One prompt a month, taken seriously.
The prompt generator makes practice; the Season makes it a conversation. One featured prompt, a month to write, and every piece sent in gets read the way writing deserves to be read.
The unlocked door
Write a story in which a character returns to a place they know well and finds one small thing changed. The change is never explained. Your story should be complete — a beginning, a turn, and an ending that lands — in no more than 600 words.
- “We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.” — Winston Churchill
- “Home is so sad. It stays as it was left.” — Philip Larkin, ‘Home is so Sad’
Planning notePlan the ending first. The temptation is to explain the change; the discipline is to let the character's reaction do the explaining. One small thing, noticed properly, beats a haunting.
Take this month's prompt and write the piece — the generator's planning habits apply. Up to 600 words, any register the prompt allows.
A parent or guardian sends it in with the consent lines below. Every submission is read properly — that is the point of the exercise.
Every writer receives a short private note on what the piece is doing. Two or three pieces each month receive a full annotated reading, published with the writer's consent.
Why only two or three readings a month
Because an annotated reading takes the time it takes. One practitioner reads everything sent in and annotates what a month genuinely allows — the same finite attention a lesson buys. The private notes are shorter, but they are real readings too: no piece goes unanswered.
Published pieces appear in the Readings — student work, credited to its writer by first name or pseudonym, with the annotation alongside. Nothing about results, scores, or schools: the piece is published because of what the writing does.
Season one stands alone. From season two, each prompt takes up the question the current Open Studio instalment leaves open — so the writing on this site and the writing sent to it stay in conversation.
Writers here are mostly under 18, so submission runs through a parent or guardian, and the consent is explicit — a submission email should carry these four lines (copy them as they are):
Ready when the piece is.
Email the piece — pasted into the email or attached as a document — with the writer’s first name, year level, and the four consent lines above. The subject line is pre-filled; everything arrives directly with me.
Send a piece in →Closes Friday 21 August 2026Write it under exam conditions → the writing roomWant more practice first? The generator →A new prompt lands on the first of each month. Leave an email and it’ll arrive the morning it opens — the prompt, nothing else.