Write into the Week: December 7, 2025
Elle | Community Manager | December 6, 2025 |
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”
–Joan Didion
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:
At some point in almost every writing session, a second presence enters the room, and takes a seat. Once it’s comfortable, it usually starts whispering in your ear. It might sound like a teacher you once had, a workshop group, an imagined reader, the publishing industry at large, or a future version of yourself after getting a book deal. Sometimes this presence is helpful. Often, it’s paralyzing.
When we think we’re writing for someone or something else—for approval, for validation, for an imagined audience who may never exist—the work can quietly shift its shape. The sentences read forced and stale.. The risks shrink and shrivel, because we’re writing scared. We start performing rather than listening. We start editing before we’ve fully said what we mean.
This week, I challenge you to ask yourself: Who are you actually writing for right now? That voice in your head might not be what your story needs. Sometimes the truest work begins when we gently escort that second presence out of the room, and write instead for the part of ourselves that is curious, earnest, and courageous enough to be messy. The part that writes not to be admired, or published, but to be honest, true, authentic.
Writing Prompt:
For ten minutes, write only to find out what you’re thinking. Don’t plan or think ahead. Don’t try to shape it. You’re not writing to impress, or to share. Begin with the line:
“What I haven’t said yet is…”
Be surprised. Be honest. When you’ve finished, read it back to yourself. Consider how your writing changes when the only person you’re writing for is yourself.
Reading Recommendations:
Poetry:
- Literal Country Music by Samuel Cheney – Cheney, winner of a Pushcart Prize, paints a picture of a home left long ago, develing into the spiritual and physical landscape of a place, including snow cones, breakfast burritos, and a little country music.
Fiction:
- The Bottlekeepers Society by Alison Schiller – Winner of NYC Midnight’s 2023 Flash Fiction Contest. A young Cajun girl with a secret crosses the swamp to seek help from a mysterious society on the eve of Hurricane Katrina.
Nonfiction:
- The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser – The essay, originally published in The Paris Review, is the foundation of Hauser’s book, a memoir-in-essays, of the same name. A broken an engagement, just days before the wedding, leads to a journey self-discovery by way of the Japanese folktale of the crane wife.
Listening Recommendations:
- From the Always Take Notes podcast: “#226, Anthony Horowitz, novelist” – In this episode, hosts Simon and Rachel speak to the prolific novelist Anthony Horowitz. Horowitz is the author of the teen spy Alex Rider series, which has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide.
- From the Memoir Nation podcast “Chris Baty on The Magic of a Goal and a Deadline (JanYourStory Prep)” – Through the month of December, Memoir Nation podcast is hosting a series called JanYourStory Prep to get listeners ready and excited to participate in our January writing challenge to write 500 words a day every day in January.
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.
- Hayden’s Ferry Review – Submission Deadline: December 31, 2025. HFR has extended their submission deadline! Submit now—genres welcome! See their website for more details.
- Salt Hill Journal – Submission Deadline: January 31, 2026. Accepting salty new poetry, fiction, essay, and art submissions for their next issue. Their submission windows only open twice a year. Submit!
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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