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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9.14.21

As the days get shorter and colder in mid-September, the autumnal equinox and the official end of summer approach. Many poets find inspiration in this in-between zone when seasonal plants transition and the duties of a school year begin again. “Three Songs at the End of Summer” by Jane Kenyon, “Blackberry-Picking” by Seamus Heaney, and “Vespers” by Louise Glück are examples of poems that speak to late summer. Write a poem that celebrates this fleeting, yet evocative moment between seasons.

9.9.21

In Hanif Abdurraqib’s essay “Fear: A Crown,” included in his latest collection, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance (Random House, 2021), he borrows the form of a crown of sonnets to link vignettes—parts of the last line of each section act as the first line of the next. Use the crown form to link an essay in sections that discusses a central feeling or theme. As you echo the last line of a vignette into the next, allow the words to launch you into unexpected places.

9.8.21

“[Amy] Winehouse is so much more than the sum of her parts, isn’t she? The tower of hair. The broad wings of eyeliner. The coldness beneath the boldness, the shyness beneath the highness,” says Diane Seuss in an interview with Tony Leuzzi for the Brooklyn Rail discussing the title of her latest collection, frank: sonnets (Graywolf Press, 2021), a reference to three things: Frank O’Hara; the synonym for honest and direct; and Winehouse’s first album, Frank. Write a story in which the protagonist is based on a legendary singer. Use song lyrics as well as their biography as inspiration for a way to begin the story.

9.7.21

“My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name. / I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi,” writes Natasha Trethewey in her poem “Miscegenation,” which begins with the story of her parents traveling to Ohio to marry in 1965 when interracial marriage was still illegal in Mississippi. The poem is a ghazal, a form that consists of couplets ending on the same word or phrase. Write a ghazal with your city of origin as the repeating word. Try, as Trethewey does, to weave together various subjects that speak to the time and place of your homeland.

9.2.21

“One of the big influences for me early on was Janet Frame,” says Alexander Chee in an interview with Lincoln Michel for his How-to series published in Fold magazine. “She would hand-write a draft of a novel entirely. Then typing it up was one revision. Then she would type it up again, and that was another revision. I decided to try it and actually really enjoyed it.” This week, pull out a notebook or legal pad and your favorite writing utensil to start an essay about a time you were influenced by another artist or writer. Was there a particular process or style that changed your writing?

9.1.21

“I’ve been pregnant. I’ve had sex with a man / who’s had sex with men. I can’t sleep,” writes Nicole Sealey in her poem “Medical History,” selected by Reginald Dwayne Betts to be published in the New York Times Magazine. In the poem, Sealey lists the speaker’s and their family’s medical history, creating a startling portrait of genealogy and the anxieties surrounding mortality that come with it. “Uncle Ken, wise as he was, was hit / by a car as if to disprove whatever theory / toward which I write. And, I understand, / the stars in the sky are already dead.” Write a short story in which the protagonist contends with their medical history. How does this fixation on their health affect the way they move through the world?

8.31.21

In her poem “Bestiary of Bad Kisses,” Ashley M. Jones compares bad kisses in the form of a catalog of animals with three sections titled: “The Frog,” “The Anteater,” and “The Bulldog.” The bestiary is a textual compendium of beasts, both real and imaginary, dating back to the Middle Ages that has seen a resurgence in contemporary literature. From Julio Cortázar to Donika Kelly, writers have sought ways to explore the metaphorical and literal resonances of cataloging animals. Write a poem in the form of a bestiary. How can you glean inspiration from myths and real-life stories? What is the relationship between your chosen animals?

8.26.21

“By calling an influence an ancestor rather than an influence, a relationship is made, a kinship,” says U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo speaking about her new memoir, Poet Warrior (Norton, 2021), in a Q&A by Laura Da’ featured in the September/October 2021 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine. “Some of these connections resonate and flower, while others challenge and force us to stand up.” This week, make a list of influential people in your life who have either helped you grow or challenged you. Write a series of linked essays that reflects on how these relationships are all connected.

8.25.21

“Consider this: I’ve spent nine months cradled in my mother’s body,” writes Nawaaz Ahmed in his debut novel, Radiant Fugitives, published earlier this month by Counterpoint. “My world was small and safe and familiar, interrupted only occasionally by light and sounds from the outside. And even those arrived muted by my mother’s flesh and bone, the light tinted by her blood.” The novel, a saga involving an immigrant family’s secrets and betrayals, begins from the point of view of the protagonist’s child at the moment of his birth, infusing the novel’s prelude with disorienting descriptions recounting the experience of first encountering the world. Write a story that begins through the eyes of a newborn. Consider the reason for this beginning and try, as Ahmed does, to suffuse the scene with sensual imagery.

