In a 1988 issue of the Yale Review, an essay titled “Making Contact: Encounters With Readers” by Annie Dillard, who passed away earlier this month, consists of a series of short segments recalling the letters, notes, and items she had received from readers who felt compelled to write to her. Dillard recounts readers who sent her missives about their lives, short stories they had written, existential questions, religious objects, medical journal articles, a marriage proposal, pamphlets about God, dead insects, and numerous bits of ephemera. Taking inspiration from this form, think about memorable things that you have received in the mail or in person over the years. Compose a chronicle of people who have given you these letters or objects, and write short reflections that explore both the content and the context of these interactions. How might the collection reveal something about the role you play in others’ existences?
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
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As part of the marketing campaign for the recent sci-fi thriller film The Last House, in which a family must figure out how to survive after being sealed inside their home due to a mysterious menace taking over the outside world, Netflix constructed a tiny living space inside an advertising billboard thirty feet above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles where an actor was “trapped” inside for several days. The stunt attracted passersby who interacted with the actor and visited him daily. Write a short story that revolves around the deployment of a publicity stunt connected to a storyline for a new film, book, or amusement park ride. You might decide to take the point of view of a confused onlooker or the performer within the stunt. Allow yourself to play around with layers of artifice and performance, and mix the real with the surreal.
“The swallows screech at dawn / Birds which day from night divide // We are quick shuttles / Weaving the blurred thread of mystery // Dusk is our element / Brushing the edge of a moment,” writes Blaže Koneski in his poem “Swallows,” translated from the Macedonian by Kristian Josifoski and published in the May 2026 issue of Poetry magazine. Swallows have long been known for their close relationship to humans—the way they build their nests on the sides of buildings and bridges, their anticipated annual migrations as harbingers of spring and autumn, and as a symbol of resilience for sailors through long journeys and homecomings. Write a poem that draws upon the physical traits and behavior of swallows, or another common bird, weaving in symbolism and connections to your own relationship to the natural progression and patterns of passing time.
What books do you turn to when you need a bit of consolation? Comfort reads are books that readers return to again and again; knowledge of the trajectory of the story providing a bit of a warm and fuzzy feeling and relief from stress or melancholy. Whether you’re feeling downtrodden because of a dreary time of year, a recent crisis, an illness, or general distress, a comfort read—even if just reading a few pages or excerpts—is liable to restore cheer from its well-worn familiarity. Write a personal essay about some of your favorite comfort reads, whether novels, poetry collections, memoirs, graphic novels, or even children’s picture books. Recount your earliest reading of the book and other times when you have turned to it again. Even if you have found different things to value in subsequent readings, what are the reliable elements that continue to provide an uplifting feeling?
In Sam Raimi’s latest horror film Send Help, a woman who is constantly underappreciated and passed over for a promotion by her lousy boss finds herself suddenly trapped on a deserted island with him. In this new environment, the tables have turned. Injured in the catastrophic plane crash that landed them on this island, he is now dependent on her canny survival skills, a dependence she finds herself more than eager to exploit. Write a short story in which, due to an unexpected event, a role reversal occurs between two main characters. What were the original power dynamics between the characters? Are there benefits and disadvantages for both characters when the tables are turned? In Raimi’s film, the characters occupy a gray area as sympathetic characters—see if you can play with drawing out moral or emotional ambiguities with the characters in your own story.
A $4.99 Costco rotisserie chicken, a plastic lawn flamingo, personal injury lawyer advertisements, a sad desk salad, a red Solo cup, a “Live, Laugh, Love” sign, a gas station bathroom key, and Botox are among the list of twenty-five objects in Emily Keegin’s recent New York Times piece “Welcome to My Museum of America,” a hypothetical museum showcasing Americanness. What are the relics you feel exemplify what it means to be an American living in contemporary society? This week write a poem exploring several objects that you would put in such a museum. Pick your objects carefully, reflecting on how each one might encapsulate something significant or insightful about the nation’s history, priorities, values, and habits. Select a diverse range of objects so that you can experiment with humor and fluctuations in tone.
