NewPages Blog :: Writing Prompts

Some songs find you at exactly the wrong moment — and stay forever.

James Blunt’s Carry You Home became that song for me while caring for the grandparents who raised me. It’s still capable of bringing me to my knees, carrying with it the weight of my grandmother’s passing and the particular ache of watching someone you love leave slowly. That line — “I’m watching you breathing for the last time” — hits different when you’ve lived it.

But the phrase that lodged itself deepest was the simplest one: I’ll carry you home.

Four words. A promise. A burden. A act of love that could mean so many different things depending on who’s asking and who’s being asked.

This week, let that phrase be your compass.

Maybe your character knows they’re dying. Maybe they don’t. Maybe the request comes out of nowhere — a sudden illness, an accident, a war that ends too quickly in all the wrong ways. They reach out to one specific person and ask them to carry them back to where their roots are, to where the family is, to wherever home still means something.

Or flip it. Write from the perspective of the person being asked. Do they even know this person well? Does the request feel like an honor or a burden — or both at once? Is there old betrayal tangled up in it? Do they go anyway?

And what does home even mean at the end? A place. A person. A moment of forgiveness. A family made whole again before it’s too late.

Create from wherever this lands for you. A short story or flash fiction. Dueling poems — one voice from each side of the request. A photo essay about the objects and places we carry people back to. A comic strip, a collage, a sketch. If you journal, write the conversation itself: the asking, the silence after, the answer.

The only rule is this: let it be real. The best work tends to come from the places that still make us cry.

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Going Deeper: Three Writing Tips for “I’ll Carry You Home”

1. Anchor the Emotional Weight in a Single Object or Detail
The reason a line like “I’m watching you breathing for the last time” hits so hard is that it’s specific. When you write your piece, resist the urge to describe grief in the abstract. Instead, find the one detail that carries everything — a worn quilt, a particular smell, the sound of a name spoken in a certain way. That concrete anchor will do more emotional work than paragraphs of feeling ever could. Ask yourself: what is the one thing this character would notice that no one else would?

2. Let the Silence Speak
The most powerful moment in any “last request” story isn’t the asking — it’s the pause before the answer. Practice writing what your character doesn’t say. What do they swallow back? What do their hands do? Subtext is the difference between a scene that tells us someone is overwhelmed and one that makes the reader feel it. Try writing the scene twice: once with every emotion stated outright, then again with all of it removed and replaced only with action and dialogue. The truth usually lives somewhere between the two drafts.

3. Complicate the Person Being Asked
The richest version of this story lives in moral ambiguity. If the person being asked to “carry them home” feels purely duty-bound and willing, the story has only one note. But what if they have reason not to go? An old wound, a life they’ve built far away, a complicated history with the family waiting back home? Obligation and love and resentment can all occupy the same heart at the same time — and that tension is where your most honest writing will come from. Give your character a reason to say no, and then show us why they say yes anyway.

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Growing up in a multigenerational household means inheriting more than hand‑me‑down furniture—you inherit stories. In my case, an aunt just eighteen years older filled the house with vampires, werewolves, and the witchy wolf lore of rural Michigan. One story always stuck:

If you’re lost in the woods and hear someone call your name, never respond to the first call. Unnatural things only call once.

I thought of that rule again while watching Sand Sea, where “black‑haired snakes” learn to mimic human voices. In earlier adaptations, they could only echo names. In this one, they’ve evolved—they can mimic entire sentences.

That evolution, from crude imitation to perfect replication, felt eerily familiar. Technology does it. Memories do it. Trauma does it. Even our own writing does it sometimes: a voice close enough to sound true, but not quite ours.

The Prompt: When the Devil Calls Your Name

That tension is your starting point. Write a piece—story, poem, essay, script fragment, comic, song, or hybrid—about a voice that sounds like it belongs to someone familiar… but doesn’t.

Some writers may want to explore a childhood rule about answering voices in the dark, or the mechanics of mimicry itself—an animal, an echo, an AI, a spell, a hallucination that almost convinces. Others might go toward grief: a voice that returns after loss, recognizable in every way except the one that matters. Or flip it entirely—what if the mimic is incompetent? The world’s worst supernatural impostor, who can copy words but not warmth, cadence, presence.

And then there’s the darkest version: a character who discovers their own voice has been replicated so perfectly that the people closest to them can no longer tell the difference. What do you do when the imitation becomes the record?

Where does the boundary lie between a voice you trust and a voice you only want to trust?

Write into that uncertainty.

Continue reading “Never Answer the First Call: Writing Voices You Can’t Quite Trust”

For this week’s newsletter prompt, I opted not to dive into music, movies, dramas, or literature (in the fullest sense), but instead wanted to explore something I have experienced more often than I would like to admit: auditory illusions. Whether from caretaker trauma, the memory of a voice calling my name in the middle of the night, or those moments in crowded places when I swear someone has spoken to me—only to find no one nearby.

That got me thinking about a poem I loved in my college creative writing class, Naomi Shihab Nye’s ‘The Words Under the Words.’ I also found myself thinking about Jane Arden’s classic song ‘Insensitive,’ which explores a different—but related—kind of echo.

Inspiration Prompt: Auditory Illusions

Have you ever heard your name called in an empty house? Or listened to a cat cry and, for a split second, felt your body insist it sounded like a human infant? These uncanny moments aren’t just tricks of the ear—they’re invitations to listen for what else might be speaking.

Naomi Shihab Nye asks whether we can hear “the words under the words.” Auditory illusions—those misheard fragments, phantom echoes, or emotional reverberations—often point toward that deeper layer. They reveal the private logic of the mind, the meanings we continue to translate even when nothing external is making a sound.

And then there’s the kind of auditory haunting Jane Arden names in “Insensitive”: the voice you can’t stop hearing long after the relationship has ended. It lingers not because you want it back, but because your nervous system memorized it. The cadence remains long after the conversation is over. That too is an illusion of sorts—memory performing its own echo chamber—another version of “the words under the words,” the layer we continue to interpret long after the speaker has gone.

This week’s prompt asks you to explore that deeper space: the gap between what is heard and what is felt, between the literal sound and the emotional frequency beneath it. Writing into those gaps is an act of faith—faith that the surface layer isn’t the whole story, faith that something underneath is asking to be recognized.

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Why We Hear What Isn’t There

Auditory illusions emerge where perception and emotion collide. We mishear because of:

Longing or Grief

The mind reaches for a familiar frequency—a lost loved one’s voice, a phrase that once meant safety.

Trauma

The world sharpens, and every sound becomes coded with urgency or threat.

Desire

We hear the “yes” in the static because part of us needs it to be there.

These “mis-hearings” aren’t errors; they’re insights. They reveal a character’s internal landscape more clearly than any literal description could.

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3 Tips for Writing Sound, Silence, and the Unheard

1. Write the Subtext Literally

If your scene has two layers—a polite, surface-level exchange and a charged emotional undercurrent—try writing both. Put the spoken words on the page, and let the internal monologue or sensory interpretation run beneath it. The friction becomes the drama.

2. Use Onomatopoeia Sparingly—But Write the Physicality of Sound

Avoid the easy “Bang!” or “Clack!” Instead, describe how the sound lands in the body. Does it thud like a heartbeat? Buzz like anxiety? Vibrate in the teeth? The physical response is often more revealing than the noise itself.

3. Lean Into the Uncanny

The most compelling auditory illusions are almost right—but not quite. A voice that sounds like a familiar friend but lacks their usual warmth. Footsteps that mimic someone’s gait but drag just a little too long. Let your reader feel the uncanniness.

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Listening for What’s Beneath

Each week, through prompts like this, we explore how perception—especially misperception—can reveal the deeper story. Whether you’re writing about phantom calls, remembered voices, or conversations with two layers, the goal remains the same:

Listen for the words under the words.
The message beneath the sound.
The truth beneath the illusion.

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Winter—especially in certain parts of the world—has a way of making everything feel stark and stripped down. Colors drain out of the landscape. Days shorten. The world contracts into muted tones: white skies, black branches, long shadows. In that kind of environment, it’s easy to start thinking in binaries. Some days, a life lived in clean lines—black or white—might even seem comforting.

But the world refuses to stay that simple. Even in winter, gray takes over: soft clouds, slushy streets, the blur where sunlight meets storm. Life, too, lives in these overlaps. Messy, chaotic, layered—not always in bad ways. And that’s where this week’s newsletter prompt was born.

Inspiration Prompt: It’s a Gray World After All

We often crave a binary world. We search for the “right” word, the clear hero or villain, the correct ending. It’s human nature to long for the neatness of black and white—a world of zeros and ones, where every choice is absolute.

But as every writer eventually discovers, the magic lives in the smudge.

The Beauty of the Blur

Strip away the extremes and you find gray. Visually, gray is where texture emerges. In stories, gray is where humanity resides. Think of the moment a character recognizes their enemy’s humanity, or when a perfect plan begins to fray.

That shift—from stark contrast to subtle gradation—isn’t just visual. It’s emotional. It marks the moment certainty dissolves.

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Writing Exercise: The Gray World

Imagine a world governed strictly by absolutes. Then allow something to break it.

The Catalyst:
What sparks the first smudge? A confession? A discovery? A quiet internal shift?

The Sensation:
How does gray feel to someone who has only ever known black and white? Is it confusing? Liberating? Dangerous?

The Scene:
Write the moment certainty unravels. Use sensory detail—softening borders, deepening shadows, a voice that finally admits, “I don’t know.”

Let this be the space where your characters learn to live.

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Pro Tips for the Blank Page

The Color-Coding Craft Tip (Practical + Insightful)

If you want to check whether your writing leans too heavily into “binary” thinking, try this visual exercise:

💡 The Gray-Scale Audit:
Take a page from your current draft and highlight moments that represent “black and white” thinking—clear good/bad, yes/no, confident/absolute—in one color.
Then highlight the “gray” moments—hesitation, mixed emotions, blurred boundaries—in another.

If the page is overwhelmingly one color, try finding a single line where you can introduce a smudge of complexity.

The Sensory Gray List (Expansive + Fun)

If you’re tired of using the word gray itself, expand your descriptive palette with adjacent textures and tones:

✨ Beyond “Gray”:

• Metals: pewter, gunmetal, tarnished silver
• Nature: flint, river stone, morning mist, woodsmoke, dove’s wing
• Abstract: static, shadows, graphite, slate, thumb‑smudged ink

These alternatives give you the nuance of “grayness” without repeating the word.

The Playlist Tip (Atmospheric + Immersive)

Music is an easy way to shift yourself into a more liminal creative space.

🎧 Soundboarding the Blur:
Try writing with lo-fi beats, ambient rain, or minimalist piano (think Erik Satie). These borderless, low-structure sounds keep the brain from snapping into rigid patterns and help you drift into a more exploratory, nuanced headspace.

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Never Miss a Spark

If this prompt inspires you, there’s more where it came from. Writing may be a solitary craft, but you don’t have to navigate the gray areas alone.

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P.S. If you write something based on this prompt, tag us on social media or reply to our next newsletter—we’d love to see where the gray world takes you!

It’s no secret that I am particularly drawn to music and lyrics and can find myself being inspired by them. Whether it’s a particular turn of phrase that seems magical, a sung truth that cuts to the very core, or just an idea that gets me questioning or thinking—music stays with me. For a long time, the lyrics “That was a river / this is the ocean” seemed to haunt my mind.

What better fodder for inspiration than to consider bodies of water and compare them to emotional depths?

In the song by Colin Raye, these words offer a masterclass in emotional scale. Encountering an old flame, the singer reassures his wife that his past feelings were merely a river, while his current devotion is the ocean. It’s a striking image: a river has a beginning and an end; it follows a set path. But an ocean is an ecosystem. It is deep, immeasurable, and powerful enough to reshape the very coastline of our lives.

The World of Emotional Waterways

Imagine, for a moment, a world where our internal landscapes were literal. In this reality, emotions aren’t just felt—they are quantified by volume, flow, and depth.

• The Droplet: A fleeting moment of affection, easily evaporated.
• The Brook: A light infatuation, noisy and cheerful, but shallow enough to walk through.
• The River: A serious attachment. It has a strong current and a clear direction, but it is ultimately contained by its banks.
• The Ocean: True, transformative love. It is a vast expanse where you can no longer see the shore you left behind.

In such a world, how would we talk to one another? Would we warn friends of a “flash flood” of grief? Consider the tension that arises when someone offering an “ocean” of commitment meets someone experiencing an emotional “drought.”

Creative Prompt: Map Your Current

Whether you are a writer, painter, or digital artist, use this “Hydrology of the Heart” to create something new this week.

The Challenge: Write, draw, paint, or collage something that treats emotions as waterways—measurable, navigable, and capable of reshaping the land around them. What happens when your “ocean” meets someone else’s “river”?

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Never Miss a Spark of Inspiration

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Due to the passing of a loved one, I have been spending more and more time jumping through what feels like the “phone Olympics” whenever I need to handle affairs or set things up. Going through the often-frustrating phone menu systems, waiting on hold only to get cut off before ever reaching a person, or even dealing with people who just refuse to be kind and helpful—it got me thinking about that little old thing we know as the dial tone.

How can that hollow sound be used to inspire your writing and art?

Inspiration Prompt: A Dial Tone Conversation

In an era of instant messaging and constant connectivity, the act of making a phone call has become a strange, often frustrating ritual. We navigate endless automated menus, parley with digital “gatekeepers,” and endure hold music that feels like it’s looping into eternity.

But there is a specific, haunting moment in this process that we rarely stop to examine: the dial tone.

The Echo of Something Unfinished

What happens when the promise of a human voice falls through? You wait through the ringing, hoping for a “hello,” only to be met with that flat, rhythmic hum. In that moment, the connection is severed, leaving you in a digital limbo.

To some, that sound is the ultimate symbol of modern isolation—a reminder of the barriers between us and the help or companionship we seek. To others, it might be a moment of relief, a sudden exit from a conversation they weren’t ready to have.

Ask yourself:

• Is the dial tone the end of a conversation, or the start of one that never happened?
• Is it a lonely sound, or a blank canvas?
• What does the “machine gatekeeper” say about how we value each other’s time?

We want you to take this feeling—the frustration, the rhythm, or the silence—and turn it into art. Let the dial tone speak through your preferred medium:

• Fiction: Write a story that begins the moment the line goes dead.
• Poetry: Capture the cadence of the dial tone in your meter.
• Visual Art: Create a collage or photograph that represents “the machine gatekeeper.”
• Multimedia: Compose a short track or film centered around the drone of a disconnected line.

Creative Tip: Sometimes the best work comes from the most mundane frustrations. If you’re feeling stuck, try recording a dial tone and listening to it for three minutes. What images come to mind?

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Never Miss a Spark of Creativity

If you found value in this prompt, there is plenty more where that came from. Our community thrives on the intersection of literature, art, and the tiny moments of daily life that inspire them.

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Resolutions for the New Year? We’ve done that. Reviewing 2025? Covered. So how do we start 2026 off right? By chasing the concept of fresh.

One of my favorite moments in the Anne of Green Gables miniseries (with Megan Follows as Anne) is when her teacher reminds her that “tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it… yet.” Isn’t that the perfect spark for inspiration?

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Inspiration Prompt: Fresh

Forget the resolutions destined to fizzle by February. Instead, picture this: a day that hasn’t asked anything of you yet. No mistakes—yet. No worn edges. Just possibility, bright and uncreased.

This week’s challenge is to capture that sense of renewal. Begin with something newly emerging—a scent, a bruise, a rumor, a memory resurfacing, a sprout breaking soil, a relationship resetting, a place you’ve returned to after too long away. Let “freshness” be more than newness: explore what is raw, recently touched, just‑changed, or changed again.

Ask yourself:

• How does something become fresh?
• How does it lose that quality?
• What happens in the moment the world feels washed clean—or when you wish it would?

Write, sketch, compose, or collage from that first spark of renewal or disruption. Let your work carry the bright sting of something just beginning.

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How do you use the season as inspiration without using the season as inspiration? It’s a tricky question.

The winter holiday season seems to elbow its way into our lives earlier every year—lights appearing before the leaves have even fallen, carols echoing long before snow arrives. But creative inspiration shouldn’t feel like a force‑feed. So how do we tap into the richness of this time of year without drowning in holiday spirit we never asked for?

Then it dawned on me: snow globes.

These little baubles come in every imaginable shape and size, and so many of them aren’t tied to holidays at all. They can be playful, eerie, nostalgic, surreal, or downright strange. When I was in elementary school, we made our own snow globes—baby food jars filled with glitter and miniature winter scenes. They were messy, handmade, and wildly charming. And honestly? What better raw material for creative work is there?

Plus, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can blend the literary with the literal and craft your own snow globe as part of your writing ritual. (Highly recommended.)

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Inspiration Prompt: Snow Globe

Imagine a world small enough to hold, yet vast enough to transform you.

There’s something irresistibly enchanting about a snow globe. Glitter drifting like slow‑falling stars. Tiny houses and trees arranged just so. Whole towns frozen mid‑breath—every window aglow, every path untraveled. Turn the globe in your hands and time seems to pause. Shake it, and the sky erupts in a private blizzard. These little worlds invite us to wonder what it might feel like to live inside a universe bound by glass.

For this week’s creative experiment, sink into that magic—then unsettle it.

What if you woke one morning and found yourself inside a snow globe?

Outside forces—hands much larger than your own—disturb the ground whenever your world is tilted or rattled. Maybe you learn to read weather patterns based on someone else’s mood. Maybe tremors become a language; maybe glitter becomes prophecy.