8.24.21

Rising global temperatures and natural disasters, such as the recent tropical storms and hurricanes in North America and the earthquake in Haiti, bring to mind the fragility of the environment and the effects of climate change. Over the years, poets have taken to their craft to raise awareness and humanize the climate crisis in works such as “I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We’ve Done to the Earth” by Fatimah Asghar, “Let Them Not Say” by Jane Hirshfield, “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” by Matthew Olzmann. Write a poem about the environment that draws the reader in emotionally, whether it is by describing a changing landscape or reflecting on the issue. For further inspiration, browse these poems engaging with the climate crisis curated by the Academy of American Poets.

8.19.21

In 1950, German artist Josef Albers began creating his world-famous series known as Homage to the Square, which consisted of three or four differently colored squares, each inside the other in successively smaller sizes. The nonprofit arts organization Public Delivery explains on its website that Albers originally started the series to help students and other artists “approach and study color experimentally,” but it eventually led him to create more than a thousand square paintings until his death in 1976. Inspired by Albers, choose a word as simple or fundamental as a square, then write an essay—or a series of linked essays—about this word, studying its presence in your life along with its etymology. What connections can you draw from one word?

8.18.21

“My story starts decades before my birth. In my father’s earliest memory, he is four years old, shooting a toy gun at nearby birds as he skips to the town square,” writes Qian Julie Wang in Beautiful Country, her memoir about coming of age as an undocumented child in New York City’s Chinatown in the 1990s, published in September by Doubleday. Wang begins by telling the story of her family decades before, during China’s Cultural Revolution, shedding light on the lives her parents led as professors before working in sweatshops and sushi factories in America and relying on their young daughter for help with their daily lives. Write a series of character studies about your protagonist and their parents. Consider how a drastic change in culture can shift the roles in a family. How does this inform the reasons for your character’s actions as well as their values and preoccupations?

8.17.21

In a preface to “After Cecilia Vicuña,” a poem from the collection Villainy, published in September by Nightboat Books, Andrea Abi-Karam includes a note on the Chilean poet and visual artist Cecilia Vicuña, who condemned General Augusto Pinochet and spoke out about how “the lies (the words, the language) of the Chilean dictatorship murdered & tortured thousands of people.” In the poem, Abi-Karam asks questions about the power of words and how to provoke change through a medium such as poetry that at times can feel devoid of consequence. “i ask questions like / … how to weaponize the poem words as weapons / give the poem teeth.” What questions would you ask yourself about the power of your own words? Write a poem that contemplates the impact you wish to make as a writer—the reasons, hesitations, desires, and conflicts that arise when you create.

8.12.21

Summer marks the celebratory time of outdoor activities and vacations, as well as a popular season for moving. Families might find the summer holiday from school a good time to move, students graduate into dorm life on college campuses, and others find the need to relocate during warm weather. Moving has been ranked one of the most stressful life events one can experience, and yet it is something universally experienced. Write an essay about a stressful time you moved between living situations. What season was it, and why was it particularly stressful?

8.11.21

This past Sunday marked the end of the 2020 summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, an international, multi-sport event that celebrates the tenacity of the human body and the achievements of athletes at the top of their field. Historically the Olympics have also caused controversy, such as holding the 1936 Berlin Games amid the rise of Nazism, the 1968 Mexico City Games preceding the Tlatelolco Massacre, and the 2008 Beijing Games in which migrant workers were denied proper wages and protections during construction. Write a story that takes place during the Olympic Games in which a dramatic event separate from the athletic competition occurs. For more on controversial Olympic incidents, read this list curated by Teen Vogue.

8.10.21

In Paul Tran’s “Progress Report,” published on Literary Hub and featured in their forthcoming debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling (Penguin Poets, 2022), the poem catalogues the speaker’s life while filling out a form: “Photograph of the ’93 Mazda MPV he reportedly turned into an ice cream truck. / I marked Humor. / Holes where the nails had been in the wall. / I marked Self-harm.” The poem, made up of single end-stopped lines, uses a call-and-response technique to reveal new information as it progresses. Write a poem in which the speaker is filling out a form—perhaps a progress report, an immigration document, or a demographic survey. How can you use the poem’s form as a way of highlighting an important event?

