In a realistic sci-fi world, a mystery writer nurtures his robot servant's interest in becoming a writer as well, paying for a series of expensive upgrades such that the robot can understand spelling, grammar, plot, human behavior, and humor. However, when the robot's talent threatens to surpass his own, the egotistical writer demands the robot's mind be restored to its original state.

When a serial writer decides that he can’t take more of his monotonous life, he destroys his copywriter and leaves his domestic prison to protest the rise of the machines.

A writing critic reviews the construction of Charles Chesnutt’s stories and how to write surfiction.

A writer arrives at an eerie residency near a lake where she camped with her Girl Scout troop as a child. The writer revisits a past trauma at the hands of the other Girl Scouts and comes to conclusions about what it is to reside in one's own mind. Along the way, she navigates a mysterious illness, a fellow resident whose identity and words are impossible to remember, and the appearance of a severed rabbit on her doorstep.

An accomplished but ineffectual columnist searches for fulfillment, until a death in the family causes him to question the family he took for granted.

A writer wakes up every day hoping each day would be the day he finally manages to write, though each day he finds new reasons to delay his writing.

A writer receiving feedback from a professor on their drafts is sure that the person on the other end is a man. They wrestle with their own hidden identities until the end of their literary relationship comes with an unexpected revelation.

A catalog of the tools different alien species use to read and write, leading to fundamental questions about what it means to make patterns of knowledge against the noise of the universe.

A dying human author travels to a foreign planet to die, but meets a young girl who he begins to teach the art and beauty of storytelling.

A creative writing teacher sits through a conference with one his favorite students. He takes us on a journey through the characters in the story, and in his life.