What sounds fill such a place? What does warmth mean when it comes only from a hidden light under plastic snow?

Or picture your own city sealed inside an invisible dome.

Snow tumbles steadily from a cloudless sky. Year‑round drifts bury familiar landmarks. The ground gives small, frequent shudders. Daylight bends oddly, refracted against an unseen, curved boundary—enough to make shadows behave like strangers.

Do people adapt? Resist? Celebrate? How long before your community begins to wonder whether you’re being observed?

And consider this twist:

Someone from a place without winter—a desert, a humid coastline, a dry savanna—is suddenly thrust into this permanent blizzard.

What does cold mean to someone who has never felt it? What memories become useless? What new skills or survival instincts sharpen under pressure? How might such a climate, relentless and alien, reshape identity, relationships, or a sense of home?

Your invitation this week:

Write into the wonder. Sketch into the distortion. Collage into the beauty. Photograph the unease.

Your medium doesn’t matter—only your curiosity does. Explore how environments transform us, how confinement distorts perception, how a small world can become limitless when imagination cracks the glass.

What changes in this miniature world?
What becomes newly possible?

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They say that in life there are only a few certainties: death and taxes. None of us truly knows when death will come knocking, though some people face its approach with more clarity because of illness. For most of us, though, the moment remains invisible until it has already passed.

This past Thanksgiving, my family experienced one of those invisible thresholds for the second time. The holiday dinner—familiar, warm, full of our usual stories—became a last supper with the beloved patriarch of our family. No one saw it coming. That suddenness, that unexpected finality, brought this idea sharply into focus:

What if this meal became the last with someone you loved? How would that change the way you saw the moment? And what new understandings might emerge when you look back?

These questions form the heart of this week’s inspiration prompt.

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Inspiration Prompt: The Last Supper

There’s a quiet mystery at the heart of every family table: we never know which shared meal will be the last with someone we love. We pass dishes, refill drinks, laugh at familiar jokes, and settle into well-worn rhythms—never imagining that a seemingly ordinary evening might become a final chapter.

And yet, when we look back, it’s often the unremarkable moments that take on unexpected weight. A holiday dish that won’t be made again. A story retold for the hundredth time, suddenly cherished because it will never be told the same way. A chair left empty next year. These details, small and human, become the symbols we hold onto long after the meal has ended.

This tension—between presence and memory, between the living moment and what endures—creates fertile ground for art.

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When the Ordinary Turns Sacred

Think of a dinner that felt like every other. The clink of utensils. The hum of conversation. Maybe the TV murmuring in the background or a candle sputtering in its glass. Nothing dramatic. Nothing staged.

And yet, inside that moment, something was already shifting. Maybe the person across the table looked a little more tired than usual. Maybe they lingered longer over a story. Maybe the only sacred thing was that everyone was together—something you wouldn’t realize mattered until years later.

These are the thresholds where the ordinary becomes sacred, where the mundane becomes myth.

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Symbols That Stay With Us

Symbols emerge without our choosing:

• A favorite dish someone made every year, crafted one last time
• A joke that breaks the table into laughter and somehow becomes a benediction
• Hands passing bread, touching briefly, unknowingly
• The way someone bowed their head before eating
• A piece of music playing softly in the background, forever tied to that night

These fragments become the reliquaries of memory. They are the objects and gestures through which we understand a person’s legacy—not in grand declarations, but in the undramatic, deeply human shape of a shared meal.

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An Invitation to Create

This week, consider exploring that threshold between presence and memory in your creative practice.

Imagine a meal that becomes eternal.
Not because anyone knew it was the last, but because the echoes of that night continue to resonate.

You might write a story about a family gathering where every detail becomes a vessel of meaning.

You might craft a poem that holds the ache of endings in one hand and the tenderness of remembrance in the other.

You might paint a table set with symbolic objects, or photograph an empty chair and the light that falls across it.

You might capture the hum of grief and grace in a piece of music.

Whatever your medium, let it hold both sides of the threshold:
the ache of something ending, and the quiet hope of what endures.

Because in every “last supper,” there’s a kind of immortality—not in the meal itself, but in the love that gathers around it.

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I admit to getting stumped sometimes for prompts. I draw a lot of inspiration from life, my hobbies, nature, and the world around me—but when your life feels like a perfect storm that has upended everything, inspiration can run dry. With Thanksgiving approaching, I didn’t want to stick with the safe, old-time idea of thankfulness. Normally, people review a year in January. Why not review your current year as November closes and December looms?

Inspiration Prompt: A Year in Review

As November draws to a close, the calendar reminds us that 2025 is nearly ready to take its place in the archives. Before the year slips away, pause for a moment and ask: What story does this year tell about you?

Every year is a narrative—woven from triumphs, turbulence, and quiet transformations. Maybe yours was marked by a single turning point, a fleeting image, or a moment that changed everything. Write, collage, craft, create toward that. Capture the essence of 2025 in a way that feels true:

• Was there a victory you didn’t expect?
• A loss that reshaped your priorities?
• A subtle shift that will echo into the next chapter?

Let your words and images hold the weight of what was gained and what was left behind. Imagine how this chapter will shape the next.

Not sure where to start? Open up the camera roll on your phone and look back at the moments captured this year. Are there ones you forgot? Ones that make you happy…or sad?

Not ready to look back? Then look ahead. There’s still one month left in 2025—31 days and change. Is there something you’ve been meaning to finish, experience, or begin? Write about the destination you’ve been hoping for and what it would take to move closer before the year ends. Sometimes the act of naming a goal is the first step toward reaching it.

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Our sunny, cold Tuesday is giving way to gloom as rain and snow roll in. Fall. Winter. The time of year when we can see our breath in the air—if we pay attention. This week’s newsletter prompt turns to the one thing all humans need to survive (besides food and water): oxygen.

