“In writing the sonnets of frank, the form was a rescue raft, a lifeline, the safety net beneath the trapeze act. I liked how it equalized every event, relationship, song, or story that the individual sonnet might take on,” says poet Diane Seuss in a 2022 Publishers Weekly interview with Maya C. Popa about her Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, in which she explores with brutal frankness her personal history and themes of death, illness, addiction, and love. Inspired by Seuss, write two fourteen-line sonnets with vastly different subjects. In using a specific form to create a sort of equalizing force between topics, how do the minor victories and upsets of mundane occurrences find balance with the heavier ups and downs of your life?
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:
What does a Bill look like? What about a Michael? As the U.S. primary election season progresses, an innocuous excerpt from Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s 2012 memoir, Can’t Is Not an Option, has resurfaced on social media and news outlets. In the book, Haley writes that when she began dating her husband, he went by his first name Bill, but she decided that he didn’t look like a Bill and found his middle name Michael suited him better, and he became known as Michael. Write a personal essay that revolves around your sentiments about your own given name. Have you ever thought about changing it? Do you think you’ve taken on certain personality traits because of it, or in spite of it?
In his essay published in the Evergreen Review, Younis B. Azeem writes from his viewpoint as a young student newly arrived in New York from Pakistan about the culture of smoking cigarettes. “Among the few indisputable facts of the world, right below gravity and above the moon landing, is that cigarettes will kill you,” he writes. “In America that belief translates into a two-part statement, the second one unsaid, where it’s declared that cigarettes will kill you before anything else does. This right here, this inherent first-world privilege is something that all the best efforts of Big Tobacco cannot undo.” Azeem asserts that in other places in the world, there are hazardous living conditions much more likely to be the cause of death than smoking. Write a short story in which a newcomer posits an unexpected, iconoclastic, or unusual opinion. How does this create a disruption to your other characters’ everyday lives?
“Like a snail with a shell of sticks // — she loads them on her back — // Like a camel with a hump of sticks // — on her back, on her back — // Like a horse with a knight of sticks and a stick for a sword,” writes Valzhyna Mort in her poem “In the Woods of Language, She Collects Beautiful Sticks” published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series. In her description of this poem, Mort explains how an inability to write another poem she was working on made her “feel homeless in language and in poetry” and that writing this poem became “a bit of homemaking” for her. Write a poem that reflects your own process when your mind wanders away from writing and you must find a way back into the home of language. Does it involve the vocabulary of domesticity, construction, or helpful creatures?
In a recent New York Times article titled “January’s Secret: It’s the Best Month,” journalist Steven Kurutz makes a case for the first month of the year. Not usually a fan favorite with its short days and cold weather, Kurutz points out the month’s many unsung advantages: post-holiday relaxation, less crowded streets, the reassuring feeling of getting back into routine, and how the blissfully uneventful stretch of weeks can offer a calming break from social obligations. This week write an essay about your favorite month of the year. Even if it’s one that revolves around a holiday or exciting seasonal offerings, take some time to reflect on the unsung pleasures of the month.
Epiphany is a religious day of celebration commemorating the visit by the Three Wise Men to the baby Jesus with their gifts, observed in January. Originating from the Greek word meaning “manifestation,” in a work of literature, an epiphany generally consists of a different sort of appearance—a moment that seems to suddenly illuminate the truth, one that oftentimes changes the course of a character’s life. Write a scene in a new or ongoing short story in which your main character experiences such a dawning realization. What is the catalyst for this discovery? How does this newfound insight transform their subsequent actions or interactions with another character or a future decision?
Do you recall cold, quiet nights with the muffled silence of snow and the whisper of the wind, or the banging clang of heating pipes and the constant drumming of a heavy rainstorm rumbling in the winter? Depending on one’s locale, the sounds of the season can present a range of tones, from the euphonic to the cacophonic, from peaceful and calming to abrasive and exasperating. Write a poem that captures the sonic spectrum of your surroundings at this time of year, perhaps experimenting with punctuation, various line lengths and spacing, and onomatopoeia to reflect all the textures of your auditory experience.
