to you.” In remembrance of Notley, write a poem that considers how your perceptions may have shifted in subtle or substantial ways after a time of loss or sorrow. Notley spoke of “hearing the dead” in dreams and receiving advice. What new worlds have opened up to you as a result of this difficult experience? How can you use lyric form to give voice to your emotions?
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?
“This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper,” concludes T. S. Eliot’s 1925 poem “The Hollow Men,” described in his obituary in the New York Times as “probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English.” When considering the ending of something enormously consequential, the expectation might be that the external drama of that conclusion match one’s internal turmoil, however the sorrow of Eliot’s sentiment comes through in the idea of ending not with something explosive and abrupt, but with something much smaller, anticlimactic, and quiet. Write a short story that revolves around an ending of some sort—whether it be the world, a war, or a relationship—and include some portion of these last four lines of Eliot’s poem.
In storytelling, the narrative strategy of beginning in medias res is to launch into the middle of a plot. Frequently applied to the composition of contemporary novels and films, such as Fight Club, Forrest Gump, and Raging Bull, the storytelling device can be traced back to Homer’s Greek epic poem The Iliad, which opens at the tail end of the Trojan War. This week write a poem that begins in medias res. Think of a story you’d like to recount in narrative verse and then select a starting point that may be much later than the logical or conventional beginning of the action. Sprinkle in flashbacks and recollections of memory to fill in any necessary pieces of context that allude to earlier events.
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.
“Nothing happens without a reason. Everything was determined by something prior.” In Devs, a 2020 science fiction television miniseries written and directed by Alex Garland, the viewer is presented with heady questions around determinism and free will as more and more is revealed about a quantum simulation project at a cutting-edge tech company that appears to have the ability to simulate the world at any and all places and times, past and future. Write a short story in which you examine these ideas through characters with opposing opinions about the freedom to change the course of one’s life. You might choose to delve into science fiction or fantasy, or develop your story around a romance or a comedy of errors. What events in the past lead each character to their respective ways of thinking?
On her website, The Marginalian, Maria Popova writes about her admiration for Marie Howe’s poem “The Maples,” which appears in her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, New and Selected Poems (Norton, 2024), and describes it as “spare and stunning.” The poem begins by asking a question that has fueled philosophical discussions for centuries: “How should I live my life?” The speaker poses this question to nearby maple trees to which they respond, “shhh shhh shhh,” and their leaves “ripple and gleam.” Compose your own poem that attempts to ask and even embody this big life question, situating a speaker in a setting in which their connection to the surrounding environment is incorporated into the answer. Do you find yourself drawn toward nature or somewhere else?
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.
Earlier this month, the National Endowment for the Arts notified hundreds of independent publishers, theaters, museums, residencies, and nonprofit arts organizations about the termination of their funding, affecting countless writers, visual artists, dancers, performers, actors, and directors. How can artists continue to create when their support is suddenly taken away? Write a short story about an artist who finds themselves without the support they need—whether financial, emotional, or otherwise. Where does your character turn and how do they keep going? Will your story take on elements of fantasy, horror, tragedy, satire, or dark comedy?
Diane Seuss’s poem “Romantic Poet,” which appears in her collection Modern Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2024), is a reference to John Keats and his famous poem “Ode to a Nightingale.” Seuss writes: “You would not have loved him, / my friend the scholar / decried. He brushed his teeth, / if at all, with salt. He lied, / and rarely washed / his hair.” This week write a poem about someone or something you love that takes inspiration from Seuss’s poem and the ways in which her verse spans the universe of mundane actions and the sublime. Consider how to apportion the profane and the profound with alternations. How can the rhythm, pacing, and sound of your lines introduce a tension between what you love and the reality of what you love?
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.
Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey, a new documentary directed by Pippa Ehrlich, who won an Oscar for My Octopus Teacher, chronicles the rescue of a pangolin from wildlife traffickers in South Africa. In one sense, the film is about the progression of a baby pangolin named Kulu who learns skills such as foraging, gains a healthy amount of weight, and heals from his trauma before being set free in the wild. But another rescue enters the story as Gareth Thomas, a middle-aged man with a troubled past, volunteers for a nonprofit pangolin center and finds meaning in his life after spending over a year rehabilitating and eventually letting go of Kulu. Write a short story in which your main character is on a rescue mission and ends up being healed or redeemed in an unexpected way. What are the obstacles along the way that provide moments of comedy, suspense, or pathos?
In the New York Times, a recent headline reads: “Universal Antivenom May Grow Out of Man Who Let Snakes Bite Him 200 Times.” Without reading the content of the article, where does this sensational statement take your mind? This could be an act of heroism, foolishness, a desperate cry for attention, or simply one of the many bizarre idiosyncrasies of human behavior. This week, scroll and scan through a range of headlines—whether seemingly legitimate or dubious—and pick a particularly strange one. Before reading the article, write a poem that follows your line of thinking upon seeing this striking bit of reportage. Think about where the story might go and what images are evoked. Are you able to draw a personal connection to aspects of your own behavior that might explain why the headline resonated with you?
