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 The Time Is Now          March 15, 2012  
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The Time Is Now

Writers Recommend

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Welcome to this week's installment of The Time Is Now. And if you're looking for even more inspiration for your writing, check out Writers Recommend, our online exclusive where authors share books, art, music, writing prompts,
films--anything and everything--that has inspired them in their writing. 
 

POETRY PROMPT
Write a lyric poem titled "Ode to the Girl in the Red Shoes." Read the Poetry Foundation's definition of the ode, for more information.

 

FICTION PROMPT
Choose an article from a magazine that profiles a person, such as a celebrity, a political figure, or a professional athlete. Using one of the settings in the article and a fictionalized version of the person as the main character, write a story in which it is revealed that the main character's greatest strength is also his or her greatest failing.

CREATIVE NONFICTION PROMPT

Travel writer, memoirist, and novelist Mary Morris, who teaches a workshop called The Writer and the Wanderer at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, likes to send her students on field trips to light the creative torch. "I like to get my students out of the house, and a little out of their heads," says Morris, whose most recent book is the memoir River Queen (Holt, 2007). "Go away. Listen. Eavesdrop. Find something new. Bring back a souvenir. What do you take with you? What do you leave behind? Sit outside in one place until a story comes to you." Follow Morris's guidance: Go on a field trip of your own, and discover the wanderer within you.       

 

THE BEST BOOKS FOR WRITERS
Each week we recommend a book--a newly published title or an invaluable classic--that will help you on your writing journey. This week's pick: 



Women on Poetry: Writing, Revising, Publishing and Teaching
(McFarland & Company, 2012) edited by Carol Smallwood, Colleen S. Harris, and Cynthia Brackett-Vincent
 
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