Journalist Zahra Hankir’s book, Eyeliner: A Cultural History (Penguin Books, 2023), traces the lineage of eye makeup from its ancient Egyptian origins to contemporary times, zigzagging across a wide-ranging swath of globalism, fashion, and celebrity—from Nefertiti to Amy Winehouse—while relating the implications of the cosmetic accessory to themes of feminine performance and Orientalism. Choose an accessory or stylistic embellishment that has played some role in your own life, or perhaps one that is culturally pervasive or resonant. Consider your relationship to this seemingly frivolous item and write a personal essay about its relevance and connection to your identity. How might you connect the dots to larger social issues and historic moments in time?
Twentieth-century artist Isamu Noguchi worked across many disciplines—costume and stage design, landscape architecture, drawing, ceramics, and furniture—and is renowned for his wide-ranging and experimental sculptures. Noguchi was influenced by many subjects from Greek mythology, Biblical figures, ancient architecture and archaeology, natural phenomena, artists and musicians, and animals and plants. One of his sculptures titled “Gregory” is named after the protagonist of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, who shape-shifts into a giant insect. Browse through Noguchi’s online catalogue raisonné to find a sculpture that catches your eye and write a story inspired by the artwork. Feel free to go beyond a literal interpretation, perhaps using the piece’s title as a launchpad for a surrealist or Kafkaesque tale.
What’s going to be popular in 2024? Trend forecasters are busy making predictions for the fads of the near future, from what we’ll wear to what we’ll eat. The Food Network predicts the rise in popularity of white chocolate, the expansion of boba tea flavors in desserts, and sake becoming the “it” drink, while Food & Wine magazine reports on fashionable food brand-related merch, ruffle-edged Cresto di Gallo as the “pasta shape of the year,” herbal liqueurs, and sweet and sour as the reigning flavor. Write a poem about a past, current, or future food trend. Are you on board or skeptical? Have fun with food vocabulary and play around with sounds and rhythms that match your selection.
In Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel, Leave the World Behind, which was recently adapted into a feature film, two families are stuck in a home in rural Long Island during a sudden and unexplainable time of apocalypse. Amid the chaos caused by large-scale blackouts, technology on the fritz, animals running amok, characters suddenly falling ill, and the possibility of terrorist attacks, the most terrifying thing seems to be the unknowability of what and who might be besieging their lives and the world as they know it. Write an essay about your fears of the unknown. What do you find terrifying and, on the flip side, what provides you a sense of reassurance and comfort? Reflect on the delicate balance of how you navigate the world as you know—and don’t know—it.
In a recent New York Times article, technology reporter Kashmir Hill wrote about spending the month of December on a break from her smartphone by switching to a flip phone. The decision stemmed from the realization of her phone addiction, mindlessly spending hours of screen time on it and checking it over a hundred times a day. With time away from her smartphone, Hill noted improved sleep, better communication with her friends and husband, more books read, more time spent outdoors, less stress, and more enjoyment in the moment. Write a short story in which your characters are affected by their phone usage. How do their habits and addictions reveal truths about their personalities and interactions with other characters? How might you incorporate technology like text messaging, social media, photography, and smartphone apps creatively in your prose or formatting?
Every year, Project Censored, an anti-censorship and media literacy advocacy organization, releases their State of the Free Press yearbook, highlighting the past year’s most significant independent journalism. This year’s book, published in December by Seven Stories Press, emphasizes the dangers of corporate media and the shuttering of community newspapers, which leave many communities without a reliable source of local information. Do some digging online or at a local library for a news story in your city from the past year, perhaps something that didn’t make national news. Write a poem inspired by your experience of zeroing in on the value of something small, ordinary, and regionally specific.
