Jacaranda trees, whose abundant violet-colored flowers dominate the streets of Los Angeles from late spring through early summer, have bloomed about a month earlier this year due to an unexpected heat wave in March. The trees have filled the city with large swaths of purple, both on the tree canopies and sprinkling carpets of blooms when they fall. Think of a sign in your local environment that annually signals a change from spring to summer and write a story that takes place against the backdrop of this seasonal indicator occurring earlier than usual. Experiment with how this subtle or explicit phenomenon in the natural environment can be expressed through various sensory details. How does this occurrence create a sense of tension in relation to the plot arc and character development of your narrative? Do your characters take notice of this anomaly or is it simply playing out in the background?

Fady Joudah, winner of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, writes that he thought about how animals process trauma without speaking and how “intifada deserves a good rhyme” when composing his poem “Pink Panther,” recently published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. The poem concludes with the stanza: “See cicada or when home is a howling / intifada. Your heart, utterly flexible, / a wind like water, / the stubborn wind.” This week, begin by creating a short list of words or phrases that you find yourself circling around in your work, perhaps indicative of themes at the forefront of your thoughts. Then, select one term that is particularly difficult to rhyme. Challenge yourself to think of rhyming words and ways to connect the terms, even if far-fetched. Build your poem around this innovative and unexpected rhyme pairing.

“When you mention music, you want that music to do the atmosphere work for you. But it’s really tricky,” says Sophie Strohmeier about linking music, compositions, and instruments to the characters in her novella All Girls Be Mine Alone (Joyland Publishing, 2025), in an interview for the Creative Independent. “It was more like creating a material palette with the evocation of what each instrument might convey.” Focus on infusing a scene in either a new personal essay or a work-in-progress with music. Allow the music to do the work of adding a fresh dimension to the atmosphere and recollection of your memories. You might recall the types of songs that would have been playing in your setting or brainstorm the sounds and instruments that most effectively convey the mindset or emotions of the people present in your retelling.

Recently, the New Yorker published an article by Julian Lucas about the devastation experienced when losing digital data and the experts who are able to repair and recover data for victims. Steve Burgess, a “data-recovery pioneer,” talks about how the value of a person’s data is dependent on whether or not they have it. “Once they have it, it really wasn’t worth anything,” he says. “But, if they don’t have it, it’s worth an arm and a leg and their children.” Write a short story that launches from the starting point of a character experiencing an unfortunate mishap with their phone or computer, resulting in the loss of irreplaceable photos, texts, audio files, writing, and contact information. Were the lost items something that they took for granted before? What is your character willing to do to retrieve the data?

What sort of emotional labor does one experience when caring for a parent or a child, a friend or lover, or someone who’s ill? This week compose a poem that details the gestures and actions, the commitments and complications involved in taking care of someone else. In Angela Jackson’s poem “Caregiving,” published in the April 2023 issue of Poetry magazine, the speaker recalls a time before the responsibility of caretaking when she would “rumble-race” and “haul-dash” to the gym to exercise twice weekly, and contrasts that dynamism with the slowed-down, zoomed-in attention spent on the person she is looking after who is “sitting on the gray stoop / like a lost little girl.” In your own poem, think about the resulting sacrifices and rewards of caretaking, and consider how to express that through sound and rhythm.

Can we learn how to avoid conflict by studying the behavior of other animals? A recent New York Times article reported that in the last decade or so, a group of chimpanzees in the forests of Uganda experienced an unprecedented uptick in large-scale violence, prompting scientists to question the origins of this civil warfare and consider whether these types of violent conflicts are a part of human evolution. Compose a personal essay that reflects on your thoughts about conflict, whether it be a large-scale conflict in the country you live in or more intimate between friends and family. How can sorting through your own beliefs and emotions help you reach new understandings about human social relations and behavior?

Early last year, a group of three thousand people across the United States were surveyed for a study published by Brigham Young University’s Wheatley Institute which found that nearly one out of five adults had chatted with an AI romantic partner. Considering this growing trend, write a short story that revolves around the unexpected consequences that arise when a character develops a romantic relationship with an AI-generated companion. Is there an inciting incident that prompts your character to turn to technology for comfort? Does anyone else know about this new love interest or is the relationship kept a secret? Aside from possible elements of sci-fi dystopia or tropes from mystery and thriller genres, consider incorporating some unexpected humor and satire into your story.

“I love the hour before takeoff, / that stretch of no time, no home / but the gray vinyl seats linked like / unfolding paper dolls,” begins Rita Dove’s poem “Vacation,” which appears in her 2021 collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse. The poem follows the speaker’s thoughts and observations of others in the airport waiting at the flight gate, from the “ragtag nuclear families” to “the heeled bachelorette” to “the lone executive.” Taking inspiration from Dove’s poem, write a poem that takes place in an airport, infusing the piece with the dynamic energy of different people on the move, traveling and waiting, perhaps impatiently with nervous energy or exhaustion. How might the sounds and textures of the airport play a role in how the poem conveys the atmosphere?

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.

In Sarah Wang’s debut novel, New Skin (Little, Brown, 2026), a young woman named Linli Feng is drawn back to her hometown to tend to her mother in the aftermath of her latest string of disastrous plastic surgeries. Through the eyes of Linli, the environment around her reflects components of her own reality, full of signs of destruction and disrepair, including grass that is “as brown and dry as any in Los Angeles,” a fruitless fig tree that has been damaged after her mother backs her car into it, and a thicket of bougainvillea with “deep magenta bracts” dying and falling to her feet. Write a short story in which the setting displays characteristics that reveal both the mindset of your main character and themes you wish to interrogate in your narrative. How might elements that may conventionally be seen as positive or beautiful take on hints of menace or darkness through the story’s landscape?