As December approaches, so does a season of remembering loved ones who passed during this time. That reflection sparked today’s idea: what if someone you love becomes like the air you breathe—essential, sustaining, impossible to live without?

Inspiration Prompt: Love Like Oxygen

Inspired by the Thai drama Oxygen ออกซิเจน, based on the novel by Chesshire, and the universal experience of missing someone essential, this week’s prompt invites you to explore love—or a person—as being like oxygen.

We all need air to breathe—there’s no escaping that fundamental truth. But what if someone in your life was your oxygen, literally or figuratively? Consider what it means to depend on someone so completely, or to be the one others rely on for emotional survival.

Questions to spark your creativity:

• What does it feel like to need someone as much as you need air?
• How does that dependence shape your choices, your freedom, or your sense of self?
• What happens when that “oxygen” is gone—or when you realize you’ve been someone else’s lifeline all along?

Creative directions to explore:

• A poem about the invisible threads that keep us breathing.
• A short story where love becomes a literal life force.
• A visual piece—collage, illustration, or photography—capturing the fragility of connection.
• A song or script that dramatizes the tension between dependence and independence.

Love, like oxygen, is sustaining, vital, and often taken for granted. How will you bring that truth to life?

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Here in Michigan, parts of the state experienced their first snowfall this past weekend. For some, it was enough to bundle up the kids and build snowmen. For others, it was just a scum of frost on the windshield. And still others may not have seen a single flake. Weather—always great food for creative fodder, isn’t it?

With the winter solstice just around the corner, what better inspiration for this week’s prompt than the idea of the first snow—or maybe the absence of it?

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❄️ First Snow: A Spark for Creative Wonder

The first snow has fallen. Maybe it melted by morning, maybe it dusted the trees just long enough to make you pause—but that fleeting moment when the world turns white carries a quiet kind of magic.

What does it mean to you?

For some, it’s the signal to dig out a beloved family recipe—perhaps your grandmother’s hot chocolate, now reimagined with cold foam and a dash of cinnamon. Could you write a poem about the memory? Or a story imagining her reaction to your modern twist?

Maybe the first snow takes you back to a childhood snow day—the one that saved you from a forgotten homework assignment and gave you time to study, finish, and play. What would it look like to capture that reprieve in fiction?

Or perhaps you imagine a world where snow falls only once a year. What kind of magic would that be? Would people bottle it, sell it, celebrate it? Could you write a speculative piece about a single day of winter wonderland?

Try a lyric essay about crafting snow castles and ice sculptures from the first flakes. Or challenge yourself visually: create a snow scene using colored pencils—but not white. Can you layer and shade until the essence of snow emerges anyway?

These are just a few ways to let the season’s first snow inspire your next creative work—whether it’s fiction, poetry, nonfiction, visual art, or something in between.

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After a gloomy start to November with gale-force winds and rain, what better tool for inspiration is there? Rainy days often feel synonymous with sadness—plans fall through, the gloom seeps into your mood. But sometimes, a good rainy day can be a portal for imagination. Think cozy games and movie marathons with family, an indoor picnic, or even a living room campout. Rain doesn’t have to be morose; it can be invigorating.

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Inspiration Prompt: Here Comes the Rain

Rain has always been a powerful symbol in art and music. From Matsushita Yuya’s “Foolish Foolish” to Brook Benton’s “Rainy Night in Georgia”, Elvis’s “Kentucky Rain”, and Junhee’s “Umbrella (10:00)”, storms often evoke melancholy, longing, and heartbreak. Gray skies and dripping windows feel tailor-made for sad songs.

But does rain have to mean sorrow?

What if the storm is a catalyst for renewal? What if the rain washes away illusions, reveals hidden truths, or sparks unexpected joy? Instead of an ending, let the downpour be a beginning.

Your challenge: Write something where rain becomes a force of transformation. Let it cleanse, awaken, and change the world of your story—or the heart of your character. Whether you’re crafting a poem, a short story, a song lyric, or even a visual piece, make the rain a turning point.

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This week, Spooky Season is in full swing with Devil’s Night and Halloween just around the corner. So what better time to take a break from the usual and lean into the paranormal… and horror. Or spooky. Spooky that isn’t horrifying totally counts, right?

It’s the season for watching Hocus Pocus for the bajillionth time and not feeling bad about it. It’s also the season for throwing on your favorite sweater, sitting outside under the falling leaves with a hot cider or cocoa, and letting the chill inspire your writing.

🎃 A Cycle of Horror (or Just a Cycle): Halloween Writing Prompt

Halloween is nearly here, and with it comes the perfect excuse to dive into the eerie, the uncanny, and the unsettling. After watching the first installment of Fear Street and revisiting the haunting loops of Stephen King’s IT, we couldn’t help but think about stories where horror isn’t a one-time event—it’s a cycle.

“Something has returned that was never meant to.”

What returns in your story, poem, or artwork? A curse, a creature, a memory, a reckoning?

Not into horror? That’s okay. Focus instead on cycles and patterns—emotional, societal, historical, or personal. What does it mean to live in a place or a body haunted by repetition? What does it take to break a loop, or to accept it?

This prompt invites you to explore recurrence in any form. Whether you’re working on a short story, a poem, a graphic narrative, or something multimedia, this theme offers rich soil for experimentation.

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When you’re stuck sitting in a hospital with nothing left to do—no inspiration striking to sketch or write, no book because you forgot to pack one—what else is left except doom-scrolling through your YouTube shorts feed? That’s where I found myself recently, watching artists I follow deal with rude people who are supposed to be their “fans.”

Since I didn’t want to dive into the joys of elder care, stress, anxiety and hospital visits for this week’s writing prompt, I started thinking about the root of the word fan. It seemed like a fantastic way to spark creativity and explore the meaning that’s been left behind as fanatic was shortened to fan.

✍️ Inspiration Prompt: The Fanatic’s Paradox

Our world loves abbreviation. Maybe that’s why we forget that the word fan is short for fanatic. For some, that connection feels uncomfortable—fanaticism carries a shadow of extremity, of devotion gone too far. I’ve even met people who refuse to call themselves a “fan” of anything for that reason.

