Writing Poetry

When ABLE teachers think about writing instruction, preparation for the GED essay is often foremost in their thoughts. This is an important goal for most students, to be sure, but to limit writing instruction in this manner does students a disservice. Writing can serve many more functions in our lives, so effective ABLE instruction should support many types of writing and help students see the benefits of becoming lifelong writers. Writing poetry, the focus of this publication, offers students an easy entry into the writers' world.

There will be a two month break in writing ideas for August and September, please come back in October for a new writing idea.

Check back every month for this 10 month series of Writing Poetry instructional resources!

Poetry Daily - Today's Poem

"Poetry Daily is an anthology of contemporary poetry. Each day, we bring you a new poem from new books, magazines, and journals."

Read a new poem every day, and use your imagination to pull from the poems and write your own poem or story!

329 Writing Prompts

Roll your mouse over a number to bring up a popup creative writing prompt.

October 20th is National Day on Writing

Writing is a daily practice for millions of Americans, but few notice how integral writing has become to daily life in the 21st century. To draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing we engage in and help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft, NCTE has established October 20, 2010 as the National Day on Writing..

November is National Novel Writing Month

Every November thousands of writers like yourself participate in this national writing event. Participants begin writing November 1st with a goal to write a 175 page (50,000 word) novel by midnight November 30th. Sign up on the website linked here to participate, and begin writing on the 1st of November and complete the 50,000 word writing to be included on the list of official winners.

Also check their webpage for other writing events, such as Script Frenzy in April, for which contestants work to write a script or screenplay during the month of April, as well as many other events..

Three-Minute Fiction

"At NPR, we love to hear, and tell, your real-life stories every day. Now, we want to hear your fiction as well.

This summer, we're beginning a contest called "Three-Minute Fiction." The premise is simple: Listeners send in original short stories that can be read in three minutes or less -- that's usually about 500-600 words long.

James Wood, literary critic for The New Yorker and author of the book How Fiction Works, will serve as NPR's "Three-Minute Fiction" guide. Wood will appear on-air throughout the summer to read his favorite submissions, and we'll also post them here on NPR.org.

Wood tells NPR's Guy Raz that writing a 500-word story "strikes at the very heart of the short story as a project, which is to get something going rapidly." Writing three-minute fiction is good practice. Think, he says, of the masters of the short story, like Anton Chekhov, who began his career writing comic squibs for newspapers."