New York 
Writers Coalition
  • Home
  • About
  • Editors and Contributors
  • NY Writers Coalition
  • Log In

Begin at the End

January 1, 2013 By Derek Loosvelt

During the four years I’ve been leading writing workshops, perhaps no other prompt has been as effective as this one: giving participants a printed out list of evocative first sentences from published novels or short stories and inviting them to begin a piece of writing with one of these sentences. In fact, it’s been so […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

Before Your Time

December 26, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

Yesterday morning, which was Christmas morning, I came across a short story by the Brooklyn-born poet and writer Delmore Schwartz called “In Dreams Begin Responsibility.” The story is collected in a volume of great American short stories called You’ve Got to Read This (a book I’ve had on loan from a friend for some time and […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

See, Don’t Think

December 18, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

Last week, on The New York Times website, I came across a beautiful and heartbreaking five-minute documentary called “Solo, Piano – N.Y.C.” The film, which I can’t recommend strongly enough, follows “a lone piano standing curbside in New York City” and “chronicles the interactions of passers-by as the piano awaits its fate.” The film was […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

A Drastic Break

December 10, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

Have you ever wondered what would happen if, instead of getting off at your designated subway stop in the morning, the subway stop you’ve been getting off at each morning for the past seventeen years on your way to work at job you’ve been working at for the past seventeen years, you kept riding the […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

Lives of Streets

December 3, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

A few months ago I posted a prompt inviting writers to write from the point of view of a plant, tree, flower, or bush. Today’s prompt is somewhat similar, but instead of plant life, the focus is on street life. That is, I invite you to begin to write a piece of prose or poetry […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

Wild Noses

November 26, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

The current issue of The Believer includes one of the last interviews with Maurice Sendak, the late, great writer and illustrator behind such iconic titles as Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen. Sendak died last year at the age of 83, and, up until his passing, he was still writing, illustrating, […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

Here I Am

November 19, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

Last week I came across an excellent essay by Stephen King about the use of imagery in writing called “Imagery and the Third Eye.” The essay–in which King writes that all 407 of his rules of writing  “will take care of themselves almost automatically if you will, from this point on, take two pledges: First, […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

Writing Blind

November 12, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

Yesterday, for perhaps the seventh or eighth time, I read Raymond Carver’s masterful story “Cathedral,” one of whose main characters is a blind man. This blind man, early on in the story, is an object of scorn to the story’s narrator. And the blind man’s blindness is an object of mockery. The reason for this […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

What Matters

November 5, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

Given that tens of thousands of residents of New York and New Jersey are still suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy* and that an incredibly important election is being held in a handful of hours, today my mind landed on a prompt I used a few weeks ago (in a workshop) that resulted in […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

Storm Stories

October 30, 2012 By Derek Loosvelt

Last night, while Hurricane Sandy* ripped through the East Coast, causing massive flooding and blackouts (but luckily didn’t do much in my neighborhood–Fort Greene, Brooklyn–other than cause an Internet outage and the lights to flicker on and off a few times) I pulled out Ron Hansen’s excellent story collection Nebraska and began to read, for […]

Filed Under: Writing Prompts

Next Page »

Welcome to Our Blog!

Recent Posts

  • Pack Your Bags For An Adventure
  • Orcs, Hobbits and Dragons
  • Post A Facebook Story
  • Would the Real St. Nick Please Stand Up?
  • Give An Awful Christmas Gift

Recent Comments

  • Jessica on Friday 5: Five ways to be a Better Friend
  • tory meringoff on Friday 5: Five ways to be a Better Friend
  • Pat on Good Poet, Bad Father
  • christine doudna on Good Poet, Bad Father
  • tory meringoff on Put Your Writing In Hyperdrive

Categories

  • 10 Days of NYWC
  • Arts
  • Fort Greene Park Summer Writing
  • Friday 5
  • News
  • NYWC Tell Your Story Campaign
  • Shoptalk
  • Social Justice
  • Writing Prompts

Links

  • Afghan Women's Writing Project
  • Akashic Books
  • Association of Writers and Writing Programs
  • Bitch Magazine
  • Black with the Blues
  • Bomb Magazine
  • Brooklyn Public Library
  • Feminist Fatale
  • Fringe Magazine
  • Granta
  • Greenlight Bookstore
  • Harper's Magazine
  • Ms.
  • National Council for Research on Women
  • National Novel Writing Month
  • NY Public Library
  • Omnivorous Reader
  • Osborne Association
  • PEN American Center
  • Poets and Writers
  • The Chicagoan
  • The Millions
  • The Nation
  • The New Yorker's Page Turner
  • The Paris Review
  • The Prison Arts Coalition
  • The Rumpus
  • Transom
  • Tribal Link
  • Verbiage

Archives

  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012

Copyright © 2019 ·New York Writers Coalition Theme · Genesis Framework by StudioPress · WordPress · Log in