But the word reminds us of something important: passion can blur into obsession. We often think of fans as supporters, yet history—and our own cultural spaces—show that unchecked fanaticism can smother the very thing it claims to love. Whether in literature, art, music, or performance, creators who step outside the expected often face resistance from those who want them to stay in one lane.

So here’s the question: When does love for art become a cage—and how can creators reclaim freedom from the weight of expectation?

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This Week’s Creative Challenge

• Writers: Craft a story, poem, or essay about admiration that becomes suffocating—whether for a person, a genre, or even an idea.
• Artists: Visualize the tension between passion and possession. What does obsession look like in color, form, or texture?
• Musicians/Performers: Blend styles or sounds that “fans” might resist. How does breaking expectation reshape the art?
• Cross‑genre Creators: Imagine a world where “fanatic energy” dictates what art can or cannot be. How do you subvert it?

💡 Consider: What happens when devotion crosses the line? How do we protect creativity from the grip of obsession?

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When trying to choose a photo for Monday’s newsletter, I was reminded of a road trip I took several months after my first niece was born. We traveled from Michigan all the way to Alabama so my dad could meet his first grandbaby. On the way home, somewhere in Ohio, we passed through road construction and saw signs for Needmore Road. That name stuck with me—quirky, poetic, and full of possibility. It felt like the perfect spark for creativity.

✍️ Inspiration Prompt: Needmore Road

You’re driving, and the exit sign flashes by: Needmore Road.

What does that mean to you?

A journey that isn’t finished? A hunger for something beyond the horizon? Or maybe a story begins when someone takes that turn—what do they find?

This week’s prompt invites you to explore the metaphor, mystery, and myth of Needmore Road. Create something—write, draw, compose—that answers:

What is Needmore Road?

Here are a few angles to spark your imagination:

• The unfinished journey: What happens when you realize you’re not ready for the end?
• The unexpected detour: Who takes that exit, and why?
• The mythic road: Could Needmore Road be a portal, a liminal space, or a test?

It doesn’t have to be literal. For example, from a poem our managing editor wrote inspired by the road sign:

“I need more road between synapses and sinews.”

Is it a place, a metaphor, a warning, a promise? Does it lead somewhere real—or somewhere imagined?

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One great thing about living in the country is we don’t get the light pollution that can blot out the night sky. There’s something magical about looking up at that velvety blanket full of lights, of patterns, of history—and maybe even a little magic. With the full moon lighting up a sky full of stars, it felt like the perfect inspiration for this week’s newsletter.

✍️ Inspiration Prompt: Written in the Stars

Starlight—tiny pins of brilliance stitched into a dark sky—has long guided travelers, sparked myths, and stirred the creative spirit. This week, we invite you to look up and let the cosmos inspire your next creative work.

Whether you’re drawn to the science of astronomy or the symbolism of astrology, the stars offer endless possibilities. You might write a story that unfolds across constellations, create a collage of imagined galaxies, or explore the emotional gravity of a black hole. Or dive into the myths behind Orion, Cassiopeia, and Andromeda—what truths or illusions do these ancient stories hold?

Consider the contrast between astronomy and astrology: one rooted in observation and physics, the other in archetypes and intuition. What happens when you blend the two? Can a horoscope shape a character’s fate? Can a nebula become a metaphor for memory?

You might even invent your own star system, complete with unfamiliar constellations and strange truths. What meaning do they hold? What does your art reveal when you look up?

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Are you stuck in the same writing patterns? Do your stories feel too safe? If you’re ready to shake things up, this writing prompt is for you.

Why Break the Rules in Writing?

Every writer has a comfort zone—familiar forms, predictable workflows, and polished structures. But the most exciting work often happens when you break your own rules. When you let go of control, you open the door to discovery.

Sometimes an idea arrives that doesn’t fit your usual style. It’s messy. It’s strange. It feels alive. Maybe it starts as color-coded dialogue. Maybe it becomes faux audio transcriptions from a case file. Maybe it looks like a corrupted file or a stack of redacted letters. You’re not sure where it’s going, but you know it’s worth the chase.

This is where the magic happens: when form breaks down, and something more honest breaks through.

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Writing Prompt: The Truth Is in the Static

Create a piece that embraces disruption as a path to clarity. Use fragmentation, contradiction, or distortion not as gimmicks, but as tools to uncover something deeper. Try:

• Found or faux-found forms: transcripts, receipts, redacted documents, corrupted files.
• Layered media: visual art with embedded text, prose that mimics audio, poetry shaped like data.
• Intentional gaps: let silence, omission, or ambiguity do some of the storytelling.

The goal isn’t novelty for novelty’s sake. It’s to see what emerges when you loosen your grip and let the form lead. Try something that makes you uncomfortable. Let the piece surprise you.

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Why This Matters for Writers

Breaking form isn’t just an experiment—it’s a way to unlock new creative possibilities. Writers who take risks often discover their most authentic voice. Whether you’re working on fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, or hybrid forms, this exercise can help you:

• Overcome writer’s block
• Find fresh ideas
• Push beyond traditional storytelling

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Yes, I’ve been on another Asian drama binge. And it’s not just limited to Asian television—Western shows do this too—where certain themes seem to dominate for a stretch of time. Lately, it’s all about rebirth, restarts, and transmigration.

In these stories, rebirth and reset often mean a character is sent back in time or reborn in a new body—usually to right wrongs, protect loved ones, or seek revenge. Transmigration, on the other hand, whisks souls into past events, video games, novels, or strange alternate worlds.

That got me thinking: what happens when you reach an “end”… but get the chance to go back and change it? Or a chance to live a life completely different from your own? Would you appreciate your dull life more—or find your new one is better?

✨ The Day After “The End” — A Writing Prompt for Rebirth and Redemption

What happens after the final chapter?

This week’s inspiration prompt invites you to imagine rebirth, redemption, and rewriting your story.

