Airport security lines: a place for aesthetically pleasing arrangements of items or high stress rushing? A recent viral social media trend that involves taking photos of meticulously curated TSA bins presents the possibility that there are those who view an airport security line as an influencer opportunity rather than a time-consuming and inconvenient obligation. Write a short story that focuses on a confrontation of opposing viewpoints set in an airport, a locale where people are oftentimes stressed about getting to their flights on time, running into delays, and scrutinizing the plans for their trips. Try incorporating some humor, light or dark, into the situation or tease out an element of suspense.

In the four lines of the poem “Quiet Night Thoughts” by Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai, the speaker expresses a sentiment of longing for home, brought on by the somber imagery of moonlight shining in through a bedroom window. In celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival, an occasion for gatherings to gaze at the full moon that leads up to the autumnal equinox, write a poem that uses the moon as a symbol of unity to reflect on the desire to reunite with loved ones—whether they be relatives near or far, or your chosen family. As you gaze at the moon in all its luminosity, roundness, and fullness, what emotions arise surrounding social harmony or disharmony?

In the 2023 horror film No One Will Save You, written and directed by Brian Duffield, a young woman named Brynn finds herself fighting off aliens who have invaded her home. In the course of the movie’s entire ninety-three minutes, Brynn speaks only five words. Instead of relying on dialogue, the building tension in the story is propelled by the facial expressions and body language of actor Kaitlyn Dever and the physical constraints of the premise—the lonely and isolated protagonist, shunned by the locals, needs to stay quiet as she confronts the alien invaders. Taking a cue from this concept, write a lyric essay that looks back on a stressful or tense event from your past. Focus on observations of actions, objects, surroundings, and people—including facial expressions and perceived emotions—and try to forgo inner monologue. What can you accomplish with primarily physical descriptions?

Earlier this month, Science journal published an article detailing findings that linked the death of bats to higher human infant mortality rates. In U.S. counties where bat populations decreased due to a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome, farmers increased their use of pesticides to compensate for the insect population control that bats typically provide, and putting more pesticide into the environment led to increased infant deaths. Write a short story that demonstrates the unfolding of a chain reaction that occurs when the population of one animal in our interconnected ecosystem either significantly increases or decreases the human population. You might experiment with incorporating elements of certain genres, like science fiction, mystery, romance, or even comedy into your story.

“The jacket doesn’t have many wears left. Its small fissures have become large ones. Its fading has become even more pronounced. And yet, I am putting it through the rigors of my living,” writes Hanif Abdurraqib, about a 1978 vintage Bruce Springsteen nylon jacket he procured, in a piece published for the Yale Review’s “Objects of Desire” series, in which writers “meditate on an everyday item that haunts them.” This week compose a poem about one such haunting object in your life. Abdurraqib describes being drawn to vintage clothing because it is a way of “extending the life of an item that someone else decided they were finished with” and “a bridge from one existence to another.” Is there a beloved item of yours with a history? Think about how you can play with diction, rhythm, and formatting to express why you hold on to this object.

Raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings, cream-colored ponies, crisp apple strudels, wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings. These are a few, mundane yet specific, favorite things the protagonist from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music sings about as an uplifting way to buoy the characters’ spirits in moments of sorrow and distress. This week write a series of short nonfiction vignettes, each one titled with one of your favorite things. Reflect on how each favorite originated, your memories associated with the items, and how they make you feel.

“Most pennies produced by the U.S. Mint are given out as change but never spent; this creates an incessant demand for new pennies to replace them,” writes Caity Weaver in an article published in the New York Times Magazine about the wasteful production of pennies. “A conservative estimate holds that there are 240 billion pennies lying around the United States…enough to hand two pennies to every bewildered human born since the dawn of man.” Write a short story that imagines a different life for the copper-plated coin, perhaps a universe in which all dormant pennies are suddenly used or an attempt to collect and dispose of them is put into place. What would propel your characters to care about the worth of a penny?

The French expression, à la rentrée, literally means “at the return” and can be translated as “see you in the fall” to refer to the time of year when students return back to school after the summer break and vacationers return to the city and to work after out-of-town trips—a time to start anew feeling reenergized with a refreshed and rested perspective on everyday routines. Think about the projects, personal goals, or relationships that you’d like to approach with a fresh start this autumn season. To celebrate la rentrée, write a poem that revolves around a familiar relationship, duty, or obligation. How might it be approached from a different angle or seen in a new light?

“The writing comes not with the then and then and then of narrative time driven by the hierarchy of information that plot demands, but with the and and and and and of parataxis. Everything is equal all together and all at once,” writes Jennifer Kabat in her debut memoir, The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion (Milkweed Editions, 2024), which combines the author’s musings on her relocation to the rural Catskills in New York with historical documents and research about the Anti-Rent War between tenant farmers and landowners that took place in the region in the early nineteenth century. Take a deep dive into a historical event that took place where you live and write an essay that attempts to bridge your own experiences and memories of your locale with the past. Inspired by Kabat, experiment with alternating back and forth through different time periods, point of view, and verb tense for a sense of simultaneity.

French director and screenwriter Tran Anh Hung’s Oscar-nominated film The Taste of Things, adapted from a 1924 novel by Swiss author Marcel Rouff, opens with a scene that takes place in the ground-floor kitchen of a late-nineteenth-century estate in France. The scene, which lasts for nearly forty minutes and contains little dialogue, consists primarily of shots of a chef and his cooks preparing a sumptuous feast as they maneuver around one another, handling and arranging various ingredients for each dish. The camera zooms in on the pots and pans, and precise sounds of sizzling, sauteing, crackling, rinsing, stirring, bubbling, and steaming are captured. Write a scene or portion of a short story that focuses in on the sounds of a particular room in your setting. When you subtract human voices, does a chronicle of meticulous details emerge?