Write into the Week: October 4, 2026

“I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.” — Stephen King

 

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 & Instructor

Writer to Writer: Turn the Monsters Loose

While I was teaching a class on creative mindset this week, one student asked another whether they were ever afraid of exposing themselves on the page. Not necessarily through memoir, but through the things they chose to write at all. The fear was that readers might see too much, make assumptions, judge the writer, or decide that the work revealed something uncomfortable about the person who created it. I understood the question immediately because I struggle with this too—even in fiction.

There are subjects, impulses, and darker corners of my imagination that I sometimes hesitate to follow because I fixate on the imagined response of a reader, friend, or family member asking: How could you write something so dark? What kind of person are you? That very fear has caused me to pull back from the grittier, stranger, and more controversial material I might otherwise put down on paper.

Yet when I allow those fears of judgment to win out and control the content of my writing, another problem arises. If I spend too much time protecting myself from a reader’s possible perception of me, I usually end up preventing the writing from becoming interesting, too.

Self-protection can enter a draft long before revision ever begins. We often start anticipating judgment while a new piece is still in early development. In doing so, we may cut off the very material that will make the piece interesting, memorable, and resonant. I’m also not suggesting that you write something fearless just to make it safer later. Instead, I’m encouraging all of us to be as honest and authentic as the piece requires by giving it enough room to develop its truth before we start worrying about how it will be received.

This kind of holding back does not always involve difficult or revealing subject matter. Sometimes the monster we are afraid to release is simply allowing ourselves to write in a genre or style we’ve previously denied ourselves. A writer may force themselves into literary fiction because it feels like the work they should be making while secretly longing to write romance. Someone may keep returning to fantasy because it feels safer than the personal essays they cannot stop thinking about. We can become so concerned with how our work—or even our choice of genre—will be perceived that we begin shaping our creative lives around an imagined audience before we have given ourselves permission to discover who we really want to be as artists.

Stephen King talks about creating sympathy for his characters and then turning the monsters loose. I like thinking about that advice more broadly. Maybe the monsters are the subjects that scare us, the desires we keep editing out, the genre we are embarrassed to love, or the version of a story that reveals more of us than feels entirely comfortable. Turning them loose does not mean abandoning craft or judgment. It means giving ourselves enough freedom during creation to follow the work wherever it needs to go. Revision can sharpen, deepen, and complicate what we discover there—but first, we have to let ourselves write it.

Writing Prompt: Genre Swap

Choose one of these two ways to shake up your usual writing:

1. Try something new: Write in a genre you’ve never attempted before, or one you rarely work in. Don’t overthink the rules or worry about getting it right. Let loose, follow your instincts, go with the unexpected, and see what happens.

2. Rewrite across genres: Take a piece you’re already working on—or just one scene from it—and rewrite it in a completely different genre or style. Consider turing romance into horror, sci-fi into mystery, nonfiction into fantasy, or invent your own combination.

The goal is not necessarily to improve the original piece. It’s to loosen your grip on what you think the writing is supposed to be, and discover what changes when you allow it to become something else.

Literary Device of the Week: Defamiliarization 

Defamiliarization is an artistic and literary technique that makes something familiar or ordinary feel new, strange, unique, or noticeable. Instead of describing an object, experience, or idea in a typical or expected way, a writer shifts perspective, language, context, or comparison so the reader is encouraged to see something common in a new and  different way.

A kitchen utensil might be described as though it were being encountered for the first time, as a newly discovered treasure. An ordinary routine can become eerie when viewed from an outsider’s perspective. A familiar emotion might be rendered through an unexpected image rather than named directly.

The goal is not simply to be unusual for the sake of it, but to interrupt automatic perception. This will make readers pay closer attention, and give them a fresh, more in-depth sensory experience. 

Defamiliarization can be especially useful when a piece feels predictable, or when you find yourself reaching for familiar language. (Ahem, cough, cliché.) Try changing the point of view, describing something without naming it, placing an everyday object in an unfamiliar setting, or asking how someone with no knowledge of the setting of your story might understand what they are seeing. Make the familiar new!

Listening Recommendations

• From the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast – “#265. What is Cozy Fiction? 10 Characteristics Cozy Writers Need to Know” – In this episode, host Savannah Gilbo breaks down the 10 characteristics of cozy fiction and how each one contributes to the reader’s experience—because cozy is rarely just one thing. It’s several craft elements working together, and once you can name them, you can build them on purpose.
• From The Dialogue Doctor podcast – “What Raymond Carver’s ‘Cathedral’ Teaches Us About Character Voice [ep 348]” – In this episode, host Jeff Elkins sits down with members of the Dialogue Doctor community to dig into Carver’s famous short story and figure out exactly what writers can learn from it. “Cathedral” has an almost absurdly simple premise: a man, his wife, and her blind friend spend an evening together in a living room. And yet Carver turns that small situation into a significant emotional transformation.

Publishing Opportunities: 

• Electric Literature – Submission Window: Septembeer 28-Ocotber 11, 2026. Electric Lit’s submission window for personal narrative essays opens this week! Submissions will remain open until October 11th or until they receive 500 submissions—which ever comes first. Don’t delay! (Note: Submissions won’t open until the 28th!)
• Phoenix Poets – Submission Deadline: October 31, 2026. The University of Chicago Press’s Phoenix Poets series is open to poetry manuscripts, including first and second books, work by more established poets, and poetry in translation. The editors are especially interested in poets who expand the conceptual, formal, and emotional possibilities of poetry; manuscripts must be at least 48 pages, and one first or second book will be selected for the Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize.
• The Susan Atefat Editor’s Prize in Poetry – Submission Deadline: October 31, 2026. Peach Literary Journal’s Susan Atefat Editor’s Prize honors work of exceptional craft, emotional integrity, and imaginative reach. For the 2027 poetry prize, writers may submit a suite of 3–5 poems. The winner receives $4,000, publication in Peach, featured placement on the journal’s website, and an author spotlight.

Residencies, Retreats & Fellowships

• The Fresh Voices Fellowship – Application Deadline: October 15, 2026. The Fresh Voices Fellowship, offered by Epiphany magazine, awards early career writers of color a $2,000 stipend, a one-year editorial fellowship, and publication in a print issue of Epiphany. 
• Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing – Application Deadline: February 1, 2027. The Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing at Bucknell University offers up to four months of dedicated writing time for a writer working on a first or second book in any literary genre, including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, hybrid work, and graphic fiction. Residents receive lodging in Bucknell’s Poets’ Cottage and a $5,000 stipend.

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.

Join us on Instagram for more writing inspiration!

We’re sharing writing tips, creative prompts, and a steady stream of encouragement—follow us @writersdotcom. Click below to check out one of our latest posts on writing creative nonfiction.