Two iconic personifications of the passage of time frequently appear at the start of a year: Baby New Year, a diapered baby wearing a top hat and sash displaying the upcoming year, and Father Time, an elderly bearded man often accompanied by a scythe and an hourglass. As we’re all pressed to return to work with renewed energy and begin the year with replenished resolve, take some time to reflect on the endings that coincide with these beginnings and write a personal essay on the theme of conclusions and closure. What routines or activities do you turn to that help bring you closure?
Last month, a long-lost art amusement park called Luna Luna was resurrected in Los Angeles, with rides and attractions created and designed by contemporary artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joseph Beuys, Salvador Dalí, Sonia Delaunay, Keith Haring, David Hockney, and Roy Lichtenstein. The interactive artworks were commissioned in the 1980s for an amusement park in Hamburg, Germany but were put away in storage, lost and forgotten for decades. This week write a story in which something that was created for another era suddenly resurfaces and provides whimsical joy to a new audience. How might you mark the passing of time and all that occurred during the years when the item was forgotten and left to languish? Is there a heightened sense of tension and anticipation, and long-awaited appreciation, for the creations?
For the past fifty years, the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City has hosted its annual New Year’s Day Marathon, a day of readings and performances that has grown into a twelve-hour-long event with over a hundred artists and writers given a few minutes on stage. In a Washington Post article about last year’s gathering, poet Jameson Fitzpatrick explained that she was there to “bear witness to poetry’s being alive. Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.” Write a short poem that captures the exuberant potential of verse, one that celebrates its own form and would be exciting to read in front of an audience. Consider how diction, sound, rhythm, and subject matter might collide to create a sensation of language teeming with vitality.
The end of a year is often a time when we take stock of all that’s unfolded in the twelve months that have just passed. Popular top ten lists cover a wide range of experiences—such as the best music albums, books read, meals cooked, restaurant outings, films watched, museum visits, and sporting events—and looking back at photos from the year helps recall favorite moments with friends and loved ones. This week jot down a year-end list, selecting a topic whose items bring you particular joy as you recount what’s made it onto your top five or top ten roundup. Use this list to create a lyric essay loosely chronicling the year through one lens, writing a paragraph for each of your chosen items.
In many places around the world, from Coney Island to New Zealand to South Korea, there are groups of people who convene on the first of January to take a “polar bear” swim, plunging into frigidly icy waters to celebrate a new beginning. Participants will often wear fun accessories, such as wintry caps, warm gloves, and boots, or coordinate silly costumes, and some gatherings are annual fundraisers for charity. Write a short scene that involves a group of people gathering to participate in a New Year’s tradition, one that incorporates both acquaintances and strangers. Who among those present is eagerly looking for a fresh start? How do your characters’ personalities vary based on how they participate in this shared experience?
Last month, the Journal of Great Lakes Research reported findings from a study of goldfish—the common East Asian carp often kept as pets—found in the wild, likely released into local lakes and rivers by their former owners. When removed from constricting fish bowls and flake-based diets, the fish grew to nearly a foot-and-a-half long and were able to reproduce quickly, destroying local marine ecosystems. Write a poem about something in your life that has ballooned out of proportion in an unexpected way. This might be a relationship with someone, an aspect of a job or extracurricular activity, or a household object that has transformed into an increasingly epic collection. Has the growth been slow and gradual or haphazardly speedy? At what point do you think enough is enough?
In his sardonic essay “Santaland Diaries,” a reading of which NPR airs every year as a holiday tradition, David Sedaris tells the story of how he, as a struggling writer, spent a season working as a Christmas elf at Macy’s department store in New York City. In one scene describing the Santaland Maze, Sedaris channels the frustration and dark thoughts many retail workers experience during the holiday season. “I spent a few hours in the Maze with Puff, a young elf from Brooklyn. We were standing near the Lollipop Forest when we realized that Santa is an anagram of Satan. Father Christmas or the Devil—so close but yet so far,” he writes. Dip into the dark side of the holiday spirit and write an essay about a year when you experienced a particularly frustrating holiday season. Consider the feelings of stress and cheer that are often at odds at the end of the year.
