Write into the Week: September 14, 2025

“To create is to live twice.”
–Albert Camus

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: Second Life

There’s something quietly profound about this short quote from Camus, “To create is to live twice.”

As creators, this is often our experience. We get to live once in the moment of experience, and again when we shape that moment into art. Whether you write fiction, poetry, nonfiction, or hybrid work, the act of writing gives you a second chance to experience, to witness, and to understand.

Maybe that’s why we return again and again to a particular theme, character, or memory. It’s not about repetition. It’s about deepening. Living twice doesn’t mean reenacting; it means making meaning.

This week, consider how you might live twice. Reach back, revise, remember, reimagine.

Writing Prompt

Write a moment you’ve already lived, but alter one element of reality. Maybe the setting, the ending, or the emotional tone. Play with real life; it’s your right as an artist.

What shifts when you take the raw material of your life, and bend it just slightly? Does it bring you closer to truth, farther away, or take you somewhere completely new?

Reading Recommendations:

Fiction Literary Criticism:

• “The Joy of Reading Books About Books” by Susan Coll. Coll recommends reads by John Tottenham, Emily Henry, R.F. Kuang, and others, while discussing why so many of us love to read books about books. I know I do! 

Poetry in Review:

• “A Review of This One We Call Ours by Martha Silano” by Joanne Durham. “How does a poet tackle climate change, the daily destruction of life on our planet? How do we balance doom and gloom with resolve and reverence?” Durham asks these questions and more as she explores the delicate intricacies of Silano’s new poetry collection, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize.

On the Writerly Life:

• “How Writing in Community Can Forge Friendships and Evoke Change” by Beverly Gologorsky. “Phillip Roth once said that only a fool would sit in a room for thirty years doubting himself,” begins Gologosky’s article on her friendship with fellow writer Jane Lazarre, and the mentorship of a writer’s group.

Listening Recommendations:

• From The Lit Hub Podcast: “Travel Writing, Well-Designed Classics, and Setting to Sea on the Lit Hub Podcast” – This week, host Drew, talks to Boris Kachka of The Atlantic about their new travel-writing series “The Writer’s Way” (featuring the likes of Lauren Groff visiting Lady Murasaki’s Kyoto and Honor Jones in le Carré’s Corfu). Then, Allison Miriam Smith and Brandon Taylor drop by to chat about why they launched Smith & Taylor Classics and how they’re putting together the colorful, playful, vibrant series of classics-in-conversation. 
• From the Memoir Nation Podcast: “Jeannie Vanasco on the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Memoir” – Jeannie Vanasco,  author of the memoir Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl, shares with us about writing from “within an experience” and why she wrote her latest book “for” her mother. There are endless nuances to explore when it comes to the mother-daughter relationship, and hosts Grant and Brooke get into why this is a dynamic that memoirists will always be drawn to.

Publishing Opportunities:

• The Kenyon Review – Submission Deadline: September 30, 2025.
• Seeking submissions of original writing on the following themes: Alchemy, Invisible Cities, Precarity, and Document.
• The Berlin Review – Submission Deadline: September 30, 2025. Open call for short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and essays. The Berlin Review proudly nominates standout work for the Pushcart Prize and other respected literary awards.

Residency & Retreat Opportunities:

• Vermont Studio Center – Application Deadline: September 30, 2025. This is an open call for applications for artist’s residences happening June 29-December 18, 2026. Accepting applications for writers of all genres and visual artists. 

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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