“To translate a book is to enter into a relationship with it, to approach and accompany it, to know it intimately, word by word, and to enjoy the comfort of its company in return,” says Jhumpa Lahiri in her 2021 Sebald Lecture “In Praise of Echo.” In the lecture, Lahiri invites readers to think of translation in broad terms, as not simply restating something in another language, but as a “miraculous transformation in which specific traits and elements are shed and others are newly obtained.” Spend time with this idea of translation as transformation and write a personal essay about an experience in which you metamorphosed an experience, an emotion, or yourself into a different “language.” This language might be a visual art form, music, a different genre of literature, or another form of expression.
In a 1981 interview published in the Paris Review, Gabriel García Márquez tells Peter Stone how his grandmother inspired the narrative voice in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, which tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family and presents its fantastical elements with utter naturalness. Márquez wanted to write the novel’s magical narratives “with the same expression with which my grandmother told them: with a brick face.” Write a short story that incorporates mystical or supernatural elements while maintaining a tone based in reality, in which these elements are considered commonplace. What themes and truths about your characters are easier to express in this imagined world? As you write, consider what Márquez says about storytelling: “A novelist can do anything he wants so long as he makes people believe it.”
In an interview published in Poetry Northwest, C. E. Janecek speaks with Asa Drake, author of Maybe the Body (Tin House, 2026), about language and its imprecision, and when it’s best to leave things unsaid. “In customer service one avoids negation because it often points to a conflict,” says Drake. “For example I might say ‘walk please’ instead of ‘no running’ and replace a rule with a directive. I’m really interested in why the command is less offensive than the rule.” Write a poem in which the speaker gives instructions to prohibit an act or behavior. Begin each stanza with an imperative verb and try avoiding negative words such as “don’t,” “no,” “never,” or “not.” How can you portray what is forbidden to a reader without explicitly naming the rules?
Music often has the ability to evoke a strong sense of nostalgia, whether it’s favorite songs played over and over during a certain phase of life or heard on the radio for a season. Songs can be introduced or recommended by loved ones, and lyrics might remind us of a particular person. Music could have even been sung along to during childhood road trips with family or become the perfect soundtrack for a specific town or city you’ve visited or lived in. Jot down a list of several songs that bring you back to a certain someone, someplace, or sometime. Write a personal essay composed of a series of vignettes about each song and the sense of nostalgia and associated memories that arise when you listen to the music. As you write, you might want to listen to the songs and incorporate lyrics into your essay.
This week compose a short story arising out of a two-part exercise that illuminates a new side of the old “show, don’t tell” strategy. First, imagine that your main character has just experienced a significant change in their life, maybe something unexpected or even shocking: a sudden relationship breakup, news about a family member’s health getting worse, winning the lottery, or running into a long-lost love. Then write a short story that takes place the day after this revelation as they go about their day—whether looking out a window on a bus commute, walking in the neighborhood, or preparing a meal—but refrain from mentioning anything about what happened the day before. Instead, focus on how your character’s observations and feelings about their immediate surroundings might be colored by their current state of mind.
If familects are the unique words and phrases that are created within a family from inside jokes, shared experiences, and specific needs, then we can think of friendlects as the parallel for private languages created between close friends. These specific, social dialects bond a family and friend unit. What happens when the two languages meet? Write a poem that incorporates a word or phrase that is only used within your family and one that was created with a friend. In your poem, you might find yourself exploring themes of intimacy and the powers and shortcomings of language as a mode of expression and communication. You could also consider how communal bonds are built, ideas around belonging and unbelonging, and being an insider or an outsider. How do you bond with others through language?
In Steven Soderbergh’s dark comedy film The Christophers, a young Black artist takes on an assignment to forge a series of paintings by an elderly, white, formerly renowned painter, whose earlier works are worth millions. The older painter’s grown children hope that the eventual sales of these forged earlier works will provide them with an influx of wealth as the painter has not produced noteworthy pieces in decades and has since been “canceled.” Initially an antagonistic relationship between an older artist and his supposedly hired-out-of-nowhere assistant, the two eventually warm toward each other and develop a bond through their exchanges about the value and legacy of art. Write a personal essay about an instance when you forged an unusual bond with an unlikely stranger or acquaintance, despite significant differences in age, identity, and temperament. What conversations and ideas brought you two together?