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 his introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2019, guest editor Anthony Doerr lists several dos and don’ts one often hears about writing short stories and describes his love for reading and writing stories that break those very rules. Some of the rules Doerr mentions are: “Don’t start with a character waking up. Jump right into the action. Exposition is boring. Backstory slows you down. Stick with a single protagonist. Make sure he or she is likable. Don’t break up chronology.” This week, think carefully about the reasoning behind one of these oft-cited rules, then write a story that explicitly goes against it. How can the incorporation of an aspect of experimentation or innovation effectively push against the possibly clichéd rationale behind the original rule?
In “Leaving the Psychologist: An Abecedarian Ekphrastic,” published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, Grisel Y. Acosta combines two poetic forms—the abecedarian, in which the first letter of each line follows alphabetical order, and the ekphrastic, which describes or responds to a work of visual art. In Acosta’s poem, she uses a 1960 painting by Spanish Mexican Surrealist artist Remedios Varo titled “Mujer saliendo del psicoanalista” as inspiration: “another face has sprouted in my chest / beastly, that’s me, a super freak / cavorting with your skull in my grasp….” Inspired by Acosta’s creation of combined forms, write your own abecedarian ekphrastic poem. Search for an image of a painting or other work of visual art that invokes a feeling of expansiveness or cyclicality. Allow this to buoy your path from A to Z.
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.
In the opening pages of We, the Casertas—a Gothic novel by the Argentine author Aurora Venturini first published in 1992 and translated from the Spanish by Kit Maude in a new edition forthcoming in May from Soft Skull Press—the main character declares with a youthful, fearsome confidence her damaged relationship with a cruel, rage-filled mother who misunderstands and mistreats her. With the use of this limited first-person point of view, Venturini sets up a complex, intensely subjective protagonist who is suffering yet defiant. “My mother knew that she could never tame me,” she writes. Write a scene in which a young person expresses their thoughts about a parental figure. How would things appear differently if written from the point of view of a young person, a parent, a complete stranger, or an elderly person looking back on a distant memory? Write one or multiple scenes to complete a short story.
From the wildflowers of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the white lilies of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, flowers have played a significant role in literature and are symbolic in many cultures. Floriography is known as the “language of flowers” and is a means of expressing emotion through the use of flowers—a method of discreet communication that has existed for millennia and saw heightened popularity during the Victorian era. Whether depicted in a painting, presented as a gift, used as commemorative decor, or worn as an accessory, a flower can symbolize gratitude, love, remembrance, trust, good health, or even danger. Spend some time looking into the language of flowers and write a poem that deploys floriography in some way, perhaps to express something you’ve kept secret until now.
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 Laura Wolf Benziker’s short story “The Green World,” published in Evergreen Review, a mother on an outing with her child at a water park has to abandon her glasses to go down a slide and experiences an unsettling transformation through her blurry, uncorrected vision. “She…stood up with a small flutter of panic,” writes Wolf Benziker. “Now she would need to trust, like a baby before it has learned how to see.” Write a short story in which your main character temporarily experiences a shift in sensory perception, such as a loss of taste or smell from illness, or muffled hearing from swimmer’s ear or air travel. What is revealed about your character in how they respond to this difficulty?
What signals to you that spring has finally arrived? While there are signs of transformation throughout the year, the signs of spring often feel particularly special following on the heels of winter as many look forward to the tiniest indications of vernal revitalization. Buzzing bees, daffodils and tulips, pollen that makes you sneeze, the end of clanging heater pipes, wearing shorts, outdoor picnics, and opening windows—there are many associations with the freshness of the season. This week write a series of short poems that focus on the small, perhaps idiosyncratic changes that signify to you, personally, that a new season is upon us.
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.
A mysterious lunch meeting at a restaurant in the financial district between a middle-aged actress and a handsome, much younger man opens the story of Katie Kitamura’s novel Audition (Riverhead Books, 2025). The reader is momentarily left in the dark as the unnamed first-person narrator recounts this lunchtime assignation and it’s not until the third chapter of the book that the details and reasons for their initial meeting come to light. Start a new short story in which two characters meet and the nature of their connection is kept ambiguous. Are they friends, lovers, family, colleagues, or something else? How can you use shifting points of view and dialogue to maintain an atmosphere of suspense and inscrutability?
In Sean Baker’s film Anora, which won best picture at this year’s Academy Awards, the title character spends the majority of her time zigzagging around New York City with various characters and in one particularly indelible shot, she strides past the iconic Cyclone roller coaster at a deserted Coney Island boardwalk on a gray winter afternoon. This week write a poem that revolves around an iconic location with a depiction that is unconventional or atypical in juxtaposition. You might consider how this locale is usually thought of in the popular imagination, how it was designed to function, or how it looks in different seasons. Play around with diction and rhythm to amp up a sense of tension and upend conventional expectations of your subject.
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.
“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.