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.
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:
The dreaded rejection letter, whether from a job application or a beloved literary journal, is often met with mixed feelings of inadequacy and disappointment. Something you worked hard on, had high hopes for, or saw a future in just didn’t pan out. Instead of imagining the receiving end, take the initiative to write a rejection letter to one of your characters. Consider the circumstance for the letter, if it’s professional or personal, and how well the writer knows the addressee. Is there room to infuse some humor or will you use this as an opportunity to write the letter you’ve always wished was sent to you? Write with truth and intent.
In her 2022 New York Times essay “The Shape of the Void: Toward a Definition of Poetry,” Elisa Gabbert writes about what makes language poetic. “I think poetry leaves something out,” she writes. “The missingness of poetry slows readers down, making them search for what can’t be found.” Write a poem that revolves around this idea of missingness and leaving something out. To facilitate a mindset of absence, you might choose a subject—a childhood memory, a relationship dynamic, a strange occurrence—that feels inherently cryptic, incoherent, or mysterious. Consider playing with line breaks, spacing, syntax, and diction, to make what’s absent hyper-present. How do the words on the page gesture toward the shape of what can’t be found?
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.
There are those who think John McTiernan’s 1988 film Die Hard is the farthest thing from a Christmas movie—an action-thriller blockbuster about a New York City police officer, played by Bruce Willis, who attempts to bring down a bunch of stereotypical villains holding his estranged wife and others hostage in a high-rise building in Los Angeles—while others passionately disagree, citing the fact that the film is set on Christmas Eve at an office holiday party with a soundtrack of seasonally appropriate Christmas songs. This week write a short story that occurs on the eve or day of a specific holiday, while subverting or upending conventions and expectations of the type of narrative usually attributed to this occasion. What conflicting themes and actions will you include in your blockbuster story?
In Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume, a septology whose first two books translated from the Danish by Barbara J. Haveland were published in November by New Directions, the protagonist is an antiquarian bookseller residing with her husband in France, who suddenly begins reliving the same day over and over again—a mysterious and seemingly endless predicament that creates a spectrum of conflicts in her life. Write a poem that imagines this Groundhog Day premise. Choose a particular day in your life that’s significant to you, and then write into the possibilities and quandaries that arise as the same day, and same actions, recur endlessly. In your imagination, what transpires when you know exactly what will happen each day while everyone else around you repeats their steps? How can you play with replicating the repetition in verse form?
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.
Anthropomorphism refers to the behavior of projecting human attributes onto nonhuman animals and objects, while anthropodenial is a term that refers to an assumption of human exceptionalism and is a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals. This week write a short story that includes both an incident of anthropomorphism and an incident of anthropodenial. You might decide to have one character whose perspective swings from one tendency to the other; or two characters who discover they have oppositional beliefs. Over the course of the story, is there a middle ground to be reached? How does someone’s beliefs about the differences between human and nonhuman animals connect to other aspects of their personality?
“I caught this morning morning’s minion, king- / dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding / Of the rolling level underneath him steady air,” begins Gerard Manley Hopkins’s 1877 poem “The Windhover,” a sonnet in which the poet wields the image of a kestrel in flight to explore his conflicted feelings about spirituality and art. The beginning lines of the poem are filled with repetition—of words, alliteration, consonance, and assonance—all of which place a weight onto the words, slowing the pace as one reads it aloud. Try your hand at weighing down the beginning of a new poem with repetition, using a variety of rhymes and sound. After a leisure beginning, does your poem suddenly break free and open, or is it more gradual?
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.
‘Tis the season for gifting, which can come with stressful shopping lists, awkward gift exchanges, wrapped packages awaiting under the tree, and festive advent calendars full of treats. This week write a short story that revolves around a character who must prepare a holiday present for someone. Create a backstory of their relationship and consider whether unsaid expectations come from something that’s happened in the past. Does it turn out to be the perfect gift or is it way off the mark? You might decide to infuse your story with elements of comedy, horror, fantasy, or surrealism—or combine all of these tones into a new classic.