As recent studies reveal the dangers of social media addiction, particularly with younger people, there has been an increase in bans on cell phones in high schools around the nation and worldwide, which in turn has prompted debate about the limits of restrictions, parental concerns, and the effectiveness of bans when many teenagers often resort to using burner phones. This week, write a short story that revolves around a recently imposed ban on cell phones at a high school and the ripple effects. When a formerly used mode of communication is disrupted, what kind of miscommunications might occur? Explore various characters’ viewpoints, including students, teachers, administration, parents, and groups of teen friends. Are there potential upsides? You might even find yourself incorporating elements of a comedy of errors or a mystery.
“Summer grass aches and whispers. // It wants something; it calls and sings; it pours / out wishes to the overhead stars.” In Carl Sandburg’s three-stanza poem “Summer Grass,” originally published in his 1928 collection Good Morning, America, the poet explores sentiments of longing and transition, capturing the spiky heat and dryness of summer through a personification of grass straining for cool, nourishing hydration, and then the deliverance of rain. As summer slowly transitions into autumn, compose a series of short poems that manifest both the physical sensations and the emotional elements you might associate with two consecutive seasons, moving from one to the other. How can you play with rhythm and line breaks, sound and space, to express movement and energy?
In Amy Gallo’s essay, “Forever Faithful to a Single Story: An Ode to Monogamous Writing,” published on Literary Hub, the author writes about her decades-long commitment to a single manuscript and how she adamantly avoided juggling multiple writing projects in the process of publishing her first book. “I couldn’t move on because I was still spoken for, I suppose, my consciousness occupied by the single story closest to my heart,” writes Gallo. Write a personal essay reflecting on your commitment to an essay or manuscript you’ve been working on. Do you tend to focus on one project at a time or do you enjoy taking breaks with something new?
In “What Scientists Learned By Eavesdropping on Thousands of People,” an essay recently published in the New Yorker, Shayla Love reports that people are speaking fewer and fewer words, citing a study published earlier this year that found, on average, people speak about three hundred fewer words a day than in years past. Write a short story set in the near future in which people rarely speak aloud to one another. Consider which thoughts or emotions become difficult or impossible to express when spoken language becomes a rarity. How do those lost conversations affect your characters and reshape societal values? Has verbal communication been supplanted by another kind of discourse?
“There’s always a chainsaw somewhere, / the high whine of a drill, somebody building something or / tearing it down, fastening metal to metal,” begins Marie Howe’s poem “Chainsaw,” published in the May 2023 issue of Poetry magazine. Taking inspiration from Howe’s opening stanza, write a poem that begins with: “There’s always a ___ somewhere.” You might similarly start with a sensory observation and draw a connection to it with larger, ever-present forces, the way that Howe explores the relentless drive of industry and human violence in her poem. Consider how the ubiquity of your object serves as a stand-in for other inescapable forces.
Jérôme Lindon by Jean Echenoz, translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti and forthcoming from Archipelago Books in September, is the story of the author’s decades-long friendship with his publisher, Jérôme Lindon, who directed the renowned French publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit for over a half century. “It begins on a snowy day, on Rue de Fleurus in Paris, January 9, 1979,” writes Echenoz. “I’ve written a novel, my first. I don’t know if it’s only my first; I don’t know if I’ll write another. All I know is that I’ve written one, and if I could find a publisher for it, that would be good.” The book’s final page concludes twenty-two years later, after Echenoz receives news that Lindon has died. Write a memoiristic account that chronicles an important friendship with someone you have worked with professionally, beginning with your first meeting. Reflect on their admirable qualities along with their less-than-perfect traits to provide a tribute that encompasses their humanness.
