Write into the Week: November 30, 2025

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke

Dear Writer,

I hope you’re having a good start to your week. In this newsletter:

• A writing prompt to inspire your creativity.
• Reading and listening recommendations in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
• Publishing, residency, and retreat opportunities available now.
• Join our free Monday and Friday write-ins, and meet our community of writers.

Happy writing this week!

—Elle, Curriculum Specialist & Community Manager

Writer to Writer: The Productive Lull

I tend to be quite hard on myself when it comes to writing and productivity. At times—less rare than I’d like—I call myself names and say negative things about my creative efforts. It’s not usually about what I write, but my lack of writing that brings out this inner critic. Over time, though, I’ve learned that I produce more and better work when I am kinder and gentler with myself. So I try to keep Rilke’s words in mind. I try to “be patient,” gentle, and kind. Above all, I try to give my creative self grace, especially during times of writing droughts and productive lulls—those weeks when nothing seems to move forward in any obvious or meaningful way. The days when the page stays blank, or a pesky draft won’t reveal what it’s becoming.

The end of the year, with its odd mix of short, dark days and holiday festivities, is often a period of creative pause for many writers. We may be tempted to call these stretches unproductive, but I wonder if that word does them a disservice. A lull is not the same as an ending, or quitting. It’s not even the same as a creative block. If your mind goes to those places, try a reframe. Think of productive lulls as a season of possibility and accumulation. It’s a time to fill up on sentences you don’t yet know how to use, questions you aren’t ready to answer, and impressions that haven’t found their shape. Something is happening—just not on a timeline we can measure with word counts or deadlines.

If you’re in one of those spaces right now, you’re not behind. You’re inside the process, even if it doesn’t look the way you expected. Patience, here, isn’t passive. It’s an active kind of listening. The kind that trusts the work to arrive when it’s ready to be met. Just make sure you’re ready when it shows up. 

Writing Prompt:

During a productive lull, start a Creative Accumulation List. Let it be a living page where you jot down anything that flickers with even the smallest hint of interest: a sentence you overhear, a strange or profound word you’d like to research later, a line you almost write but don’t yet know what to do with, an image that won’t leave you alone, or a question you don’t yet understand. Don’t shape it. Don’t analyze it. Just let it gather, gather, gather.

Return to this list over the coming days and weeks. Let it grow and blossom until one fragment begins to tug at you more than the rest. Trust that inspiration often arrives not as a rare lightning strike, but as a slow, intentional accumulation that eventually knows when it’s time to become something more.

Reading Recommendations: SubStack Edition

Poetry: 

• The Rabbit Room – The Rabbit Room SubStack is an extension of the publishing house and podcast network of the same name. It began as an experiment in the creative community, and has flourished into a space to read and write great poems.

Fiction: 

• The Caffeinated Writer by Michelle Richmond – Richmond is a NYT bestselling author of six novels and two story collections. Her SubStack is a mix of writerly inspiration, craft essays, and lessons learned from both her writing and teaching careers. Recent essay topics include: Becoming a writer after the age of 50 and the benefits of a small book advance. 

Nonfiction & Poetry: 

• Claiming Writerhood by Jessie Petrow-Cohen – This SubStack is a wealth of poetry, essays and Petrow-Cohen’s complicated journey of being a writer who is afraid to call herself a writer. I’ve recently enjoyed the essays “Quieter Voices” and “Permanence in the Place We Store Sensation.” 

Listening Recommendations:

• From The Lit Hub Podcast: “November 28, 2025 – The Thanksgiving Episode” – A literary episode all about giving thanks to creativity and the arts. 
• From The Writer’s Voice Podcast “Joan Silber Reads ‘Safety‘” – Joan Silber reads her story “Safety,” from the December 8, 2025, issue of The New Yorker. A winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story, Silber is the author of nine books of fiction, the most recent of which are the novels Mercy and Secrets of Happiness.

Publishing Opportunities:

• Electric Literature – Submission Deadline: December 14, 2025. Seeking submissions of full drafts of personal essays between 2,000 to 6,500 words. No formal subject matter restrictions, but preference to those that center narrative and consider what it means to interrogate, investigate, adventure, and introspect within the essay form. 
• Boulevard Literary Magazine’s Short Fiction Contest – Entry Deadline: December 31, 2025. This contest is for emerging writers! Boulevard is accepting submissions of short fiction (up to 8,000 words) from any writer who has not published a nationally distributed book. The winning entry will receive $1,500, and all entrants will receive a print subscription to the magazine.
• Allium, a Journal of Poetry and Prose – Submission Deadline: February 15, 2026. Accepting submissions for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, for consider for three upcoming issues. They do accept simultaneous submissions. 

Residency & Retreat Opportunities: 

• The Notre Dame Kylemore Residency by the Irish Writers Centre – Application Deadline: December 10, 2025 – The Irish Writers Centre will hold their third annual partnership with Notre Dame Kylemore. Four writers will be awarded a fully catered, five-day residency opportunity from Monday, March 30 to Friday April 3, 2026 in the beautifully restored Notre Dame Kylemore on the grounds of Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Co. Galway. Please check the website for eligibility details.

Monday and Friday: Free Group Writing Sessions

Come write with us! Community write-ins are a great way to meet other writers, and carve out space in your calendar for your writing.

Monday: Write Into the Week with Elle

Join me (Elle) for an hour of mindset support, goal setting, community, and dedicated time to write! We’ll meet on Monday at 11 AM Eastern time, at this Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83999379617

Friday: Open Write-In

Join the Writers.com staff for a 90-minute writing session each Friday from 11 AM to 12:30 PM Eastern time. We will write together for the first hour. In the last, optional half hour, we’ll share our writing with one another and connect.

To add yourself, join our newsletter using the join box above, and add yourself to the “Friday Write-Ins” list at the bottom of any email. We’ll send you a Zoom link the morning of the call.

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