8.5.21

“It was a challenging but exhilarating time, and I’ve come away with a deeper understanding of what I’m capable of,” writes Anjali Enjeti in her last Craft Capsule essay “How to Be a Writer and an Organizer.” In the essay she discusses the importance of finding balance as a writer and how she spent most of last year revising and editing two books for publication, teaching at a low-residency MFA program, reporting for two news publications, and organizing for leadership councils during the presidential election. Write an essay about a time in which your endurance and capacity for work was tested. Whether it be political organizing, parenting, or working several jobs, what did you learn from the experience of trying to balance multiple tasks?

8.4.21

In a profile of Alexandra Kleeman for the New York Times, she discusses her relationship to the speculative and the setting of a post-apocalyptic California in her latest novel, Something New Under the Sun, out this week from Hogarth. In the novel, only the wealthy have access to temperature-controlled interiors and real water. “Things that we’ve always needed, like land, a place to live, resources, become privatized and turned into possessions, when they weren’t to start with,” says Kleeman. Write a story with a speculative setting in which a necessary resource is privatized. Ask yourself “what if” when considering this altered version of reality.

8.3.21

In C. K. Williams’s poem “Marina,” published in the New Yorker in 2005, the speaker is reading essays by Marina Tsvetaeva as a bug makes its way across the table. As the poem progresses, lines from Tsvetaeva’s essays are interlaced with descriptions of the bug dragging its transparent wings behind it, and the bug becomes a metaphor for her difficult life. “‘The soul is our capacity for pain.’ // When I breathe across it, / the bug squats, quakes, finally flies. / And couldn’t she have flown again, / again have been flown?” Write a poem involving lines from a writer you admire. Try, as Williams does, to elucidate or challenge the featured lines.

7.29.21

“I had been thinking about this story for probably seven years before I drafted it,” says Sterling HolyWhiteMountain in an interview for Guernicas Back Draft series about writing his short story “Featherweight,” which was recently published in the New Yorker. HolyWhiteMountain offers a glimpse into the first draft of the story’s opening paragraph and the final draft, and discusses his revision process for his story revolving around the breakup of a relationship. Write an essay that uses revision as a theme. Perhaps you might revise a family story you’ve been told, or consider different points of view of a memorable event. What will you leave out, and what will you add?

7.28.21

In an interview for the Creative Independent, Jackie Ess discusses how an Instagram account with nature photos started by her partner inspired the titular character of her debut novel, Darryl (Clash Books, 2021). “I started a Twitter account for Darryl,” she says. “I would do these little monologues as Darryl, and I think you see that the chapters are a little bit like Twitter threads.” This week, write a story with a protagonist inspired by a social media presence. Whether it be an influencer or somebody’s dad, how will their virtual mask fold into the conflict of the story?

7.27.21

“I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing,” writes Muriel Rukeyser in her poem “Effort at Speech Between Two People,” in which two disembodied voices confess, speak, and exchange information about their lives. In the poem, the voices are both individual and collective, and the use of caesuras serve as a visual cue for silence in a conversation. Write a poem in which two people speak without relying on the use of traditional dialogue tags. How can you focus on the sounds of the language and the potential for slippage between voices to add texture to the poem? For more inspiration, watch Carl Phillips read Rukeyser’s poem in the Poets & Writers Theater.

7.22.21

In an interview in the September/October 2013 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, Jordan Pavlin, who was recently promoted to editor in chief at Knopf, speaks about how “there are often two essential people in the life of a passionate reader: a great local librarian and a brilliant, inspiring high school English teacher.” Did you have an English teacher who inspired you to become the writer you are today? Write an essay discussing the influence a teacher or mentor had on the books you read and the early stages of your writing.

7.21.21

The first chapter of Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad (Knopf, 2010), titled “Found Objects,” first published in 2007 in the New Yorker, explores the perspective of a woman reckoning with a dangerous habit of stealing from others while at a session with her therapist. The conversation between Sasha and her therapist creates moments to weave in and out of the present and past. Throughout the chapter, Sasha lies to her therapist, to others, and to herself, as she struggles to figure out the reason for her addiction. Inspired by Egan, write a story set during a therapy session. What is the protagonist contending with, and how does the setting allow for the story to weave in and out of the present?

7.20.21

“A language is a map of our failures,” writes Adrienne Rich in “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children,” a poem that begins by reflecting on an incident involving children burning a book in a backyard. In the five-section poem, several forms and topics are discussed as the scope of the situation is widened to a global scale, then focused onto the intimacies of sexual relations, resulting in a capacious exploration of language and its failures. Write a poem that reflects upon your relationship to your first language and expands upon how communication can fail us.

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