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?