Haunted houses are often depicted as decrepit manses with crumbling Victorian architecture, sitting on top of hills, surrounded by creepy dark woods, isolated from civilization. The house in Brenda Iijima’s second novel, Shelter Is Necessary for Existence (Two Dollar Radio, 2026), is set instead in a densely populated, affluent brownstone neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, and is haunted by the ghosts of previous tenants and psychogeographical history, as well as its new owners’ preoccupations and paranoias. Write a story set in a haunted home located in a neighborhood that doesn’t lend itself to conventional spooky tropes. Start with a scene of exploration or discovery of something that formerly went unnoticed, in or around the home. How might gentrification, exploitation, or constant construction contribute to a sense of dread as elements of psychological horror seep into your story?
Stine An’s debut collection, B-Dragon Suite, forthcoming from Nightboat Books in September, is a multidisciplinary, hybrid work that revolves around Korean pop music’s sounds and culture. The verses spring from an invented universe inhabited by a fictional boy band and girl group while also meditating on themes of colonial history and diaspora. Pieces range from prose poems and concrete poetry to song lyrics and dramatic scripts. The poem “B-Dragon Solo” begins: “B is for benighted. / Use banger in a sentence. The Korean War was is such a club banger. / B is for bang. / B is for banger.” The lines continue, incorporating emojis and Korean characters and romanizations. Create a poem that grows out of an imagined universe of your own, perhaps one that exists at the confluence of pop-music aesthetics and digital forms of communication, such as emojis and graphics. Try your own experiments with language and translations.
In a recent interview published on the Creative Independent, author and editor Naomi Falk talks about the importance of ritual and her daily morning habits of cooking, meditation, walking, and dream journaling. “I adore the morning time,” she says. “Between the hours of six and nine, everything that I do is just for myself.” Write a personal essay that takes a look at how you like to start and end your day, including the type of atmosphere and activities that help you ease into the morning and how you like your night to wrap up. Where might spirituality or dreams come into play? Does exercise or body movement contribute to a sense of warming up or cooling down before and after the day’s events? Consider how your relationship to patterns and repetitive habits say something about where you are in your life.
In The Invite, a recent film directed by Olivia Wilde with a screenplay by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, an unhappily married couple invite their upstairs neighbors over to their apartment for dinner and the evening leads to unexpected revelations after a risqué proposition. Taking inspiration from the contained setting of an apartment and the ripe ingredients for drama and comedy of mysterious neighbors and an awkward proposal, write a short story in which members of a household—a couple, multi-generational family members, or housemates—invite neighbors they don’t really know over for a gathering and a surprising idea or proposition is brought up. How does this closed space open up a multitude of possibilities in terms of what might go wrong or right, and how the characters end up learning from one another?
What do you think of when you hear the word clown? In a 2022 Los Angeles Times article by Jake Kroeger about the contemporary state of clowning in the arts and its growing popularity, clown teacher and performer Jet Eveleth defines the word as “a celebration of the physical and vulnerable side of the human experience.” Eveleth points out how the actions of a clown, whether it be falling down or falling in love, are “poking fun at the human condition.” This week write a “clown” poem, allowing yourself to explore whatever the word brings up for you. Perhaps it is children’s birthday parties, horror movie villains, campy decor, circus hijinks, or something that lives in the contradiction of simultaneous joy and sorrow. How do the paradoxes of a clown—both happy and sad, silly and sinister—reveal truths about the human condition?
Ships and boats, clocks, bird cages, Black dolls, antlers, and masks. Artist Betye Saar, who passed away last month at the age of ninety-nine, was renowned for her assemblage works created with found objects that she gathered in her studio over the course of decades, objects she used to explore social issues of racism, stereotypes, femininity, and spirituality. “I’ve always felt that old objects hold a power,” Saar stated in a 2024 New York Times interview. “They’ve survived, and they have a sense of the previous owner. They have a spirit.” What objects have you collected over the years? Jot down a list of old objects, perhaps the types of everyday items you might find at a garage sale or antique collectibles shop. Then, write a lyric essay with short reflections, experimenting with how to put the objects in play with one another thematically when you consider their spirit and who owned them previously.