The Time Is Now

In the 2019 coming-of-age comedy film Booksmart, directed by Olivia Wilde, two best friends who have spent their high school years studying and pursuing other bookish activities in order to get into Ivy League universities are shocked to discover that their peers have also gotten into prestigious schools despite their hard-partying ways. To rectify the injustice of this, they decide to attend a party on the last day of school, the night before their graduation, which sends them on a wild and chaotic adventure. Write a short story that takes place during a brief, contained period of time—perhaps just a day or two—when a character attempts to infiltrate a tight social group after feeling left out. How does an outsider’s perspective bring about new realizations of what’s important in life? What kinds of interactions unfold that impact your characters?

“Lichens in the armpits of marble statues / differentiated from lichens on the thighs, / eaten by snails on moonless nights.” Talvikki Ansel describes her poem “The Lichens,” published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, as growing from an imagining of “the stories of far-flung lichen family members” and “inspired by the presence and tenacity of lichens on trees and rocks and the roof-racks and side mirrors of my car.” Taking a cue from Ansel’s muse, spend some time jotting down notes and observations from any type of natural growth in your surroundings and conduct a bit of research about the biological processes involved. Compose a poem that mixes your personal imaginings with scientific findings and striking imagery.

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?

In First Reformed, the 2017 drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader, a tormented minister leading a small congregation in upstate New York finds his mental, physical, and spiritual states unraveling after a situation with a young couple seeking his guidance leads to a shockingly terrible turn of events. Throughout the turmoil, Reverend Ernst Toller continues a project to record onto paper all of his daily activities and unfiltered thoughts for a year with the intention of destroying the journal once he’s done. Write a short story in which your main character is experiencing a particularly tumultuous phase of upheaval and decides to maintain a daily routine of writing in a diary. Incorporate snippets and excerpts from the diary entries to illuminate the character’s biases and singular perspective, lead the reader to conclusions about your character, or shed light on their preoccupations as they navigate a difficult time.

Clunky metaphors, the use of em dashes and the verb “delve,” and the rule of threes. These are some telltale signs that you’re reading prose created by artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT, according to a recent New York Times Magazine article titled “Why Does A.I. Write Like . . . That?” by Sam Kriss. AI creates a certain supposedly distinctive voice that is markedly strange, yet one which is foundationally based on how humans articulate themselves in language. This week write a poem from the persona of an AI bot that is commenting on its own algorithm and how it mines language from novels and textbooks to create what humans request through their prompts. Play with vocabulary, punctuation, and style to mimic the voice of AI. How does your AI persona’s own “consciousness” push it to create hallucinations?

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!

In many holiday movies and holiday-themed episodes of popular TV series, a clashing of traditions stands as a focal point: the combination of Christmas and Hanukkah in The O.C.’s “Chrismukkah” episodes; the tension between older and younger generations in Home for the Holidays; attending extravagant and polished parties while withholding truths in Metropolitan and Happiest Season; and the uncomfortableness of houseguests in The Family Stone and Happy Christmas. Write a short story in which these differences come to a head because of a newly enmeshed relationship, whether that be between housemates, a romantic couple, in-laws, or different sides of the family. How do your characters’ personalities reveal themselves over the course of the narrative? Consider the ways you might craft the story to demonstrate how multiple layers of power dynamics operate in both blatant and subtle ways.

“It was happily free of theoretical ambitions, such as being avant-garde or radical or even funny,” writes Ron Padgett in the foreword to The Complete C Comics (New York Review Books, 2025), which collects the two issues of comic books created by Joe Brainard in collaboration with New York School poets in the 1960s. Brainard created the drawings and poets, such as Padgett, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, Frank O’Hara, and Peter Schjeldahl, provided text for speech balloons and captions. This week experiment with the energy and humor of this illustrative format. Take inspiration from classic comic book icons and characters and write a poem that channels the childlike playfulness of comics, giving them your own “adult” spin, perhaps incorporating elements of surrealism or parody, or even accompanying your own doodles and sketches.

’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?

How long would it take you to memorize more than a hundred square miles of city streets? London’s black cab drivers are trained to rely on memory and not GPS technology by studying and passing a series of exams, a process called “The Knowledge,” which can take someone three years or more to receive an official license. Potential drivers must memorize over twenty thousand street names, countless landmarks, and various routes. Write a short story that revolves around a character who must take on and pass an extraordinarily difficult exam of some sort. What significance—whether professional, financial, psychological, or spiritual—would passing the test hold? Consider the various tonalities you wish to strike within the story: hopefulness, despair, suspense, ambiguity, or celebratory happiness.