For nearly three decades, from the early 1980s until 2013, Dr. Jonathan Zizmor’s skincare ads for his dermatology practice were a mainstay in New York City subway cars, touting treatments for various skin problems and displaying the doctor’s own slightly smiling visage. A 2016 New York Times article noting his retirement stated: “To know Dr. Zizmor is to know the city’s secret handshake, to appreciate its quirkier, more pedestrian pleasures that natives claim as their own.” What’s hyperlocal to where you live? Brainstorm some ideas of things that might qualify as local lore, your city’s secret handshake—perhaps some idiosyncratic window displays or advertisements, a distinctive element of the urban landscape, a quirk of the natural environment, or public street art. Write an ode to one of these items, to commemorate and share its pedestrian pleasures.
“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.
Restaurants in Dhaka have begun serving human meat in the world of Bangladeshi author Mojaffor Hossain’s short story “Meet Human Meat,” translated from the Bengali by Mohammad Shafiqul Islam. The characters in the story discuss this new trend with matter-of-factness, talking about logistics like supply and demand, how it’s advertised on menus, where the humans are sourced, the various modes of preparation, and dish accompaniments. Hossain uses this satirical conceit to touch upon larger topics, such as the Rohingya refugee crisis with restaurants serving “the meat of Rohingyas.” Write a short story that hinges on an outrageous idea, using it as a conceit for larger themes you’re interested in exploring. You may find that setting your story in a universe in which something taboo is commonplace and unremarkable will allow you some unexpected creative freedom.
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade,” wrote Italo Calvino on the first page of his 1979 novel, translated from the Italian by William Weaver. Calvino’s postmodern structure comprises twenty-two sections, with each odd-numbered passage narrated by a second-person “you” (you, the reader; you, a character). Each even-numbered passage, in turn, is the start of a new work, a fictional book that the “you” character discovers and reads, only to find that it ends abruptly and picks up in the next even-numbered passage as an entirely different work. Taking a cue from this puzzle of an approach, compose a poem that alternates between two narratives united by a winter’s night. How might a second-person “you” character be utilized in your poem? Is there an emotional progression connected to the accumulation of images and themes?
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?
Fools and lovers, emperors and empresses, devils and death, chariots and towers, moons and stars: The cards of a tarot deck are filled with scenes and images of a colorful assortment of characters, arcane symbols, flora and fauna, and celestial ephemera that can spark one’s imagination. In Chelsey Pippin Mizzi’s guidebook Tarot for Creativity: A Guide for Igniting Your Creative Practice (Chronicle Books, 2024), the symbols and archetypes on each of the seventy-eight cards are described in a way to fuel creativity and experimentation. Consider this creative connection to tarot and write a story in which one of your characters stumbles upon an errant tarot card at a crucial moment of indecision. Search online or through a book for a tarot card that resonates with the tone or theme of your narrative. What is depicted on the card and how does your character read into the imagery?
Anne Sexton’s 1962 ekphrastic poem “The Starry Night,” inspired by Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 painting of the same name, begins with a snippet from a letter written by the painter to his brother: “That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night to paint the stars.” Choose a favorite work of visual art by an artist for whom you can find a bit of personal information, whether it’s something they’ve written or details about their daily life, philosophies, thematic interests, or relationships with close ones. How can you connect what you learn about the artist with the artwork itself? Write an ekphrastic poem exploring the emotions and thoughts that come to the surface when you look at the artwork, allowing yourself to incorporate a creative synthesis of their biographical details.
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?
Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror is an animated television miniseries adaptation of the manga horror series created by manga author and artist Junji Ito. The story takes place in the fictional Japanese town of Kurouzo, which is overtaken by a mysterious, and ultimately, deadly obsession with spirals. Spirals begin appearing everywhere: in a stirred-up bath and bowl of soup, in the pattern on a fish cake, in the smoke from a crematorium, in a potter’s wheel, in a head of hair, and the whirl of a snail’s shell. Taking a page from Ito’s unusual premise of a simple shape transforming into a malignant force, write a short story in which an unexpected terror arises from a seemingly innocuous object or image. How does an everyday item become imbued with horrific capabilities to create an atmosphere of foreboding?
