With Gratitude: Fifteen Prompts to Get Us Through the Rest of (Another) Tired, Old Year

Dec 17, 2025

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” —T.S. Eliot

Hey friends, thank you so much for your readership and support for the Art of Flash Fiction this past year. As of this writing, there are 10,746 of you! I hope you enjoy this month’s free all-subscriber post. Below, I’ve provided fifteen writing prompts, one for every day until the end of this tired old year. If you want/need fifteen additional prompts, go ahead and check out last year’s as well:

With Gratitude: 15 Prompts to get us through the rest of this tired old year

Kathy Fish

December 17, 2024

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I know this is a hugely busy time for all of us! I mean for you to spend ONLY fifteen minutes a day on these (and if you have more time on your hands, so much the better!) The idea is to wake up on January 1st with fifteen fresh drafts or “glimmers” at the very least. Spend January polishing and revising and sending them out. So, let’s get started!

DAY ONE: DECEMBER 17TH

“An unknown group and a snowman, perhaps modelled on Baron Hans von Essen, Sweden,” 1920. (Public domain). I don’t know who Baron Hans von Essen is, but I feel like snowman making has gotten a tad more sophisticated since 1920. But good on this unsmiling group for trying. Anyway! Write a flash about a grumpy group of individuals who band together to create…a monstrosity. (There might be a metaphor in there somewhere.) Maybe play with the first person plural “we” point of view.

DAY TWO: DECEMBER 18TH

Write about an unwanted gift that causes no end of trouble for its recipient. Keep escalating to funny or tragic effect.

DAY THREE: DECEMBER 19TH

We’ve done lots with anaphora, but today, let’s play with epistrophe (repetition of a word or phrase at the end of successive sentences or clauses.) Make it tiny: 75-100 words. Play with rhythm, cadence, and sound. You may end up with a prose poem.

DAY FOUR: DECEMBER 20TH

From Bernadette Mayer’s excellent list of writing experiments:

Using phrases relating to one subject or idea, write about another,
pushing metaphor and simile as far as you can. For example, use science
terms to write about childhood or philosophic language to describe a shirt.

DAY FIVE: DECEMBER 21ST

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

Write a strange encounter with yourself or another version of yourself. This could be funny or tender or emotionally powerful. Read this great Nancy Stohlman story as an example:

My Past Life Self Won’t Stop Following Me Around the Museum
She follows me from room to room. Every time I stop to look at a piece, she looks at it too.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh what?
Oh, nothing.
Look, don’t you have anywhere else to be?
Not really, she says. Where’s the portrait room?
Wrong museum.
I’ve had my portrait painted, she says. Once I posed in the nude.
I stopped. You?
Oh yes, she says. It takes a lot of concentration to stay that still for such a long time. I doubt you could do it.
You’re starting to annoy me.
Yes, that’s sort of the point, she says, smoothing her hair.

DAY SIX: DECEMBER 22ND

Employ the Interrogative Mood in a piece made up of ALL questions. Use the words: What, When, Where, Who, and How. What story can you tell in this form? What can we learn of the questioner? How might you convey subtext? Can you get very specific or very weird?

Here are the first few questions of Padgett Powell’s novel, The Interrogative Mood:

Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make you more nervous or less nervous than a named horse? In your view do children smell good? If before you now, would you eat animal crackers? Could you lie down and take a rest on a sidewalk?

DAY SEVEN: DECEMBER 23RD

Write a fairy tale based on the image above, taken from Tom Seidmann-Freud’s Book of Hare Stories (1924) Public Domain. Include three totally made up words.

DAY EIGHT: DECEMBER 24TH

Describe a dream, but don’t identify it as such. In this story, your teeth really did fall out. You really did go school in your underwear. You’ve discovered an auditorium inside your house. And so forth. My story, “The Gateway,” is based off a photo prompt and a dream of not being able to locate a hotel room.

DAY NINE: DECEMBER 25TH

I mean, Merry Christmas, I guess? Write a ghost story based on this weird ass Victorian Christmas card.

DAY TEN: DECEMBER 26TH

Here’s a writing prompt from none other than Joyce Carol Oates, from the marvelous craft book, Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer:

“As minutely as possible, you will describe a significant place, conveying by means of language the emotion generated by this place in your imagination.”

DAY ELEVEN: DECEMBER 27TH

Play with the idea of what came after…After the wedding reception…After the snowstorm…or a long, hard winter…After a death…After a long-distance phone call…Consider the emotion at play without naming it. Let your descriptions convey the feeling.

DAY TWELVE: DECEMBER 28TH

Incorporate at least five of these words from the final paragraph of the James Joyce story, “The Dead.” Bonus challenge to use all ten in fewer than 300 words. I believe in you! Then by all means go read (or reread) “The Dead.”

Obliquely / Treeless / Mutinous / Waves / Buried / Churchyard / Thorns / Falling / Faintly / Dead

DAY THIRTEEN: DECEMBER 29TH

Write a flash in the form of a letter of apology / recrimination / explanation / profession of love. You choose. Convey strong emotion, hesitancy, or dishonesty by employing exposed revision. Use strikeouts, rewrites, erasures. Get creative. Maybe do this on actual paper. Maybe some words have been smudged with a bad eraser. Tear the page. Make a mess. Maybe the writer is struggling for some reason. Maybe that reason is regret.

DAY FOURTEEN: DECEMBER 30TH

Write a story as a series of mathematical story problems. Remember those? Here are some real story problems as an example of the form:

1. Ariel was playing basketball. 1 of her shots went in the hoop. 2 of her shots did not go in the hoop. How many shots were there in total?
2. Adrianna has 10 pieces of gum to share with her friends. There wasn’t enough gum for all her friends, so she went to the store to get 3 more pieces of gum. How many pieces of gum does Adrianna have now?
3. Adrianna has 10 pieces of gum to share with her friends. There wasn’t enough gum for all her friends, so she went to the store and got 70 pieces of strawberry gum and 10 pieces of bubble gum. How many pieces of gum does Adrianna have now?

But find a way to tell an increasingly weird or compelling story via these math problems. Have the questions become increasingly absurd or completely unrelated to math. Why does Adrianna always have to buy the gum?!!

Aaaaaand…DAY FIFTEEN: DECEMBER 31ST

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.” —T.S. Eliot

Okay, flashers, we made it to the end of this old year! Your FINAL prompt for 2025 is to write a piece where a quiet person finally, inevitably, finds her voice. Hand her the microphone! Write her a flash monologue. It’s New Year’s Eve and by god, she has something to say. Let her say it. Click the link below for more thoughts on this: