Welcome to The Time Is Now. For even more inspiration, check out our Tumblr, Lines We Live By, a collection of excerpts from our favorite books.
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Poetry Prompt
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Choose one of your poem in which you've used the first person. Rewrite it without using "I" at all. (If you don't have a poem to revise, try writing one without using the first person.)
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Fiction Prompt
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Buy yourself five postcards. Write one question on each postcard and send them to yourself every other day. When you receive the postcard, write for twenty minutes, responding to the question. Use these responses as the ingredients for a story.
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Creative Nonfiction Prompt
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Revision is often the hardest part of writing--and, some writers say, a craft all its own. As an exercise in this craft, revisit an essay you've written and try to both significantly cut down the length and restructure the piece, while maintaining the story. We tend to tell stories as they occurred in life, but a narrative can often become mired in chronology. As you restructure, move things around, play with the order, and don't be afraid to get experimental. As for trimming the length, take Faulkner's timeless editorial advice: "In writing, you must kill all your darlings."
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The Best Books for Writers
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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:
Proofs and Theories: Essays on Poetry (Ecco Press, 1994) by Louise Gluck
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A profile of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet laureate Natasha Trethewey, our annual coverage of MFA programs, over 100 writing contests with upcoming deadlines, and more in the September/October 2012 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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