In the universe of the 2023 French film The Animal Kingdom (Le Règne animal), directed by Thomas Cailley, a wave of mutations have begun to transform some humans into animals. A woman who has begun mutating escapes into a forest while her husband and teenage son search for her. The unpredictable affliction causes chaos, as people adjust to seeing strangers and loved ones with fingers gradually turning into claws, fur growing on their skin, noses turning into beaks, and arms becoming feathered wings—all while fighting over conflicting perspectives of freedom and acceptance. Write a poem that explores your beliefs around these themes, perhaps pulling in fantastic metaphors or flights of fancy to assist you in your exploration.
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.
Autumn arrives with a multitude of textures and sensations: the wool fuzz of a cozy sweater or a favorite blanket, the dry crackle of crumbling leaves, sharply slanted golden sunlight, and a strong gust of wind. This week pick up a previously unfinished story, an in-progress story, or start one afresh, and begin by writing an autumnal scene that takes inspiration from an especially seasonal image or sensation. Include contradictory elements in your scene, such as light and dark, soft and sharp, silence and noise, warmth and coldness, that are often a part of fickle fall feelings. Does the specification of this time of year bring up fresh realizations about any of your characters, or how they’re inclined to behave? Or could it propel you toward a different narrative mood?
“I changed the order of my books on the shelves. / Two days later, the war broke out. / Beware of changing the order of your books!” writes Mosab Abu Toha in his poem “Under the Rubble,” which appears in his new collection, Forest of Noise (Knopf, 2024). In the poem, Abu Toha combines moments of whimsy, with distressing references to violence, death, and loss to present a portrayal of the day-to-day existence during a time of catastrophic war. Write a poem that ruminates on a difficult issue in your life that incorporates elements of playfulness or wonder in your exploration of the subject. Consider experimenting with a series of variating short stanzas as Abu Toha does in his poem, changing the tone with each section. Abu Toha speaks about his book in an interview in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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.
To do something at the eleventh hour is to accomplish a task at the last possible moment. The origins of the phrase are unknown, although there is some indication it may come from a Bible parable or simply from the idea of the eleventh hour being close to the twelve o’clock hour at midnight signaling the end of a day. This week write a short story in which your main character manages to pull off a miraculous feat at the eleventh hour. It might be something seemingly mundane—a household chore, a work project, a last-minute gift for a special occasion—that turns out to have wider implications or consequences. Is waiting until it’s almost too late typical of your character or wildly unexpected? What drama is drawn from your character flying by the seat of their pants?
The practice of cutting one’s hair can sometimes be an emotional process—the shedding of one’s layers much like the way a snake sheds its skin. For some, cutting hair might symbolize a spiritual rebirth, embracing new beginnings and letting go of the past. For others, it can be a traumatic experience. Haircuts can be well thought-out decisions, premediated and anticipated, or spur of the moment, an abrupt change to one’s appearance. Write a poem about your last haircut or the experience of observing a haircut. Include details of where you were, who was cutting the hair, the sounds of the clippers or scissors, and the emotions you experienced. Read “Haircut” by Elizabeth Alexander and “Hair” by Orlando Ricardo Menes for further inspiration.
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?
“‘It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,’ Mrs Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.” The final sentence of Shirley Jackson’s classic short story “The Lottery” is included in a short list of “The Best Last Lines in Books” on Penguin Random House UK’s website, along with selections from a range of books by authors such as Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Franz Kafka, Ira Levin, and Virginia Woolf. Many of these lines are powerfully evocative and open-ended, whether darkly humorous, straight-up horrifying, or daringly hopeful. Jot down a list of your favorite last lines and use one of them as a prompt to provide either the first sentence of a new short story or to inspire a plot. How do the emotions, weight, and mood of this final sentence affect the way you use it in your own piece?
In early September, mysterious white blobs began washing ashore on the beaches of Newfoundland in Canada, described as sticky, spongy, and doughy. Beachcombers and scientists alike were confounded—were the blobs of animal or plant origins? Were they toxic or innocuous, or created from industrial waste? As scientists continue to collect samples and run tests on these mysterious blobs, take this period of uncertainty to write a poem about a blob: these beach blobs, a blob inspired by science fiction, an explicitly frightening or comedic blob, or perhaps an experience that simply feels blob-like. How does the slipperiness of this concept lend itself to metaphors in your poem? Consider experimenting with the shape of your text, creating a concrete, yet blobby, poem.
