30 Days, 30 Essay Prompts: A Month of Generating Inspiration and Ideas for Memoir

Aug 12, 2024

This class is now sold out. To be alerted when the next session of this class starts, please email academy@narratively.com.

We’ve all been there. You know you have revealing and relatable stories to share, but you rarely find the time in your busy schedule to write — and when you do, you catch yourself staring at that dastardly blinking cursor on the white screen and just can’t find a way to start. This October is the time to break those habits, get moving on your writing and never look back. Led by Narratively Chief Submissions Reader Amy Barnes, this fun and inspiring course is designed to help you break through writer’s block and figure out how to put your unique life experiences into words. Every day, Amy will post a short personal essay to read, paired with a prompt to inspire your own writing. You’ll set aside a few minutes of your day to respond to that prompt and share an approximately 500-word piece of writing with a supportive and encouraging community of writers. This is not an overly time-consuming class. The idea is to set aside half-an-hour each day to focus on your writing, and to make sure you write something. Much of what we produce will be rough drafts, ideas that don’t pan out, or just plain bad, and that’s OK! You are not required to participate every single day; the goal is to challenge yourself to write as much as you can. (Although we just may have a special prize for any writers who participate all 30 days!)

During the course, you’ll have the option to pick three 500-word pieces that you’d like the instructor to review and provide feedback on, along with ideas on potential publications for submission. By the end of the month you’ll have multiple solid essay ideas, a few early drafts and a solid plan of where to go from there. And you’ll vastly expand your knowledge of the personal essay marketplace via the daily readings, which will be chosen from 30 different publications that are all open to personal essay submissions.

This class is right for you if …

You’ve written and published personal essays before and you need a fun kickstart to get back in the swing of things.
You have interesting life experiences that you want to share in essays but you’re not sure how to get started.
You want directed readings and inspiring prompts to get out of writer’s block and get moving on your memoir.

By the end of this class you’ll be ready to…

Finish and submit multiple personal essays this year, and/or move forward on your full-length memoir.

This is a 30-day prompt-based class, running from October 1 to October 30. Students can work at their own pace, at a time of their choosing, and are not required to write every day. All Narratively Academy classes are conducted online and accessible to students anywhere in the world.

Instructor Bio: A Narratively editorial team member for the past six years, Amy Barnes stepped into the new role of chief submission reader in 2024. Her third collection of fiction and essays, Child Craft, was published by Belle Point Press in September 2023. She has read over 2,000 essay submissions for Narratively, along with many other nonfiction and memoir stories as a reader and editor for sites and presses including Fractured Lit, Craft, The Porch TN, The MacGuffin, Orison Books, Ruby and Gone Lawn. She has taught online courses for over 20 years for JER Group. Her own essays and creative nonfiction have appeared in many publications including McSweeney’s, JMWW Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, Southern Living, Allrecipes, Motherly, Romper, Reckon Review, PS, Simplemost, Forbes, Fodor’s, The Lonely Crowd and many others. She’s been nominated for a wide range of writing awards including Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize, and was included in Best Small Fiction 2022 and longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions from 2021 through 2024.

Registration Details: Seats in this class are limited and available on a first-come, first-serve basis. All purchases are final and nonrefundable. After signing up, you’ll receive an email receipt confirming your purchase. Prior to the start of your class you’ll receive an invitation to access the virtual classroom and view all class materials.

Questions? Email us at academy@narratively.com.

More: Check out all of our Narratively Academy online writing classes here.