Herb strewer, runemaster, toad doctor, bobbin boy. These are all occupations listed on a Wikipedia list of obsolete occupations—job positions that existed in the past that were rendered obsolete at some point because of technological advances and other sociocultural changes. Write a story that revolves around a character working a job that seems to be outdated or on the brink of obsolescence. How can you revitalize the job and its value in your story? Considering the rapid transformations brought about by technology in current times, what are the larger implications?
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:
At JSTOR Daily, a recent story reports on the crowdsourced online slang dictionary Urban Dictionary from a linguistic perspective, noting its inclusion of both niche joke word usage and its usefulness as an archive of social meanings for words such as “like” and “eh.” This week write a poem that incorporates some of your favorite slang or informal vernacular phrases. You might decide to allow this diction to pull your poem towards one tonal direction, or to offset its informality with more conventional elements of meter.
“I had to write the book for two reasons. The first one was gratitude for all that kept me alive and made life worth living, and the second was vengeance against all that diminishes life,” writes Anne Boyer in an interview about her memoir, The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), for the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog. Think of an urgent issue in your own life which has provoked in you both feelings of gratitude and vengeance. Write a personal essay that expresses both of these important emotional states. How do you give voice to these feelings in a complex and productive or healing way?
Queering the Map is an online interactive mapping project where users can post queer stories, memories, and anecdotes that are geolocated on a browsable world map. In Condé Nast Traveler, Melissa Kravitz writes, “Rather than centering the stories around a building or historical monument, it adds a bench carved with the initials of a couple on the west coast, the spot where a person came out to themselves, or the site where a fundraising group collected money for AIDS victims to the collective queer history.” Write a scene in a story that establishes the setting by noting a memory that is attached to a mundane item or physical structure. How does this infusion of a backstory inform the relationships that your character develops?
Is there something in the way you move? A study published last month in the Journal of Applied Physiology presented findings that people have unique movement patterns like fingerprints, ways of walking specific to each individual due to distinct muscular contractions. This week observe the idiosyncratic motions of someone close to you, whose gait you can detect from afar or out of the corner of your eye. Write a poem that attempts to capture this person’s particular way of moving. Utilize sound, rhythm, and spacing in your lines to depict these recognizable footsteps.
“We deserve to have our wrongdoing represented as much as our heroism, because when we refuse wrongdoing as a possibility for a group of people, we refuse their humanity,” writes Carmen Maria Machado in her new memoir, In the Dream House (Graywolf Press, 2019), about the need to acknowledge the queer community as human beings who are multifaceted and morally complex. Think of someone who at some point has occupied a heroic role in your life and write an essay that attempts to represent all the dimensions of this person. What possibilities are you allowing for when you articulate a person’s flaws or mistakes instead of simply presenting the best version?
“I wanted to write a story and fit it all on a menu and call it ‘Myself as a Menu,’ writes Lynne Tillman in Frieze about a story she wrote for Wallpaper magazine in 1975. “This way I would have a structure and humorously author ‘a self’ as an assortment of so-called ‘choices’, while representing a text as arbitrary, like a menu of disparate dishes and tastes.” Write a story inspired by this menu form, perhaps using a real restaurant menu as a template or launchpad. Create a persona by choosing certain “courses” or “sides” to further elaborate on your character’s personality.
Last month poetry scholars from Keele University opened up a “Poetry Pharmacy” in a Victorian shop in a small town in England. Visitors can participate in poetry classes, specialist day retreats, and consultations and prescriptions for poetry, which all focus on providing mental health support for the local community and emphasize the therapeutic benefits of poetry. “We believe that poetry can do so much to match or alter a mood, to assist in so many ways with good mental health,” says Deborah Alma, the pharmacy’s designated “Emergency Poet.” This week write a poem with an intentional mood in mind, one that is designed to match a bright or pensive mood, or combat and soothe a conflicted one.
Do you believe in ghosts? Browse through the New York Times’ list of haunted hotels and National Geographic’s photo gallery of cemeteries with “views to die for” and think back to a hotel stay or cemetery visit from your own past that might have been tinged with something eerie in the air. Write an essay that centers on this haunting experience. What kind of decorative adornments, distinctive architecture, or imposing weather might have contributed to the mood? Was the tone of the visit tempered by more practical considerations and activities, or did you deliberately revel in the phantasmic atmosphere?
