“Writers often talk about stakes, and they mostly mean the stakes within the piece: what’s at stake for the protagonist, whether fictional or not. Yet for me, the stakes that matter most—the stakes that shape the work profoundly—are those the author faces while writing,” writes Joy Castro, founding editor of the Machete series published by Ohio State University Press, in a recent installment of our Agents & Editors Recommend series. Castro encourages writers to take “bold, huge, scary risks” and “trust that your readers are as intelligent and soulful as you are.” Inspired by Castro’s advice, write an essay that considers your relationship to risk in life and your creative work. Do you take leaps or keep your feet on the ground?
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:
Each year Oxford Languages names a Word of the Year that reflects the “ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the past twelve months” based on thorough analysis of statistics and data, but for the first time this year’s choice was open to a public vote. More than 300,000 people cast their vote and the overwhelming winner is “goblin mode,” a slang term defined as “a type of behavior which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.” Write an essay about a time you have gone into “goblin mode.” Was the period of unapologetic behavior necessary for you to recharge?
In “Finding Comfort and Escape in Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” published on Literary Hub, A. Cerisse Cohen writes about the impact the iconic cookbook had on her relationship with cooking during the pandemic when she moved from New York City to Missoula, Montana. Cohen not only discovers that “bad food is often the result of impatience,” but also finds a transformational lesson behind the patient, careful labor behind Hazan’s dishes indicating to her the many ways through which people take care of one another. Write an essay about your relationship to cooking and the impact it has had on other aspects of your life. Are there lessons you’ve learned from preparing an ambitious dish?
In “Ten Ways of Being in the Weeds With Your Novel, and Ten Ways Out,” the latest installment of our Craft Capsule series, Blake Sanz writes the essay in second-person, addressing the many struggles and frustrations one can encounter when drafting a piece of writing. “You’ve pulled out a minor character and decided that the whole story should be told from her point of view. You’ve begun to write it that way, only to discover that this idea doesn’t work either,” he writes. Inspired by Sanz’s journey, write an essay that takes the reader through the challenges you faced in drafting a work of your own. What discoveries did you make, small and large, as you moved through versions of this piece?
In the opening pages of Hilton Als’s memoir My Pinup: A Paean to Prince (New Directions, 2022), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author reflects upon a confessional joke in Jamie Foxx’s 2002 stand-up special, I Might Need Security, in which the comic meets the iconic musician Prince for the first time and is so overcome that he can’t look him in the eye. “Being enthralled—or, more accurately, frightened and turned on by Prince and what his various looks said about an aspect of black male sexuality—was that something only comedians could talk about?” writes Als. Inspired by this reflection, write a personal essay about an encounter with an icon who shifted something within yourself. What excited or frightened you?
“How to choose // persimmons. This is precision. / Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted. / Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one / will be fragrant. How to eat: / put the knife away, lay down newspaper. / Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat,” writes Li-Young Lee in his evocative poem “Persimmons,” in which he uses the autumnal fruit as a way to speak on a number of personal subjects, such as his memories of a sixth grade teacher, his relationship with his wife, and his father’s blindness. Inspired by Lee’s poem, write a lyric essay about a favorite fruit that conjures sensorial memories. Let yourself be surprised by the direction of your associations.
The Day of the Dead holiday is traditionally celebrated on the first two days of November, a time for families to remember and honor their dearly departed. The festivities have increasingly become more global but date back to the eleventh century and hold great significance for Mexico’s Indigenous communities. Public places and homes are filled with altars and offerings to commemorate loved ones with their favorite things, including traditional dishes and treats as well as elaborate decorations. Inspired by the celebratory spirit of the Day of the Dead, write an essay that explores how you remember your ancestors. Does this holiday reframe your understanding of grief and loss?
“Once you know what a book contains, why read it again? Because literature is not information. It’s an atmosphere, a location, a space, a landscape you can enter, with its own weather and light that can be found nowhere else,” writes Sofia Samatar in a recent installment of our Craft Capsules series. Samatar argues for rereading favorite books and discovering in the experience why readers continue to return. She writes: “Every piece of writing calls a particular world into being, an environment through which a reader moves.” Pick a favorite text, whether a single essay or a whole book, and take notes on your feelings as you reread it. Then write an essay using these notes that reflects on this experience of rediscovery.