You died with regrets. Maybe it was a quiet death, unnoticed. Or maybe it was dramatic—tragic, even. But instead of oblivion, you wake up… somewhere else.

You’ve been reborn.

Maybe you’re back in your own body, but decades earlier, standing at the crossroads that led to your downfall.

Maybe you’re in a new world, one stitched together from myth and memory, where your soul now inhabits a stranger’s form.

Maybe you’ve transmigrated into a book, movie, or game—a story you once loved or feared, now yours to rewrite from within.

Or maybe you’re reborn as someone else entirely, in a life that seems better, brighter—but carries echoes of your past.

You remember everything. The pain. The dreams you never chased. The people you lost. The choices you made.

Now, you have a second chance. What do you do with it?

• Do you try to fix what was broken?
• Do you seek revenge, redemption, or simply peace?
• Do you cling to your memories, or let them go?
• Do you follow the same path, or carve a new one?
• And most importantly: how do you continue the story after what should have been “the end”?

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Coming up with new inspiration is never easy. This week, my mind kept circling back to two ideas.

The first was the old saying that things come in threes—a memory sparked by a YA series I read years ago. I thought it might’ve been The Westing Game, though I’m not sure anymore. One character had a string of bad luck, but by the third time something happened, his fortune had shifted. Maybe good things come in threes after all.

Then there’s the idea of lightning.

We often say lightning never strikes the same place twice, a comforting phrase meant to reassure us that rare, painful events won’t repeat. But how true is that, really?

Growing up, we had an ash tree in our backyard that weathered countless storms—until it was struck by lightning not once, but twice. Scarred the first time, split the second. What are the odds?

You be the judge.

✍️ Inspiration Prompt: Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice

That’s what they say. But tell that to the ash tree in my backyard—scarred but proud after its first strike, split and silent after the second. Now it’s just a memory, like the shed that once stood beneath its branches.

And tell that to the people who’ve survived not one, but multiple lightning strikes—living proof that the improbable can happen again, and again. What does it mean to be marked more than once by the same force? To carry the charge of recurrence in your body, your story, your silence?

This prompt invites you to explore repetition, inevitability, and the myth of safety.
What happens when the extraordinary returns? When the pattern repeats? When the storm circles back?

Write, draw, compose, or create something that wrestles with recurrence—a second chance, a repeated trauma, a rekindled love, or a pattern that refuses to break.

Does lightning strike again in your story?
And if it does, what’s left standing?

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In our college creative writing classes, our beloved professor often reminded us: the best fiction we can write is our own truths and observations disguised in the guise of a fictional story. That wisdom has stayed with me. This week’s inspiration prompt was born from that idea—and from nearly twenty years of caretaking in some capacity since graduating, layered on top of my normal work.

✍️ Inspiration Prompt: Caretakers and the Unseen

As lifespans stretch and support systems shrink, more people are stepping into the role of caretaker—often quietly, often without recognition. Whether tending to aging parents, disabled siblings, or chronically ill partners, these caretakers navigate a world of advocacy, sacrifice, and emotional labor. Their work is rarely glamorous, but it is deeply human.

This week, we invite you to explore the lives of those who care for others—not just professionally, but personally, intimately, and imperfectly.

Consider:

• What does it mean to carry someone else’s needs while suppressing your own?
• What invisible burdens do caretakers shoulder?
• What moments of grace, resentment, humor, or heartbreak emerge in the daily grind of care?

Your Challenge:

Tell the story of someone who tends to others—quietly, invisibly, or imperfectly.

Paint the unseen. Reveal the emotional terrain.

Let your work honor the complexity of care.

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Inspiration often strikes in the quietest moments. Over Labor Day weekend, I sat on a bench overlooking the still waters of Lake Huron. The surface was so calm it looked like glass—reflective, serene, deceptive. It reminded me of a line from the movie Deep Blue Sea, where a character, standing above an oceanic research station, remarks:

“Beneath this glassy surface, a world of gliding monsters.”

The line refers to sharks lurking below, but the imagery reaches far beyond the literal. Glass reflects like a mirror, yet it can also distort—warping what we see, hiding truths, creating illusions.

What lies beneath a polished surface? What dangers—or wonders—glide just out of view?

This week, explore the tension between appearance and reality. Use the idea of a “glassy surface” or “gliding monsters” to inspire your work across genres:

• Fiction: A character peers through the “glass” of a perfect life—only to find something monstrous beneath. Or perhaps a respected figure’s reflection hides a darker truth.
• Nonfiction: Write about a time when appearances deceived you—or the world. When did calm waters mask dangerous currents?
• Poetry / Prose Poem: Explore the tension between reflection and distortion. What happens when you break through the surface?
• Research / Hybrid Work: Investigate the mysteries of the deep—new species, unseen ecosystems, or the science of perception itself.
• Visual / Experimental: Contrast clarity and illusion, surface and depth, beauty and menace.

What glides in the shadows, waiting to be seen?

Time to plumb the depths.

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Maritime history is full of drama—and here in Michigan, where the Great Lakes behave more like inland seas, the stories run deep. Beneath their glassy surfaces lie shipwrecks caused by reckless captains chasing speed, tragedies swallowed by fog, and yes… even pirates.

Real-life pirates in the Midwest! These freshwater swashbucklers weren’t after gold, but lumber, illegal alcohol, and wild game meat—sailing the lakes with stealth and grit.

This week’s inspiration prompt invites you to write into the tension between surface calm and hidden danger:

• A lake that never gives up its dead.
• A family heirloom with a watery past.
• A pirate hat that fits a little too well.
• A ship that returns every year on the same foggy night.

What stories lie beneath the still water? What truths surface when we stop pretending the inland sea is tame?

Craft an ode to imaginary freshwater pirates—or real ones like Jack Rackham, James Jesse Strang, and Dan Seavey. Write a story of a town on the edge of myth, haunted by a foggy ship every November. Dive into the history of the Great Lakes in a lyric essay. Create a poetry collage weaving verse with images of pirates, Petoskey stones, and more.

