This February, Say It With PowerPoint

Why you should host a .ppt party with your friends, family, colleagues, and/or minor-league nemeses.

Feb 16, 2025

Welcome back to Keep Writing, where we continue to slog forward into the abyss despite the horrors we find there. Join me in rubbing our temples for the 800th time today and help yourself to the heaping buffet of ibuprofen and Pepto-Bismol. If you’re new here to Keep Writing, welcome: Grab a pair of lumpily knitted mittens and wander through the snowy hedge maze of our archives.

Hey, you. What are you doing two weeks from now?

If you answered “nothing,” “staring listlessly out the window,” or “half-heartedly filling out tax forms despite not knowing if we’ll have a functioning government by April”—and I mean, same—may I make an alternative suggestion?

I think you should throw a PowerPoint party with your friends.

Yes, PowerPoint, as in the classic slideshow software best known for boring captive employees in a board room and introducing the world to bouncing animated WordArt. Sure, she’s been holding down the fort as the sexiest offering in Microsoft Office since the late 1980s, but Our Lady of the Perpetual Star Wipes is really having a moment in the 2020s.

And what a start to the decade she had. Truly, who else but Zoom and Among Us was more there for us in the early pandemic days? The soothing free templates of Microsoft PowerPoint shuttled us from one virtual event to the next, offering comfort and connection and visual aids for every niche webinar, virtual book launch, or live-streamed baby shower.

Soon the people, buoyed by the easy-breezy utility of this classic software—as well as the availability of free knock-off versions via Google Slides or Canva—took the power of the slide deck into their own living rooms. They began hosting PowerPoint parties, dazzling their friends with impassioned presentations on subjects like “Stranger Things Characters as Pasta Shapes” or “The World’s Most Beautiful Horses” (both real topics I have had the pleasure of listening to at .ppt parties).

Even Hollywood took notice, producing the very funny Smartypants on Dropout, in which comedians take the stage to perform passionate presentations on topics like “No Thank You, ‘The Ocean’” and “God’s Mistake: How I Would Make Our Bodies Better.”

Now, you might be saying, Nicki, I am not new to the internet. PowerPoint parties have been around for years. Why are you advocating for them now?

Well, Paula—can I call you Paula?—that’s a very good question, and part of the God’s honest truth is that I’ve been meaning to write about them for at least a year now and kept getting distracted with other topics. And you know what, Paula? That’s on me.

But I do think this format offers writers a wealth of benefits, especially if you’d like to ultimately pitch an article or otherwise write about the subject you choose:

It can give us an outlet for all those random research tangents we go down for our projects. (Had to cut a lengthy tangent on the politics of mid-century American ballet from Chapter 15? Now you know what to do with it!)
It asks us to imagine our topic in a visual/multimedia format, something we text-focused writers often struggle with (and one that’s especially helpful when pitching outlets that rely heavily on visuals, such as websites or magazines).
It makes us consider how we package our topic for an audience’s consumption, something editors always love to see. (“The History of Stove-Top Stuffing” is not as interesting as “‘Instead of Potatoes:’ The Infuriatingly Sexist Story of How Stove-Top Stuffing Was Invented, Sold, and Marketed”—a real presentation I once gave.)
It tests our own interest in the subject. If we struggle to make it through 15 slides without losing interest, chances are we’d quickly lose interest in a longer piece on the subject. Alternatively, if we struggle to distill a topic down into a 15-minute presentation, we know we’ll need to refine the subject into a smaller piece when converting it into an article pitch (or seek a longer format for it).
It allows us to get feedback on our subject in real time. (End up with a lot of audience questions on one particular aspect? Say more about that! See fidgeting or restless eyes when you discuss another aspect? Say less about that!)
It’s refreshingly interactive in a way that the page does not allow. You can ask questions! Poll the crowd! Pass out a handout! Pause for charades! Go wild and roll around in the bliss of having an audience respond to you in real time.

So, Paula, you can see there are six very good reasons for writers to indulge in a little slideshow salon on a regular basis. But the real reason I’m advocating for them now is simpler: Because I think there is comfort to be found in brief and startling certainty in an uncertain world.