A marine heat wave known as a blob has recently been detected in the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii, similar to the hot spot discovered several years ago that led to massive amounts of coral reef bleaching. In other blob news, a unicellular organism, also known as a blob, has just gone on display at the Paris Zoological Park. The bright yellow slime mold can move an inch and a half per hour, is comprised of 720 sexes, is capable of solving problems, and can split itself into multiple parts and fuse back together. Write a short story in which a blob of your own making appears. Does it bring foreboding, mayhem, or wondrous joy?
Several years ago, New York Public Library staff discovered a box filled with file cards of written questions submitted to librarians from the 1940s to 1980s, many of which have been collected in the book Peculiar Questions and Practical Answers: A Little Book of Whimsy and Wisdom From the Files of the New York Public Library (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2019). Questions include: “What does it mean when you’re being chased by an elephant?” and “Can you give me the name of a book that dramatizes bedbugs?” and “What time does a bluebird sing?” Write a poem inspired by one of these curiously strange questions. Does your poem provide a practical answer, or avoid one altogether leading instead to more imaginative questions?
Last week Science journal published a study with the DNA analyses of graves and found objects from prehistoric German households that demonstrates wealth disparities in inhabitants not previously seen. The findings include indications that under the same roof, there were family members who passed down inherited wealth, unrelated individuals not buried with wealth, and nonlocal women who maintained or married into wealth. Consider the beloved and functional items in your home and write a personal essay that examines how these objects express social complexity or class status. How might you be remembered based on your possessions?
Earlier this month the transcription of a long-lost chapter from The Tale of Genji was found in a storeroom in the Tokyo home of a descendant of a feudal lord. Often called the world’s first novel, the eleventh-century masterpiece written by Murasaki Shikibu recounts the love life of a fictional prince named Genji. In the recently discovered chapter, the prince meets his future wife, Murasaki, who shares the same name as the book’s author. Write a new chapter from a story or novel you know well. What occurs in this portion of the story that might fill in some gaps or offer a new discovery? How does it fit in with, or transform, the meaning of the original text?
What is documentary poetry? In “Where Poetry Meets Journalism” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, documentary poetry, also known as docupoetry, is described as “socially engaged poetry that often uses nonliterary texts—news reports, legal documents, and transcribed oral histories.” Select a piece of journalism that particularly catches your eye or imagination, and then search for nonliterary texts around the same topic or theme. Write a docupoem that chronicles a story or experience by combining these found texts with your own observations and language.
“John Bonham was the coolest member of Led Zeppelin and getting hit in the auricle region with a wrench thrown by his apparition would be a damn honor,” writes Timothy Cahill in “Five Things I’d Rather Get Hit With Than Have to Hear Led Zeppelin’s ‘All My Love’” on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Think of a song that’s gotten stuck in your head, an especially irritating earworm that was just the wrong thing at the wrong time. Write a humorous personal essay about the song and the havoc it wreaked on your life, perhaps using satire or exaggeration for comedic purposes. Does the song have a pop cultural context? Was there a time when you enjoyed it? If so, what changed your outlook?
“I try to produce work to help somebody know something of a world they don’t know,” says Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of Felon (Norton, 2019), in “Name a Song,” a conversation with Mahogany L. Browne in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. This week, think of the various worlds that you’re privy to, perhaps through your geographical location, cultural background, work history, hobbies and passions, or life experiences. Write a short story inspired by an expansion and fictionalizing of one of these worlds, providing a glimpse of a world you know well.
A recent study published in Open Science reveals that the songs of male humpback whales are informed by the exchanges they have with each other during their travels. In this way their vocalizations denote their migratory route. Throughout the day, jot down bits and pieces of conversation you’ve either partaken in or overheard, song lyrics you have in your head, and any phrases or words that strike you. Use these bits of language to compose a poem that will then become your travel song, a way of detailing the encounters you’ve had throughout your daily voyage. Where have you been and what have you heard?
“At almost one o’clock I entered the lobby of the building where I worked and turned toward the escalators, carrying a black Penguin paperback and a small white CVS bag, its receipt stapled over the top.” The entirety of Nicholson Baker’s debut novel, Mezzanine (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), takes place during a ride up an office escalator during a lunch break. Baker inserts extensive footnotes on ordinary phenomena such as shoelaces, milk cartons, perforated paper, plastic straws, paper towel dispensers, and the contents of his lunch into the story. Write a personal essay that uses footnotes to delve into the details of an hour in your daily routine. Incorporate minutiae about your physical movements and observations of mundane objects to express the significance of your everyday experience.
Can’t fall asleep? Would it help if a voice soothed you with murmured reassurances and flattering serenades? A recent New York Times article featured the creator of DennisASMR, a YouTube channel in the growing genre known as A.S.M.R. (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) boyfriend role-play. The teenager who lives with his parents in Savannah, Georgia creates eerie scenarios of one-sided conversations that are watched by millions of viewers. Write a short story that imagines the lives of characters viewing these videos. Why do they look to these videos for comfort? How does this role-play help or hinder their lives?
Last year a British ultramarathoner competing in northwest Canada donated his frostbitten amputated toes to a Yukon hotel bar. Renowned for serving the Sourtoe Cocktail, a shot of whiskey with a mummified human toe dropped inside (the toe is not swallowed, but must touch the drinker’s lips in order to join the club and receive a certificate), the bar depends on donated digits. Write a poem inspired by emotional and visceral responses to this unusual cocktail and ritual. Explore the possible themes of human connection, extreme adventure, sacrifice and generosity, and horror with humor.
In a recent interview for BOMB Magazine, poets Prageeta Sharma and James Thomas Stevens visit the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe and discuss topics ranging from Native American artists to identity, community, and appropriation. Throughout the interview the paintings and artworks viewed at the museum are brought into their conversation, propelling them to go in new directions or to speak more deeply on a subject. This week take a walk somewhere scenic—perhaps in a park, natural environment, or art museum—and write a short lyric essay that ties together issues already on your mind with ones that come up as you explore and carefully observe your surroundings.
“Sometimes the narrator tries to steer her thoughts in directions she prefers, or recoils from certain darker avenues of thought, but she can’t keep it up for long,” writes Lucy Ellmann in a Washington Post interview about her new novel, Ducks, Newburyport (Biblioasis, 2019), which is comprised of a single sentence that extends over a thousand pages. Write a short story that is entirely contained within one sentence. Allow for detours and interruptions—tidbits of song lyrics, physical sensations, flashbacks—to flow and come out. How do all the thoughts and distractions combine to form a bigger picture or statement?
“When you get into the occult community and the literature, it’s not just about ‘talking’ to or ‘communing’ or ‘feeling’ spirits. It’s also at the other extreme, evocation,” writes Katy Bohinc in “Poetry as Magic” in the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog. “Evocation is the practice of calling a spirit into a room, getting its signature on a piece of paper, interpreting its messages as divination, and then sending the spirit into the world to do your bidding.” Have you ever felt yourself in the presence of a spirit, or seen evidence of one? Write a poem that revolves around a real or imagined evocation of a spirit. What do you ask of this spirit?
The abacus: a time-tested tool or outdated artifact? A recent New York Times article showcased an annual abacus tournament in Kyoto with competitors ranging in age from eight to sixty-nine years old. Children across Japan were taught proficiency in using the tool for calculations until the early 1970s, but since then instruction has been cut down to a couple of hours of basic use during elementary school, though advocates are pushing for reinstatement. Think of an object, tool, or method that you currently use that might be considered old-fashioned. Write an essay that reflects on why you continue to use this method. What are its drawbacks and advantages?
A study published last week in the journal Science detailed findings that the North American bird population has dropped by three billion since 1970, a decline of twenty-nine percent in less than fifty years. Write a story that revolves around how an imminent extinction of all birds affects one specific character. Is there a moment of realization when this decimation impacts your character’s life? How does the disappearance of these creatures change the human relationships in your story?