Happy (almost) National Novel Writing Month! NaNoWriMo may have shut down, but we can still write 50,000 words this November (or 30,000 words, or 60 pages—I just take it as a challenge to write every day, so do whatever you have time for). If you’re looking for a structured writing experience, check out Chill Subs’ First Draft November newsletter; they’ll be sending out prompts and providing a space for discussion and accountability throughout November.

Here's a list of all the writing prompts posted on Read as a Writer in August 2025! You can also find these prompts, plus all the prompts ever posted on Read as a Writer, on the writing prompts page. And check out my new page of writing resources here. Character Write a piece where the protagonist is keeping a secret from the reader, the people around them, and, to an extent, themself.

This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org. If you purchase a book through those links, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. Today’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is “Non-Bookish Freebie,” so I chose to make a list of my top ten writing resources.

In The Phoenix Keeper, Aila Macbhairan, the head phoenix keeper at San Tamculo Zoo, has to figure out how to relaunch the zoo’s dormant phoenix breeding program while arguing with the phoenix program’s new PR director, Luciana Reyes, and navigating her relationship with Connor, the diamondback dragon keeper. Two of the craft elements I thought were well done in this book were Aila’s characterization and the descriptions of magical creatures.

This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org. If you purchase a book through those links, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt was “Books With a High Page Count,” which, for purposes of this post, I’m defining as books with more than 500 pages.

This post contains an affiliate link to Bookshop.org. If you purchase a book through that link, I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I loved this book. Socially anxious protagoni…

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's Top Ten Tuesday prompt was "Books Guaranteed to End Your Reading Slump," so here's my list of books that I think are guaranteed to pull you in and inspire you to keep reading, in no particular order. Hope you enjoy!

I'm going to try a new type of post today. While thinking about how reading benefits my writing, I realized I might find it helpful to analyze specific craft elements more closely, especially those that a particular book does well. Thus, in this post, I'm going to be discussing two specific craft elements that Sorcery and Small Magics does well. After the discussion, I'll provide a summary of how I think writers might apply these craft elements to their own work and offer some writing prompts to help you get started.

[Skip to writing prompts] In Our Infinite Fates, Evelyn and Arden are reincarnated every lifetime and kill each other in every one before they turn eighteen. Evelyn does not remember why they need …

Here's a roundup of all the writing prompts posted on Read as a Writer in July! You can also find these prompts, along with all the other ones I've posted, on the "Writing Prompts" page of the blog. In addition, I recently read an article on Authors Publish called "7 Reasons Why You Should Try Using Writing Prompts…

[Skip to writing prompts] This is How You Lose the Time War is an engaging, character-driven novel primarily told through letters between the two protagonists. If you like sapphic enemies-to-lovers…

[Skip to writing prompts] In Sorcery and Small Magics, Leovander Loveage and his longtime rival, Sebastian Grimm, attend the Fount, a school dedicated to training sorcerers to use Grandmagic and the less powerful magic of charms and cantrips. A mishap in one of their classes leads to Leo being cursed to follow Grimm’s commands. But that’s not all: as time passes, the curse worsens, and Leo finds himself in terrible pain if he goes more than a day without seeing Grimm.

[Skip to writing prompts] The Raven Scholar is a masterfully-crafted, detail-packed roller-coaster of a book. It starts off a little slowly, but after the first few pages, I couldn’t stop reading i…

Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast.

[Skip to writing prompts] Wind and Truth, the fifth book in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series, is an exciting, fast-paced (though, like all Stormlight Archive books, very long) fantasy …

Above all, this book is a love letter to teachers, teaching, students, and school. Walden is an amazing teacher. She’s not great with people—is, in fact, incredibly socially awkward and makes no secret of the fact that “I’m afraid I don’t have normal conversations very often” (Walden, The Incandescent, Tesh 173)—but she cares deeply for her students and, if you put her in front of a classroom, teaches a wonderful lesson.