Whether full of work mixers, gatherings with relatives, community-centered potlucks, or festivities with friends, this time of year is often busy with social events of all kinds. This week write a short story that revolves around a seasonal get-together. Perhaps there are pressures present associated with themes that surface around the end of the year, such as the winter blues, religion, childhood traditions, and social expectations. Is a spare and stark tone more fitting for your story, or is a maximalist, ornate narration more suitable? Are your fictional party scenes imbued with an atmosphere of joy and cozy lights, or chilly temperatures and disappointed hopes, or both? Have fun adding a dash of humor or menace into your convivial gathering.
“Cold, moist, young phlegmy winter now doth lie / In swaddling clouts, like new-born infancy,” writes Anne Bradstreet in the opening lines of her 1650 poem “Winter.” In her seasonal poem, Bradstreet traverses from the month of December to “cold, frozen January,” and finally to “moist snowy February,” cycling through the movements of the sun, the length of day, and the sensation of warmth or chill on the body. Though we often think of winter as one portion of the year’s seasons, how do the individual months of winter feel to you? Write a poem that tracks your personal memories from multiple Decembers, Januaries, and Februaries (or Junes, Julys, and Augusts in the Southern Hemisphere), perhaps thinking of these months as smaller, concentric or overlapping circles within a larger one.
The work of French novelist Édouard Louis concerns itself with capturing the past and its indelible effect on the present, as the author explores the facts of his life through novelistic means. In his first autobiographical novel, The End of Eddy (FSG, 2017), translated by Michael Lucey, Louis details the experience of growing up poor and gay in a homophobic, working-class French town; in History of Violence (FSG, 2018), translated by Lorin Stein, Louis endures a brutal attack and then overhears his sister telling her husband about the assault; and in A Woman’s Battles and Transformations (FSG, 2022), translated by Tash Aw, Louis tells the story of his mother’s moving to Paris to live a new life on her own terms. Inspired by Louis’s autobiographical novels, write an essay that considers a time in your life in which you felt the urge to change or become someone new. Try to capture the intricacies of the past—the difficulties, the hopes, the dreams—through a form that reflects the transformative urgency of that moment.
While a character’s backstory can often provide the engine to a plot, how much backstory is too much? In “The Case Against the Trauma Plot,” published in the New Yorker in 2022, Parul Sehgal discusses the prevalence of the “trauma plot,” which relies on a character’s past trauma to move the story forward. Citing examples such as Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life (Doubleday, 2015), Jason Mott’s novel Hell of a Book (Dutton, 2021), and the television series Ted Lasso, Sehgal argues that the trauma plot “flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn, instructs and insists upon its moral authority.” In contrast, Sehgal cites instances in which omitting backstory provides an effective air of mystery to a character, or what Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt calls “strategic opacity.” Taking inspiration from this critique, write a story in which the backstory of your character is kept from the reader. What happens when you resist explanation for a character’s choices? What tools other than backstory can you use to create a dynamic character?
Love poems have a long and storied literary history. “The Love Song for Shu-Sin,” composed in ancient Mesopotamia for use in fertility rituals, is considered by some to be the oldest love poem found in text form. “Song of Songs” from the Old Testament of the Bible celebrates the romantic and sexual love between two people. In more recent times, poets have been testing the limits of the love poem. Nate Marshall’s “palindrome” imagines an estranged lover’s life rewound like a film as the subject becomes “unpregnant” and the speaker “unlearn[s]” her name. In Sharon Olds’s “The Flurry,” two parents discuss how to tell their children they’re getting a divorce. Think of a relationship in your life that resists easy categorization and write a love poem that attempts to capture this complexity. Whether the subject is the distant love of a parental figure or the one who got away, resist the easy associations that come with the emotion and dive into love’s thorny contradictions.