And Now We Write

  • Flash Week Challenge Day 1: Write a Flash Fiction in Just 10 Minutes a Day

    Welcome to Flash Week! I’ll host these once a month. We’ll have them the week starting the third Monday and going through the following Sunday.  We start with a blank sheet of paper. For seven days, we pledge 10 minutes a day to Flash Week. We end with a complete flash fiction story of ~900-1200…

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 19: Writing Exercise – Sea Students

    For a handful of exercises this month, we’ll look to works from the long and living legacy of Japanese literature for sparks of inspiration. For today’s ten-minute writing exercise: In Inter Ice Age 4, Kobo Abe imagined a world where children can be genetically engineered to live aquatically once the polar ice caps melt. Write…

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 18: Writing Exercise – Opening Images

    This January, we’ll be working on first lines and beginnings in honor of the new year. Happy 2025! Today’s ten-minute writing exercise is: In a cold, quiet forest, a girl in a faded red canvas coat looks up at the midnight moon. I just told you the closing image of a story. Brainstorm opening images…

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 17: Writing Exercise – Phone Tag

    This month, we’re featuring a handful of prompts from The 3am Epiphany by Brian Kitely, a book of over 200 writing exercises. If you like these and you can swing it, I encourage you to get a copy. Today’s ten-minute writing exercise is a simplified version of #64, Phone Tag: Write a phone conversation overheard…

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 16: Writing Exercise – Reviewing the Reviewer

    Write a negative Yelp review and the response to it. Twist: the responder has found out …

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 15: Writing Exercise – Eyewitness Testimony

    For a handful of exercises this month, we’ll look to works from the long and living legacy of Japanese literature for sparks of inspiration. For today’s ten-minute writing exercise: In the Akutagawa short story “In a Grove,” which was adapted into the movie Rashomon, a series of characters give testimony on the events leading up…

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 14: Writing Exercise – Wait, Let Me Start Again

    In January, we’ll be working on first lines and beginnings in honor of the new year. Happy 2025! Today’s ten-minute writing exercise is: Write a story in first person, in which the narrator keeps changing their mind about where to begin. Our themes this month are: We’ll also be writing a complete work of flash…

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 13: Writing Exercise – Funhouse Mirror

    This month, we’re featuring a handful of prompts from The 3am Epiphany by Brian Kitely, a book of over 200 writing exercises. If you like these and you can swing it, I encourage you to get a copy. Today’s ten-minute writing exercise is a simplified version of #90, Funhouse Mirror: Write a deliberately distorted tall…

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 12: Writing Exercise – Answer Me!

    Using a well-defined text convention that is not narrative prose can catch the eye of a casual reader and force the writer to improvise to adopt the conventions of the borrowed form. For today’s ten-minute writing exercise: Write a series of texts, including emojis, from someone who messed up to the person they hurt. As…

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  • 2025 Writing Challenge Day 11: Writing Exercise – Road Trip

    For a handful of exercises this month, we’ll look to works from the long and living legacy of Japanese literature for sparks of inspiration. For today’s ten-minute writing exercise: Shank’s Mare is a comic novel from the Edo period recounting stories from the road as two bawdy grifters travel from Edo to Kyoto. Their primary…

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