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?
In the title story of Saeed Teebi’s 2022 debut collection, Her First Palestinian (House of Anansi Press), a new romance begins with the main character, Abed, acknowledging what is involved in getting to know another person: “Not long after the first joys of finding each other had settled, Nadia asked me if I would teach her about my country. It was inevitable. The walls of my Toronto apartment were conspicuously covered with Palestinian artifacts, and donation brochures featuring Gazan children were often lying around.” With the story’s title and this opening, Teebi invites the reader to consider and reflect on their own expectations of how this relationship will develop. Write a short story that charts the progression of a relationship, from somewhere near the beginning to somewhere near the end. What character details do you explicitly put into place, and what assumptions do you rely on to create a sense of expectation?
In Rae Armantrout’s poem “Unbidden,” which appears in her collection Versed (Wesleyan University Press, 2009), the poet’s use of short lines in conjunction with enjambment contribute to a sense of disjointedness. “The ghosts swarm. / They speak as one / person. Each / loves you. Each / has left something / undone,” writes Armantrout. This week compose a poem that revolves around a feeling of inconclusiveness. For your subject matter, consider a situation or relationship from your past that feels unfinished, one that continues to haunt you with questions. Deploy enjambment strategically—splitting up specific phrases and ending lines with significantly weighted words—to create a sense of discontinuity and unknowability.
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?
“I cannot help but admire Rooney the storyteller, willing to toe that tricky line between the pleasure-read and philosophy, determined to choose cooperation over cynicism,” writes Jessi Jezewska Stevens in her review of Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024), published in 4Columns. In the article, Stevens considers the task of a work of literature that attempts to be both a novel-of-ideas and a realist romance. This week compose a short story that simultaneously explores a philosophical idea close to your heart and chronicles a romantic relationship’s ups and downs. Do your characters discuss large issues with each other in pages of dialogue or through e-mail correspondences, or do they embody the ideas in another way? Are there additional ways you can think of to accomplish portraying both tasks?
While scientists have long known that spiders can fly across entire oceans on their silk threads by ballooning through strong wind currents, it’s only more recently that research has demonstrated their ability to travel on Earth’s electric field. Unlike humans, spiders can detect the naturally-occurring global electric field known as the ionosphere with the tiny sensory hairs on their bodies and prepare to lift off and take flight. Write a poem that focuses on modes of movement, perhaps imagining the ways in which humans have moved through space and how this has changed over time with new inventions and technology. What might be possible in the future? Try experimenting with rhythm and spacing, and explore what type of diction feels most reflective of the pacing you seek.
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?
Nutter Butter, the peanut butter sandwich cookie that launched in 1969, has recently found itself the topic of internet discussion revolving around videos posted on their TikTok page, which combine the bizarre and psychedelic with the creepy and cryptic. In an interview with the New York Times, a social media manager for the cookie company’s accounts spoke about how social media content performs best when it’s confusing and surreal, remarking: “We were trying to tap into: What is a Nutter Butter’s fever dream?” Write a short story inspired by imagining the fever dream of an object of your choosing—perhaps a favorite snack or household product. How might leaning into the nonsensical open new pathways for your story’s forward momentum?
“One by one, like leaves from a tree, / All my faiths have forsaken me; / But the stars above my head / Burn in white and delicate red, / And beneath my feet the earth / Brings the sturdy grass to birth,” begins Sara Teasdale’s 1915 poem “Leaves.” Write a poem that uses rhythm and meter to evoke the feeling of the autumn season and describes the sights and sounds of the natural environment drying and withering, beginning the descent to decomposition. You might use this as an opportunity to ruminate on the larger themes of slowing down, and cycles of renewal and decay. Pay particular attention to consonance, short and long vowel sounds, and the length of your words and lines to create the desired tone of your poem.
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?
