⏳ Weekly Writing Prompt | December 7: Borrowed Time
A prompt about time, choice, and unexpected possibility. PLUS: Q&A with Chill Subs' Benjamin Davis.
Welcome to the Weekly Writers’ Hour Prompt!
This week’s challenge invites you to write into the possibilities that open when time briefly bends in your favor.
📝 PROMPT
You (or your character) are given one extra hour. What do you do with it? Write in the genre of your choosing.
There is no contest submission window for this prompt. We’ll resume the full contest (prizes, publication, and editorial selection) in mid-January.
A Note from Our Editorial Team
This week, as always, take the prompt in any direction that pulls at you.
Maybe a character wakes to find the world paused, a single unclaimed hour humming just for them. Maybe you slip into memoir and write the hour you wish you could return to—or the one you wish you’d had. Maybe the extra time becomes an opportunity, a temptation, a portal, a mistake.
You don’t need to explain where the hour came from. You don’t even need to use all sixty minutes. What matters is what shifts: a choice, a revelation, a detail that only becomes clear when the usual rules of time fall away.
Congratulations to the winners of Lights, Camera, Action!
We are thrilled to share the contest results for the week of November 9th. Writers were invited to write something that feels cinematic. Special thanks once again to our guest judge, Jordan McGarry.
First Place: The Crossing by Alice Dawson
Second Place: Run, Peanut, Run by Jonathan Josephson
Third Place: The Swarmers by Toni Burns
Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who participated. It’s a pleasure to share these pieces with you.
PS: 🗳️ Vote for Writers’ Hour Magazine
Our friends at Chill Subs are hosting their 3rd Annual Chill Subs Community Favorites Best Lit Mag Awards. Show your love and nominate Writers’ Hour Magazine (type ‘Hour’ to find us) 👉 Vote for Writers’ Hour Magazine. Deadline is today, December 7th.
We’re also hosting a special Q&A with Chill Subs cofounder Benjamin Davis:
🎙️Finding Your Place in the Literary World w/ Chill Subs
🗓️ Date: Monday, December 8, 9am ET (2pm GMT)
📍 Location: Virtual, over Zoom
🎟️ Free & open to all 👉 Register Here
PPS: ✍️ Write with us daily at Writers’ Hour
Come work on this week’s prompt at Writers’ Hour—our daily silent writing sprints—where writers around the world gather together to write. It’s the perfect environment to focus, share space with other writers, and make progress on your contest entry.
If you’re craving more creative community or a steadier writing rhythm, check out our December events, or learn about Membership.
🔒 Paid Subscriber Perk: Editorial Feedback Lottery
This week, three paid subscribers will be chosen at random to receive personalized feedback on up to 500 words written in response to this prompt.
How to enter the feedback lottery: