Write into the Week: September 6, 2026

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.” — Anne Frank

 

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: Harvesting What Summer Gave You

Note: Due to the holiday, there will be no live Write into the Week session on Monday, September 7th. Our next live session will be Monday, September 14th. See you then!

Even though it’s late this year, Labor Day weekend is often when summer begins to loosen its sweaty hold, at least culturally—the last long weekend, the return of school-year routines, and the subtle shift from lazy summer days toward the crisp structure of fall. Even when the weather is still warm, September is often the month when we look ahead and consider what remains of the year.

But before we rush too quickly into fall, why don’t we pause to consider and gather what summer has already given us? Not every season of writing looks as productive as others. Sometimes summer is full of travel, visitors, heat, distractions, disrupted routines, long days, strange moods, or stretches when writing happens in fragments, or not at all. If that sounds like your summer, don’t pass judgement on yourself. A slope in word count doesn’t mean nothing has been happening creatively.

A season of rest and creative refresh can give us material even if it hasn’t shown up on the page yet. It can leave behind new images, memorable conversations, discovered desires, or fresh memories you’ll only start to process later.

But before we rush too quickly into fall, why don’t we pause to consider and gather what summer has already given us? Not every season of writing looks as productive as others. Sometimes summer is full of travel, visitors, heat, distractions, disrupted routines, long days, strange moods, or stretches when writing happens in fragments, or not at all. If that sounds like your summer, don’t pass judgment on yourself. A dip in word count doesn’t mean nothing has been happening creatively.

A season of rest and creative refresh can give us material even if it hasn’t shown up on the page yet. It can leave behind new images, memorable conversations, discovered desires, or fresh memories you’ll only start to process later.

One fabulous gift of a writing life is that almost anything we live through can become part of the work eventually, including the subtle changes we may not notice at first. The version of ourselves we were at the beginning of summer is not quite the same version now standing near its end. On the surface, it may look like little has changed, but we rarely stay one version of ourselves for too long.

This week, instead of beginning with a new fall goal, consider beginning with a summer harvest. Look back with kindness, and consider: What did this summer place in your hands? In front of your eyes? Did it delight your other senses in new ways? What did it teach you, awaken in you, or ask you to return to? What images start swirling in your mind when you think of the last few months?

None of this has to be grand or dramatic—quiet and simple works, too. Begin collecting the bits you’d like to carry forward, even if you don’t know why they matter yet. Just gather. Later, maybe one of those fragments will become a poem, an essay, or a new character. No matter what you write, inspiration is all around us. There’s no need to plan just yet. For now, harvest.

Writing Prompt: Gather What Glows

Make a list of your summer harvest. This should include a wide range of things that made up your summer season. You might consider: landscapes, conversations, images, meals, weather, disappointments, delights, adventures, questions, books, songs, objects, and people.

Choose one, or more, item(s) from your list that you feel most connected to, that seems to glow in your mind—even if you aren’t sure why. Begin a new piece of writing from that small piece of summer. Let it lead you; don’t try to control where the piece ends up.

Reading Recommendations

Poetry:

• “Dancing While Walking” by Diane Mehta via The Berlin Review. The musicality in “Walking while Dancing” beautifully meets its subject matter. Here, sound and movement shape the speaker’s experience of the world, as Mehta uses nonsense syllables, street rhythms, and the remembered gestures of another dancer to explore the way memory can choreograph the present body.

Fiction:

• “A Present, an Apology, and a Tribute” by Patrick ten Brink via The Berline Review. “Can’t you see that some words attract and some repel, and not just due to the magnetism?” This short story turns the idea of “magnetic words” into a playful, inventive exploration of language, love, and creative obsession. Through experiments with ink, magnets, and poetry, the story asks what words might choose to say when they are given a life of their own.

Nonfiction:

• “The Fourth Person” by Elijah Sparkman via Gulf Coast Magazine. “Her goal in life was to write a short story in the fourth person.” Sparkman’s personal essay begins with a breakup, a rainy moving day, and a writer determined to create a new point of view—literally. I found this essay to be stange and quirky, with a side of quiet aching. 

Listening Recommendations

• From The Michigan Quarterly Review – “Empty Summits” by Chang Joon An – In this braided essay, Chang Joon weaves together family grief, religious doubt, Korean history, and Shohei Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama into a narrative about sacrifice, guilt, and the stories we (don’t always want to) inherit. Formally ambitious and emotionally charged, the piece moves between criticism and creative nonfiction as it asks what remains when the beliefs that once held a family together no longer hold you.
• From the Always Take Notes podcast – “Matt Haig on his early struggles as a literary novelist and the unexpected success of his memoir ‘Reasons to Stay Alive'” – In this episode, hosts, Simon and Rachel, speak to the novelist and non-fiction writer Matt Haig. Haig is the best selling author of the novel The Midnight Library, and of the memoir, Reasons to Stay Alive. 

Publishing Opportunities: 

• Carnegie Mellon University Press – Submission Deadline: September 15, 2026. Open call for poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction. This is the first time the Carnegie Mellon University Press has been open to creative nonfiction submissions. This is a great opportunity!
• The Kenyon Review – Submission Deadline: September 30, 2026. Currently open for general submissions in short fiction, flash fiction and essays, poetry, and excerpts from larger works, and translation. 
• New Plains Review Contest – Submission Deadline: October 13, 2026. $1,000 prize for poetry and fiction. They are specifically interested in work focused on water. Please see the guidelines on their Submittable page for more details. 
• The Berlin Review – Submission Window: Open. Submissions for The Berlin Review’s next issue are open for short stories, flash, poetry, and essays. The deadline will be announced in around four weeks. Submit now!

Residencies, Retreats & Fellowships

• Ragdale’s Creative Sabbatical – Applicatin Widow: Rolling, until full. This is a rare opportunity for writers and creatives who want a residency experience, but who cannot be away from home for weeks at a time. Ragdale’s Creative Sabbatical runs from December 1-4, 2026. Designed for artists, art administrators and other creatives, these shorter residencies are 4 days and 3 nights, and are open to all disciplines. 
• Macdowell Artist Residency Spring/Summer 2027 – Application Deadline: September 10, 2026. Macdowell, the nation’s first artist residency, offers fully-funded residences of two to eight weeks for artists and writers of all disciplines. This is a chance to live and write in community with other artists, and to fully immerse yourself in your creative craft. 
• Vermont Studio Center Residency – Application Deadline: September 30, 2026. Residency applications are now open for the Vermont Studio Center. Artists and writers in all forms and genres are welcome to apply for residencies happening from July to December 2027. All residents receive partial fellowship, and 35% receive fully funded fellowships. 
• Djerassi Resident Artists Program – Application Deadline: October 9, 2026. Applications for 2027 residencies are now open! The Djerassi Resident Artist Program has awarded over 2700 writers, visual/media artists, composers, choreographers, filmmakers and scientists for the past 42-years the gift of time and space with a one-month residency on their 583-acre ranch in Northern California’s Santa Cruz Mountains. All at no cost to the artists. (Elle has attended multiple residencies there, and she highly encourages you to apply!) 

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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