Earlier this summer, while on a camping trip in Yellowstone National Park with his owners, a two-year-old Siamese cat named Rayne Beau ran off into the Wyoming woods and went missing. After several days of searching the area, the owners returned to their California home devastated only to receive a phone call two months later that the cat had been spotted wandering around three hours north of their home, traversing more than eight hundred miles. Write a short story that imagines the trials and tribulations that a pet might experience embarking on a long journey home. You might decide to use multiple perspectives throughout the narrative, considering the people and terrain the animal encounters along the way.
In a recent piece published on Literary Hub highlighting responses from writers and editors on their appreciation for The Chicago Manual of Style, book editor Barbara Clark muses on the poetry found within the guidebook. “When I looked up something in the manual, I saw poems in their purest form. Open to a page at random, and find a poem there,” says Clark. “Fused participles! Who can imagine such a thing?” Taking inspiration from grammar-related terms and phrases, compose a poem that plays with an open interpretation of the words involved, bringing these concepts beyond language usage and into a more personal or philosophical context. Can you locate a sort of soul or lyrical beauty within organization and categorization?
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.
Why did the chicken cross the road? In Tad Friend’s 2002 New Yorker piece “In Search of the World’s Funniest Joke,” he details the work of Dr. Richard Wiseman, a British psychologist who conducted a global humor study that included an experiment comparing scores for the same joke with different animals inserted in it. “We found that the funniest animal of all is a duck,” said Wiseman. “So science has determined that, if you’re going to tell a talking-animal joke, make it a duck.” Write a short story that involves a duck, whether in a main role, or in a minor appearance. See if you can facilitate the duck’s function as a humorous device: Is its appearance unexpectedly wacky or quirky? Do the human characters respond in a humorous way, or does the hilarity extend from a deadpan atmosphere?
Wim Wenders’s 2023 Oscar-nominated film Perfect Days follows the life of a man named Hirayama, who cleans public toilets in Tokyo for work. Hirayama adheres to routines in his daily activities, waking to the sound of someone sweeping outside, brushing his teeth, misting his plants, buying a coffee from the vending machine outside of his apartment, playing cassette tapes on his commute, and taking photos with film cameras while on his lunch break. His work tasks are completed with integrity, even using a jerry-rigged mirror to check the undersides of the toilets he cleans. The character speaks very little and the focus remains on the simple beauty of his everyday experiences. Write a poem that chronicles one day in your life, encapsulating both mundane routine and beauty beheld. Consider playing with repetition, line breaks, and spacing, to reflect the regular and irregular rhythms of your day.
“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.
Airport security lines: a place for aesthetically pleasing arrangements of items or high stress rushing? A recent viral social media trend that involves taking photos of meticulously curated TSA bins presents the possibility that there are those who view an airport security line as an influencer opportunity rather than a time-consuming and inconvenient obligation. Write a short story that focuses on a confrontation of opposing viewpoints set in an airport, a locale where people are oftentimes stressed about getting to their flights on time, running into delays, and scrutinizing the plans for their trips. Try incorporating some humor, light or dark, into the situation or tease out an element of suspense.
In the four lines of the poem “Quiet Night Thoughts” by Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai, the speaker expresses a sentiment of longing for home, brought on by the somber imagery of moonlight shining in through a bedroom window. In celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival, an occasion for gatherings to gaze at the full moon that leads up to the autumnal equinox, write a poem that uses the moon as a symbol of unity to reflect on the desire to reunite with loved ones—whether they be relatives near or far, or your chosen family. As you gaze at the moon in all its luminosity, roundness, and fullness, what emotions arise surrounding social harmony or disharmony?
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?
Earlier this month, Science journal published an article detailing findings that linked the death of bats to higher human infant mortality rates. In U.S. counties where bat populations decreased due to a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, farmers increased their use of pesticides to compensate for the insect population control that bats typically provide, and putting more pesticide into the environment led to increased infant deaths. Write a short story that demonstrates the unfolding of a chain reaction that occurs when the population of one animal in our interconnected ecosystem either significantly increases or decreases the human population. You might experiment with incorporating elements of certain genres, like science fiction, mystery, romance, or even comedy into your story.