Dive in—the water’s full of stories.

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Happy Tuesday!
This week’s writing prompt, featured in Monday’s newsletter, was inspired by a video of a gynecologist explaining the difference between correlation and causation—a concept that’s often misunderstood and misused in shaping public opinion and policy in the U.S.

While the video’s core message is serious, one example stood out: the correlation between shark attacks and ice cream sales. It’s attention-grabbing, funny, and oddly perfect for storytelling.

Sometimes, even in dark periods, a spark of inspiration can lead not just to serious exploration and discussion, but also to a break from heaviness—a light-hearted stretch of the imagination.

✨ Inspiration Prompt: Correlation isn’t causation—but it sure makes a good story.

Did you know shark attacks and ice cream sales both spike in summer?
Coincidence? Absolutely.
Causation? Not quite.
But the pattern is seductive—and dangerous when misunderstood.

And maybe, just maybe, someone is behind the screen painting the mice to make the experiments work.

This week’s prompt invites you to explore the tension between correlation and causation—the seductive power of patterns, the danger of assumptions, and the emotional fallout when we mistake one for the other.

🧠 What happens when patterns deceive us?

We live in a world overflowing with data but starving for understanding.
People see two things happen together and assume one caused the other.
Fear spreads. Certainty calcifies.
A coincidence becomes a conspiracy.
A trend becomes a truth.
A symptom becomes a scapegoat.

This prompt is your invitation to interrogate the illusion of cause—and the human need to make meaning, even when the dots don’t connect.

✍️ Try exploring:

• A character who builds their life around a false belief rooted in a misinterpreted pattern—or one who manipulates statistics to justify a personal or political agenda.
• A society that spirals into fear from imagined connections—or a world where every coincidence is treated as divine causation.
• A scientist, artist, or mystic haunted by ambiguity.
• A visual piece that plays with misleading graphs, painted mice, or absurd experiments.
• A poetic representation of data that tells two conflicting stories.
• A collage or graphic narrative that juxtaposes real-world headlines with imagined consequences.

Create in any form: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, scripts, songs, graphic narratives, collages, or other art forms.

And have fun unraveling the stories we tell ourselves when we mistake patterns for truth.

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Last weekend was full of joyful detours—chores and housecleaning gave way to a quick trip to the farmer’s market that somehow turned into a few hours at the Dinosaur Gardens. Perfect fodder for a writing and inspiration prompt, don’t you think?

Those unexpected turns have a way of lingering, their joy carrying over into the week. And now here we are—today is a dreary Tuesday evening, but sometimes dreariness is a blessing, especially when it comes with much-needed rain. Maybe it will revive the struggling vegetables in the garden.

If you’ve been in a rough submissions patch, our latest newsletter featured 80+ opportunities, plus new lit mag issues and book reviews. And if you’ve been in a dry patch creatively, let this be your metaphorical rain to quench those budding ideas.

✍️ Inspiration Prompt: The Joyful Detour

Not everyone maps out their life or schedules every moment, but most of us make To Do lists—those small intentions to get things done. Even with the best of intentions, life often gets in the way.

It’s easy to focus on what didn’t get done—but what if we looked at the upside instead?

Maybe your weekend of chores was interrupted by an unexpected bounty of fresh produce that needed preserving. Or a quick trip to the farmer’s market turned into a spontaneous dinosaur dig and rock-hunting adventure. Or perhaps a friend you haven’t heard from in years calls you out of the blue, interrupting your writing time.

These welcome interruptions might derail your plans, but the joy and memories they bring often make the delay worthwhile—don’t they?

Your turn: Dig into your memory. Write a poem, essay, or story—or create a collage, comic, or artwork—that captures a moment when your best intentions were lovingly overruled by something unexpected, something you didn’t know you needed.

What did the unexpected moment teach you? Did it shift your priorities for only a day, or did it affect long-term change in your life?

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Happy Tuesday!
This week in our newsletter, we tried something new—giving you a sneak peek at what’s coming to our Magazine Stand. Hopefully, you enjoyed that first look at the upcoming lit mag issues. If you missed Monday’s newsletter, you can catch up here.

If you love independent bookstores and maps, we are also working behind the scenes on trying to bring an interactive map to life. Baby steps…wobbly and uncertain, but we’re trying.

Speaking of uncertainty, we actually brought you a writing prompt devoted to turning uncertainty in love into certainty with the idea that you know you will fall in love with a certain person in the future.

Inspiration Prompt: A Premonition of Love

We’ve all seen it—books, movies, songs—where love strikes like lightning. Two strangers lock eyes across a crowded room, and just like that, they’re swept into a whirlwind romance. It’s the classic “love at first sight” trope.

But what if we turned that idea on its head?

In Japanese culture, there’s a beautiful phrase: koi no yokan—a premonition of love. It’s not the instant spark of passion, but rather a quiet certainty that love will bloom in time. A subtle knowing. A gentle inevitability.

It’s the moment before the moment.
A glance that lingers.
A silence that feels full.
A feeling that says, “I’ll love you—just not yet.”

Is this love destiny? A soul recognizing its match? Or is it our mind projecting hope onto a stranger, crafting a story before it’s even begun?

You be the judge.

This week’s prompt invites you to explore the concept of koi no yokan in your own creative way. You can:

📝 Write a poem, story, or essay
🎨 Create a piece of visual art or collage
🎭 Capture the feeling of love’s quiet arrival in any medium you choose

Think of something along the lines of e.e. cummings’ “somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond” or Julio Cortázar’s “The Night Face Up.” Maybe write a story that ends with the line:
“I knew I’d love them, just not yet.”

Or illustrate the moment before love begins—a gesture, a shared silence, a fleeting glance. What does that premonition feel like visually?

(And yes, if you now have Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” stuck in your head—“I’ve got a premonition, that girl’s gonna make me fall…”—you’re welcome.)

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