Weekly Challenges

Play around with a dichotomy of two themes, such as growth and decay, sleep and wakefulness, work and play, etc.

Begin or end a story with the line: “And then there were two.”

Your character finds an old disposable camera on the ground. Not seeing anyone around, they pick it up and have the film developed at a camera shop. The photos revealed are beautiful… Write the story.

Create an eye-catching still-life using 3-5 food items from your refrigerator or pantry. Highlight at least one product with loud and/or colorful graphic elements on its packaging.

Three words: Long lost sister. Write about her.

Try your hand at blackout poetry by finding an old, unused book or magazine and scouring it for meaningful words or short phrases that can be pieced together to make up a new poem. Use a black marker to redact the remaining words around them.

Illustrate a celebration of your choosing: a birthday party, a wedding reception, a New Year’s Eve bash. Who’s in attendance? Are they dancing, grazing on snacks, perhaps playing a game?

You pick up a used novel at the bookstore without flipping through it. When you do, you discover it was much-beloved before you. Invent the life of the person who once owned it, and meditate on the book’s meaning to them.

How do you show love and compassion to yourself? Meditation? Winding down at night with a pampering skincare routine? Setting goals and intentions? Making sleep a priority? Write about self-care in poetry or a short reflective prose piece.

Illustrate or photograph your idea of a cozy nook: a place you might sit with a book and a mug of hot chocolate.

Reimagine the opening of Pandora’s box through a new lens: a hurricane of intense emotions, positive or negative, that you finally allow yourself to feel. Do they take on a shape, a presence, a character of their own?

A “deus ex machina” is a literary device defined as “a person or thing that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an insoluble difficulty.” Write a short story that includes a deus ex machina.