Permission
Micro lessons in craft, prompts to spark your week, and opportunities to grow your writing practice.
10/23/2025
Hi Writers!
Welcome to TPOW’s Weekly Edition.
Happy Christmas Eve Eve!
Leah (Phoebe) here.
We have snowfall, folks. Snowfall that quickly melted away, but hopefully more comes tomorrow and the next day.
This Week: “Writing isn’t always sitting down to write.”
Yes, many of us use that line far too often. Sometimes to the point where it becomes less a protection of our sanity and more an excuse we hide behind. I know that. You probably do too.
But I think this week is different.
With kids out of school, time off work, family gathered, and the constant hum of activity inside our homes, outside our homes, or both, it feels necessary to give ourselves permission to just… not. To pause without apologizing. To stop insisting that every available moment be productive.
I was going to write a normal newsletter this week. One about how emotion is perceived differently across cultures, time periods, belief systems. I sat down at 1 a.m. trying to fine-tune it, wondering how I’d lost track of time somewhere between cleaning the house, wrapping presents, making coffee cocktails, baking cookies, and playing Mario Tennis with our kid.
And it hit me: pushing that piece out right now would be a waste. Not because the subject doesn’t matter, or because I don’t believe in the work, but because it wouldn’t be given the attention and care it deserves. Which, yes, actually does come down to how it’s told.
So instead, my micro craft lesson this week is one I’m giving myself.
It’s okay to step away.
Earlier this month, during Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s class in the Enrichment Series, we talked about how certain parts of the brain can become overworked. How intense focus, sustained for too long, can actually make us less effective. How walking, resting, shifting our attention away from the page often leads to more progress than forcing ourselves to produce something right now, in this exact moment.
Writing doesn’t only happen at the desk. Sometimes it happens when we let our minds loosen their grip. Sometimes it happens when we stop demanding output and allow space instead.
That’s the practice this week.
Permission to step back.
Permission to breathe.
Permission to trust that the work will still be there when we return to it with care.
Prompt: Take a Walk
Go outside.
Take a walk. At least twenty-five minutes.
Choose a street you haven’t gone down before. Let yourself be slightly aimless. When you find the most open piece of land you can, stop. Stand there for a minute or two. Just look.
If it’s safe to do so, take your shoes off. Press your toes into the ground. Notice the temperature. The texture. How your body adjusts.
Hold onto a tree branch. Feel its weight in your hand. Close your eyes. Listen. Name what you hear.
Don’t write while you’re out there.
Let this be part of the work.
If you do end up writing something as a result of this, send it to us.
We’d love to read it.
Stories We’re Following: Creative Writing News
Prize & Publication
The Deadlands (Psychopomp) — Fiction Submissions Open Through December 31
The Deadlands is a paying literary magazine interested in death as liminal space, ritual, and meaning across genres. They’re open right now for fiction (up to 5,000 words, 10¢/word) and explicitly welcome literary, speculative, hybrid, and cross-genre work that isn’t just horror. There’s still time to submit this month.
https://psychopomp.com/the-deadlands-guidelines/
Inspiration
The Ongoing Existence of “News of the Weird”
I stumbled upon and was delighted by News of the Weird — a long-running syndicated column that curates real news stories so strange they read like fiction. Nutcracker museums. Quicksand rescues. Taxidermy traded at GameStop. There are so many prompts just waiting to be snatched up from this catalog of real-life weirdness.
https://shepherdexpress.com/puzzles/news-of-the-weird/
Philosophy/Curiosity
At the end of every year, I find myself googling “what is the color of 2026?” — which now just gets a response from Google’s AI bot that says, “There is no color for 2026, however…” and then proceeds to give me several anyway.
So this is what I’ve found, loosely and imperfectly, across numerology, astrology, folk belief, and cultural pattern-making: a surprising number of symbolic systems are gathering around the idea that 2026 isn’t just another year.
In the Chinese zodiac, 2026 is the Year of the Horse, paired with the Yang Fire element. Fire Horse years are often described as energetic, intense, fast-moving, and transformative. There’s an emphasis on independence, momentum, risk, and visibility. Less maintenance, more movement.
In numerology, 2026 reduces to a 1 year (2 + 0 + 2 + 6 = 10 → 1). Year 1 is associated with beginnings, leadership, self-direction, and innovation. It’s considered the start of a new nine-year cycle, a time for planting seeds, setting intentions, and stepping into new identities or projects.
Across Feng Shui and related traditions, the colors most often associated with 2026 are red and vermilion, tied to Fire Horse energy: passion, confidence, vitality, presence. Some forecasts also highlight gold, emerald, and ruby tones as colors connected to harmony, opportunity, and steadiness.
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Upcoming at TPOW: Learning & Community
Thursday Flash Club — Weekly on Substack Live, starting again in the New Year
- Prompts, mini craft lessons, and community.
- Keeps us writing, talking, and trying new things.When Place Has Agency: Setting & Space in Fiction — Begins April 1
- Four week class on writing setting as an active force in fiction.
- Learn to use atmosphere, texture, and spatial tension to shape story.Shifting Perspectives: Mastering Point of View in Fiction — Begins April 2
- Four week class exploring First, Second, Close Third, and Omniscient.
- Perfect for experimenting with new narrative possibilities.Writing With Your Whole Nervous System — Begins May 6
- Four week class on embodiment, sensory detail, and emotional truth.
- Learn to write scenes that feel inhabited, grounded, and alive.Writing the Wild: Lyric Non-Fiction — Begins May 7
- Write from the elements: wind, water, wilderness.
- A generative class on lyric movement and the untamable.
Stonecoast Enrichment Series
World Building — February 10 - 7 pm EST
Explore bottom-up, top-down, and goal-oriented worldbuilding with Lucas Carroll-Garrett, and learn how each approach shapes depth, tone, and narrative focus.Your Body, Your Story — March 10 - 7 pm EST
Nina B. Lichtenstein dives into the body as memory archive through sensory prompts. Learn how physical experience transforms forgotten moments into vivid scenes.Writing Words into Life! Elements & Techniques of Basic Scriptwriting — April 14 - 7 pm EST
Develop dialogue, explore the playfulness of scripts, and rediscover fun in storytelling with Adam Rodriquez-Dunn.
Closing Reflection
Have a wonderful holiday, whatever it is you do or don’t celebrate.
Love,
Leah (& Nina)