For 10 glorious minutes, we forget the headlines as we listen to Evangeline tell us why Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch is the very best film in the Air Bud franchise. We watch Samwise deliver a wildly passionate and fervent list of all the second-tier Muppets, ranked. We sit, riveted, as Gwennie tells us seven outrageous things we didn’t know about the history of Jell-O.

We come together. We listen, we laugh. We ask smart, savvy questions. We learn more about our friends and family. We end the evening feeling lighter, brighter, and more curious about the world around us. And then we immediately begin the hunt for our next topic.

All fine reasons enough to host a PowerPoint party, in this writer’s humble opinion.

Until next month—

Keep writing,

Nicki

March 2025 Calls for Submissions

Spotlight Pick

Flash Point Science Fiction: Speculative flash fiction

If you’ve got a speculative story from 100 to 1,000 words, Flash Point Science Fiction wants to read it. Editors welcome “science fiction, fantasy, slipstream, and everything in between, so long as it’s short.” Payment is $.02/word. No submission fees

Deadline: March 31

Superpresent: “Movement” submissions

For its Spring 2025 issue, the quarterly magazine Superpresent seeks submissions that have to do with its chosen theme of “Movement.” Send up to three poems (one per page) or 500-2,000 words of prose (essays or short stories). No submission fees.

Deadline: March 1

Teach. Write.: Submissions dedicated to those impacted by Hurricane Helene

The next issue of Teach. Write.: A Literary Journal for Writing Teachers will be “dedicated to those in western North Carolina impacted by Hurricane Helene.” As a result, “the editor is particularly interested in stories, poems, and essays that express the experience, resilience, and fortitude of the Appalachian people during this difficult time. In fact, any writing that speaks to overcoming adversity would be welcome.” Submissions do not have to focus on teaching or learning, and student writing is also welcome, but submitters must include a 30- to 75-word third-person bio “explaining your experience as a writing teacher OR explaining the impact a writing instructor has had on you.” Send up to three poems (up to 100 lines each) or one essay (up to 2,000 words) or story (up to 5,000 words). Payment is $15 for short stories or essays and $10 for all other genres.

Deadline: March 1

Thema: “The Lost Sock” stories and poems

Thema, a theme-centric journal, is now accepting submissions for its first themed call of the year. Mail stories and poems relating to “The Lost Sock” to editors by March 1 to be considered for the journal’s next issue. (Yes, mail: Emailed submissions are only accepted from writers outside the U.S.) Contributors are paid $25 for short stories and $10 for poems and short-short pieces (fewer than 1,000 words).

Deadline: March 1

About Place Journal: Careful/Care-full Collaboration submissions

About Place Journal, a publication by the Black Earth Institute, is seeking submissions for their Spring 2025 issue on the theme of “Careful/Care-full Collaboration.” Editors explain: “About Place Journal invites submissions that contemplate what it means to collaborate with others through practices and processes that are careful and care-full, that is collaborations that are cautious at various stages and shaped by an ethics of care between the artists, for their communities, and throughout the process of co-creating.” Send up to three poems (50 lines max for each) or up to 4,000 words of prose.

Deadline: March 10

National Baseball Poetry Festival: Poems about baseball or softball

And now for something completely different: Every May in Worcester, MA, fans of verse and baseball gather for the National Baseball Poetry Festival. Poets from anywhere in the world are invited to submit baseball- or softball-themed poems to the Festival’s poetry contest. Winners will be published on BaseballBard.com and will receive a t-shirt, tickets to the Friday night festival baseball game, and recognition at the festival. Submit only one poem. A separate contest welcomes student submissions from poets in grades four through 12. Submissions to both contests are free.

Deadline: March 28 at noon ET

Texas Review Press: The Clay Reynolds Novella Prize (and the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize)

Since 2001, this prize has honored one novella manuscript each year with a $1,000 advance, a publishing contract, and ten copies of the finished book. The judge for this year’s prize is Fatimah Asghar. Send manuscripts between 20,000 to 50,000 words. Submission fee: $20. (Note for poets: TRP also hosts a nearly identical $1,000 prize for poetry chapbooks under 40 pages. The poetry prize judge is KB Brookins and the deadline and submission fees are the same.)