In his essay “How to Pass the Time on a Holiday Commemorating the Destruction of Your Ancestors,” published by Literary Hub in 2015, Indigenous poet Tommy Pico confronts the reality of the history of Thanksgiving and what it means for him: “You’re maybe only a little bit aware of it for a small part of today, in between the family or the baking or the turkey. It might be a twinge. But that twinge is where I live.” In the conclusion of the essay, Pico offers a summary of how he spends the holiday—making pie with his friends, writing poems, and drinking dirty martinis—and provides readers a chance to reflect on what it means to ask how a Native American celebrates Thanksgiving. Inspired by the duality in Pico’s essay, write a personal essay about how the history of Thanksgiving affects the way you experience the holiday today.
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2022 was awarded to French author Annie Ernaux for what the Nobel Committee calls “the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements, and collective restraints of personal memory.” This skill is exemplified in her book The Years as she tells her life story spanning over sixty years in an unconventional manner, using the choral “we” and sometimes shifting into the third person. Reflecting on the voice of her book, Ernaux writes: “There is no ‘I’ in what she views as a sort of impersonal autobiography. There is only ‘one’ and ‘we,’ as if now it were her time to tell the story of the time-before.” Write an essay in the third person that focuses on a span of time in your life. How does this formal choice affect how you consider writing personally and collectively?
Last month, former U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey delivered the annual Windham-Campbell lecture “Why I Write” at Yale University. In considering the theme of the lecture, Trethewey recalls the familial, poetic, and cultural influences that inspired her to become a poet, weaving personal stories with reflections on history and literature. “I’ve needed to create the narrative of my life, its abiding metaphors, so that my story would not be determined for me,” says Trethewey. This week, ask yourself why you write and write a personal essay that searches for your response. What is the story you want to tell?
In “Oral History,” an essay published in Astra Magazine online, Yiyun Li recounts when she was invited by her child’s third grade class to share a story of what her life was like in the third grade. Instead of telling the true story of a teacher’s cruel punishment of a fellow student and the betrayal and ostracism she experienced as a result, she fabricates a story about the lantern festival she attended. Li writes: “How else could I have contributed to their education? Had I chosen to tell them a true story, I would have inflicted cruelty, too.” Inspired by Li’s decision, write a personal essay about a time you chose to conceal the truth to protect someone. What were the circumstances behind this decision, and what were you trying to protect them from?
Following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, Twitter user @aardvarsk tweeted: “I am tired of being a part of a major historical event.” The tweet gained over 60,000 retweets and 263,000 likes, and like anything popular these days, eventually turned into a meme. The expression, and versions of it, have spread online over the past two years noting the fatigue of many living through this time of multiple pandemics, war, and political and economic instability. Write an essay that reflects on the exhaustion of living through major historical moments. Consider how people a century ago were feeling and what might be said of the 2020s in the future.
In “The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books,” an essay published in the New Yorker this week, Leslie Jamison writes about her childhood obsession with Choose Your Own Adventure books and how they offered readers the chance to inhabit more daring versions of themselves. The essay is written like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, with the end of each section offering a choice to continue reading or to jump to another section. Inspired by Jamison’s essay, write a personal essay in the form of a Choose Your Own Adventure story. What choices will you allow your readers to make, and how will these choices affect the trajectory of what is revealed?
On August 29, 1952, American composer and music theorist John Cage premiered his most famous and controversial piece 4’33”, a three-movement piece written for any instrument or combination of instruments in which the score instructs silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. In an interview that appears in Richard Kostelanetz’s 1988 book Conversing With Cage, Cage says of the audience for this first performance: “There’s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds. You could hear the wind stirring outside during the first movement.” Write an essay inspired by this iconic piece of music. Try listening to the natural and ambient sounds of your writing environment and explore the moments in your life in which silence has been meaningful.
In the anthology Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World (Woodhall Press, 2022) edited by Darien Hsu Gee and Carla Crujido, which is featured in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, writers express the many facets of being a woman of color in poems and essays, all of which are three hundred words or less. The pieces navigate topics ranging from immigration, colorism, and financial struggles to family, food, and friendship. Inspired by these themes, write a micro essay that illustrates how your identity affects the way you move in the world. What creative approaches will you use to compress your thoughts into three hundred words or less?
In this week’s installment of our Craft Capsules series, Nuar Alsadir taps into her experience as a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, arguing that “the most direct way for others to connect with your writing is by connecting with the emotion you feel in relation to the work.” Alsadir shares a lesson she learned while attending clown school as research for her book Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation (Graywolf Press, 2022). As a woman on stage described her love of eating chicken feet, the class laughed “because we could sense the enjoyment she felt as she imaginatively enacted the process on stage.” This week, write an essay in which you describe an activity that truly gives you pleasure. Allow the genuine emotion you experience to guide the language of the essay.
