Doing the Work 02/24/25

Calls for submissions, reading recommendations, writing prompts 02/24/25

Hello friends!

Welcome to the eleventh installment of our Doing The Work series. Here, we share opportunities for submitting your work, recommend some great reads, and offer creative exercises for you to try.

In this week's edition:

• Calls for Submissions: Opportunities for poets, prose writers, and artists.

• Reading Recommendations: A selection of writing I've been enjoying recently.

• Creative Prompts: Writing exercises to inspire your creativity.

If you find this post helpful, please share it with your friends and family. Enjoy!

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Calls for Submission

Huge opportunity just opened up! The 33rd annual Tom Howard/John H. Reid Fiction & Essay Contest is officially opened for business. It's sponsored by Winning Writers, co-sponsored by Duotrope, both incredible writing resources.

There is a huge prize pool, and 12 total spots to place. The deadline for submissions is May 1st. There is a submission fee, so I totally understand if it isn’t for you, but it’s too good of an opportunity to not share!

P.S. You will need a Submittable account. It is free to make, and I’d highly recommend doing it anyway if you want to start trying to publish work, since many journals use them.

Reading Recommendations

I just recently finished reading all of Sally Rooney’s books. For those who don’t her, she wrote the book Normal People, and her latest book is Intermezzo. She’s one of my favorite contemporary authors, and I highly recommend her work.

But I don’t want to just recommend work you need to buy (go to your library!) so I will include the essay that made her famous, Even if You Beat Me. It’s a phenomenal piece, and so worth the read.

Writing Prompts

Part of the great poetry tradition is wordsmithing—coming up with words that don’t exist.

Most recently I tried writing some poems just based around a single word, and I tried to come up with the most unique words I could. It’s incredibly fun to try and come up with combinations you’ve never seen before.

So try coming up with your own! But here are three that I used if you need some further inspiration: crowstepped, mooncast, shadowcasters. Anne Carson has couple that I love, too: childfingered, wherefrom.

And if you enjoyed this prompt, feel free to check out our bookof writing prompts!

Thank You & Good Luck

If you found this useful, check out last Monday’s post.

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Thanks for reading,
Sam & Corey.