Off Assignment is a literary magazine with a penchant for journeys and a fascination with strangers, looking for writers who travel, poets who wander, essayists with a sense of place, reporters with swollen notebooks, and gourmands with street cart taste. “We’re not here to guide vacations. We don’t cover spas or centennials. We have a taste for offbeat places. We care about voice and story. We want the writer on the page—sweating, tripping, and telling a tale.” Off Assignment Submission Guidelines
Turning Point . . . Prompt #666
Write about a turning point. Or, a point of no return. #justwrite #iamawriter #iamwriting
Adversity . . . Prompt #665
The idea of using prompts is to inspire writing in a freeform style. There are no rules, except to write without too much thinking. Let your thoughts flow and capture them in writing. Give your inner critic time off during this writing. The challenge of freewriting is getting Self out of the way. With freewrites, you are writing for yourself, not for an audience. Give yourself permission to be open to whatever comes up while you are writing. Writing Prompt: How do you handle adversity? There are several prompts, ideas about freewrites, and resources about how to write without adding trauma in “The Write Spot: Writing as a Path to Healing,” available from your local bookseller and as both print books and ebooks on Amazon.
Cleaver Magazine
“Cleaver” publishes craft essays on writerly topics. If you are a poet, fiction writer, essayist, or graphic narrative artist and would like to propose a craft essay, contact the editors with a query before submitting. Guidelines: offer a reaction to or exploration of one’s personal experience as a prose writer/artist/creative; pieces that delve into something you’ve either found compelling, learned along the way, figured out, gotten obsessed with, found surprising, and want to share with other writers. Quirky is okay. Nothing too scholarly/academic/ teacher-y. Aim for between 800 and 2000 words. “Riding West Towards The Woods” by Deb Fenwick is a sample of the type of writing “Cleaver” is looking for.
Resilience . . . Prompt #664
“Resilience is the ability to scrape yourself off the floor relatively quickly after a giant trauma, medium-size setback or everyday disappointment. Resilience is a set of coping mechanisms we develop over time. This quality is determined by how we take care of ourselves, the people we surround ourselves with and what we do to find meaning and purpose in our lives.” — “How to Bounce Back From Anything,” by Elaine Chin, M.D. and William Howatt, PH.D, Good Housekeeping magazine, July 2018 Writing Prompts How do you define resiliency? What are your coping mechanisms? What do you do to take care of yourself? Is there someone in your life who hinders your ability to be resilient? Write about the times you have been resilient. #justwrite #iamwriting #iamawriter
You Think You Know Me
Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page. You Think You Know Me By Karen Handyside Ely You think you know me, but you don’t know… that I am struggling with a powerful bout of depression. I’ve battled it before. I’ve been in deeper, darker, more dangerous pits. This current episode has rolled over me slowly. Not a storm, but more a dense, thick, cloud cover, wrapping me in the heavy humidity of numbness and ennui, pinning me to the ground with a listless, languid, low-grade despair that makes me want to sleep all day. I’m suffocating one breath at a time… in slow motion. This time around, my depression isn’t a raging sea, which has been my usual experience, but an ebbing tide that creeps back over the sand as the fog rolls in to smother the beach. I could cry, just writing…
You Think You Know Me . . . Prompt #663
Writing prompts inspired by the June 5, 2022 interview with Kevin Powell and Dr. Adrian Arancibia. Prompt #1: You think you know me, but you don’t know . . . Prompt #2: Same as first prompt, but this time write in your parent’s voice, or from your parent’s perspective, Or: Write from the point of view of Someone Important in your life. Write as if your mother or father or Important Person were writing, “You think you know me, but what you don’t know . . . #justwrite #iamwriting #iamawriter
The next chance I get . . . Prompt #662
Writing Prompt The next chance I get . . . #justwrite #amwriting #iamawriter
Illuminating The Essay
Guest Blogger Arletta Dawdy’s reflections on Susan Bono’s talk, “Illuminating The Essay.” Remember the bogs of Ireland or those on the moors of England in old romance novels? The one where the heroine comes to the lonesome manor to be a governess, nurse, or maid only to fall for the moody master, his neighbor or maybe the groundsman. She’s lost in the mire of boggish emotions until HE comes to her rescue. Well, I don’t see HIM rescuing this writer from her blogger’s mind-bog. If you noticed, I’ve been absent for, low, these many months and then I thought there might be hope showing on my horizon. Marlene Cullen, producer of Writers Forum, invited local heroine/publisher//teacher Susan Bono to inspire an October gathering by “Illuminating The Essay.” Susan has published personal narratives in her famed journal, Tiny Lights, for nearly twenty years. She is an expert in the form and…
What fascinates you? Prompt #661
Write about what fascinates you, or what you are obsessed with. #justwrite #amwriting #iamawriter #freewrites