Tara Laskowski WRITING PROMPT Visit the Merriam-Webster Time Traveler site [link: https://www.merriam-webster.com/time-traveler] and choose the year you were born to see a list of words that were first introduced that year. Choose three of them and write a three-paragraph…
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Samantha Steiner WRITING TIP: WRITING AND REST For a time, I was bothered by the question: what do I do on the days when I don’t feel like writing? I tried forcing myself to write every day. Sometimes…
Melissa Joplin Higley PURPOSEFUL PUNCTUATION Punctuation tells the reader how to read a passage or poem: how fast or slowly to proceed, where to pause or stop, where to reflect or rush ahead, what information to consider together…
Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello THE EPISTOLARY EXERCISE Write a story entirely in the form of a letter to an individual addressing a specific conflict between you both. The addressee can be your imagined reader, a character, creature, object, place, or…
Mary McLaughlin Slechta WRITING PROMPT I have a small wooden drawer long detached from its bureau. It’s a great catch all for things I’ve kept past their usefulness and others discovered on walks around the neighborhood, especially in a…
David Hollander THE UNDELIVERED MESSAGE: A WRITING PROMPT Many of the prompts that I’ve had the most success with involve the institution of formal rules or limitations, which have the odd effect of liberating writers from having to…
Sarah Freligh WRITING PROMPT Write a life story in three brief scenes involving hair. Sarah Freligh is the author of four books, including Sad Math, winner of the 2014 Moon City Press Poetry Prize and the 2015 Whirling…
Nicole Callihan WRITING PROMPT Often prompts focus on content, but today, I’d like you to think about form. Write a story in exactly two grammatically correct sentences. One of the sentences—perhaps the first, though if not the first, certainly…
J.L. Scott WRITING TIPS Writing Tip Stuck? Ask your kids to help you out. No matter how old they are, they can help you with ideas for a new piece, how to get a character out of a…
Margo Berdeshevsky WRITING PROMPT Create a connection/conversation with an object, real… or virtual, from your childhood…hold it in your hands or in your arms … and talk with it/to it…tell that object what was the saddest moment of your life…