For many the end of summer brings forth memories of transition, as a new school year is set to begin. Every year, especially during the formative time of late childhood through adolescence, students return from their summer vacations changed, having used the freedom of the time away to explore changing friendships, interests, and core beliefs. What recollections do you have of the end of summer and the beginning of the school year? Catalogue as many back-to-school memories as possible, from kindergarten through high school, perhaps using old photographs to guide you. What patterns and transformations do you come across? Using this list as a structure, write an essay charting this time in your life.
“The confessional booth felt like every other confessional booth I’d ever been in. The wood of the bench was so dark and uniformly grained that it looked fake, and the once-plush cushion atop it was now dingy and flat,” writes Isaac Fitzgerald in his memoir, Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional (Bloomsbury, 2022), in which he recounts the experience of confessing his sins to a priest when he was twelve at a church in Boston. In the passage, Fitzgerald both describes the physicality of the experience—the breath of the priest filling the confessional, hearing his disembodied voice—and maintains the intimacy of the first-person perspective, making the memory itself read like a confession. This week write a personal essay in the form of a confession. Does writing in this perspective change your narrative voice?
In an article for Atlas Obscura, Eden Arielle Gordon writes about the work of dendrochronologists dating the oldest tree in the world. Jonathan Barichivich is a Chilean scientist and grandson of a park ranger who discovered the Alerce Milenario, a Patagonian cypress in Chile’s Alerce Costero National Park. Barichivich’s careful calculations estimate the Alerce Milenario to be 5,474 years old, which would mean the cypress lived through several of the world’s most transformative events, including the development of writing, clocks, and the hydrogen bomb. Write a personal essay inspired by the discovery of this ancient tree. What would it mean to be over 5,000 years old? How would you reflect on the ways the world has changed?
As heat waves strike around the globe, many flock to beaches and parks for refreshment and recreation with friends and family. Although being out in the hot weather requires sunblock and stamina, weekend excursions ultimately provide an opportunity to disconnect from work life, day-to-day duties, and the overall stress that comes with modern society. Think back to a time you visited a favorite place to relax on a weekend. Was it a quiet spot under the shade of a tree, a nearby body of water to dip your feet into, or a hiking trail with an incredible view? Write an essay that explores this experience at your favorite place. Try telling the backstory of what was happening in your life to color the essay with context and depth.
“There are two kinds of silence that trouble a translator: physical silence and metaphysical silence,” writes Anne Carson in her essay “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” published in A Public Space. In the essay, Carson discusses various forms of silence—whether of torn ancient manuscripts, the untranslatable, or not being heard—through the works of British painter Francis Bacon and German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, weaving in and out of anecdotes and analyses that are punctuated by the author’s extensive experience as a translator of ancient Greek. Inspired by this thought-provoking essay, meditate on the many ways that silence has taken shape in your life. Then, write an essay that uses the works of others, or your own personal life, to illustrate your experience with silence.
In her lyric essay “Tsunami” published in the Margins, Juliet S. Kono uses the zuihitsu form to tell a layered story about how her family has survived through multiple tsunami attacks. The essay uses dates to introduce each section, beginning with her family emigrating from Japan to Hawai’i in the early 1900s, then jumping to the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Tōhoku, Japan, and culminating in 1946 when she and her family survived a deadly tsunami in Hilo, Hawai’i. Inspired by Kono, write a lyric essay that explores a shared history between you and your ancestors. Try using dates to structure the essay, adding historical and emotional layers to the narrative as you write.
“My multiethnic existence is a protest against a racial hierarchy,” says Kali Fajardo-Anstine in “Keeping the Stories,” a profile by Rigoberto González published in the July/August 2022 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. “If you ask me about my identity, prepare to hear about a complicated ancestry. I am a Chicana of Indigenous and mixed ancestry, and the story of who I am is inextricably tied to this country.” Inspired by Fajardo-Anstine’s statement, write an essay about the experiences that influence how you identify yourself in the world. What are the many stories that make up who you are?
In the introduction to the anthology This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music (Hachette, 2022) edited by Kim Gordon and Sinéad Gleeson, which is featured in “The Anthologist” in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, composer and guitarist Heather Leigh writes about how the authors of each essay acknowledge that “music somehow remains intangible” and how “we can try to explain and to rationalize it, but we’re seduced back by the song.” What music seduces and captures you? Using this question as a guide, write an essay that centers around the impact a certain song or musician has had on your life. Use tangible memories and details to add texture to the composition of your essay.