Writers don’t just write for themselves, we write to be read, and with that we leave a legacy. in this episode I tell the story of two writers who left an impact on me, and invite you to think about your legacy
LINKS:
The 3-Day Challenge – https://storyaday.org/3dc
I, WRITER Waitlist – https://stada.me/iwriter
Music credits: Alan McPike, https://standardstrax.com/
Video credit: (Tony Conaway) Gary Zenker, Main Line Writers’ Group (full video https://youtu.be/1R0rqla54hk)
My personal theme for my StoryADay Challenge stories this year was ‘love’. It didn’t always work out, but let’s give it another shot today…
Write A Love Story
There are many types of love, and it manifests in as many ways as there are humans in the world (and imagined humans in our stories).
You can write a romance if you must, but I’m going to encourage you to write a story that shows us an act of love more unexpected than that.
It might be:
Remember to show us what’s happening in your story. Paint me a picture. Make me laugh, make me cry, make me feeeeeel the lurrrve.
Julie Duffy is a hopeless romantic in all senses of the world. A cock-eyed optimist, and a writer who loves stories that paint the world we want, not just the one we have. Invite her onto your podcast to talk about how stories change hearts and save the world.
This week I bring you three stories from the writing world that bust the myth of the lone genius writer
Episode 252 – This week I bring you three stories from the writing world that bust the myth of the lone genius writer (now, doesn’t that make you feel better).
LINKS
Sign up for the free Your Writing Life Masterclass now: Join the free Your Writing Life class from StoryADay
Orget started on a mini challenge with the StoryADay 3-Day Challenge
Are you excited (nervous?) about StoryADay May? I have an invitation that might help settle you into your writing chair.
I know it’s last minute, but if you’re around, I’d like to invite you to join me live on Saturday, April 30 for some writing and Q&A
When: 9:30-11 AM (Eastern US)
Where: Zoom (link will be emailed an hour before the meeting)
Over the next month I’m going to be sending you lots of prompts, to help develop your writing practice.
But for any of that to matter, you have to really believe that you can be a writer and can fit it into your life.
I’d like to invite you to start that process tomorrow morning.
If you can, I’d love for you to join me on Zoom for a Q&A session, and stay for a writing sprint, where you’ll have a chance to stretch your writing muscles, and get warmed up before May starts.
You can work on your Creative Challenge Workbook or your Story Prompts, even your Short Story Framework brainstorming, or you can read some inspiring short stories or work on your first, warm-up story.
Q&A will start at 9:30 AM (Eastern US) CHECK YOUR TIME, and we’ll get down to some quiet writing, in community. (If you’ve never been to a Zoom writing sprint, you’ll be amazed how productive you can be, writing quietly in the presence of others!)
You don’ t have to stay for the whole thing. Come and go as you please.
I’ll send another email tomorrow morning around 8:30 AM with the link.
Until then…here’s a little gift for you. Save this picture, cut it out, stick it to your notebook or your laptop, because you are, an official StoryADay Writer! Congrats!
Leave a comment and let me know if you’ll be there
Write a story just for you
When I was working for the first company to help authors publish using digital print on-demand tech, I talked to a LOT of authors,
Publishing is a business, and it’s hard to get picked, and it’s hard to stay lucky.
And if you want to ‘be published’ traditionally, you must convince someone that there is a large enough audience waiting for it.
But what if that’s not what you’re writing? Should you just stop?
Yesterday morning, my iPad and iPencil kept telling me they needed recharged (yes, normally I write on paper, but I was working with electronics for…reasons).
I charged the iPad for a while, then, impatient, pulled the cord and moved around with it.
It worked for a while then complained it needed charged.
The same thing happened with the iPencil.
In my impatience to get things done I was trying short-term, stop-gap fixes.
Finally, I realized my devices were trying to tell me something I often ignore when my body tells me the same thing:
Continue reading “Healing – A Short Story”This collection is a great example of what modern speculative fiction can be: fascinating, compelling, peopled by sympathetic (and not-so sympathetic) characters; surprising and familiar, inspiring, filled with mystery and a sense of discovery for the reader…and I love it when stories are connected, so I enjoyed piecing together the connections between some of the stories in the collection.
Continue reading “[Reading Room] Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland”Do you believe that you have a right to write? Not that people in general have a general right to be creative. Do you believe that you, specifically, have a right to write? Even if it takes time away from your partner, even if it takes time away from your kid, even if, even if, even if…
Do you believe you have a right to write? Do you believe your voice is important? Do you believe your voice matters?
Mindset is I’m coming to believe more than half the battle when it comes to writing. Everything else? We can, we can learn as we need it. I think getting that in place is huge.
If you need a place that’s snug and safe, to work on your writing practice, consider joining us in the I, WRITER Course. Find out more.
Some writers become discouraged by the Morning Pages practice: It can feel like running on a treadmill to nowhere, never sure if you’re making progress.So how do you know if you’re ‘doing Morning Pages correctly’?
This morning when I had a realization that might convince you to try (or enjoy) Morning pages, yourself.
Do you write Morning Pages?
Julia Cameron popularized this free-writing practice in her book The Artist’s Way and many writers swear by it.
The idea is that you write 3 pages of no-obligation, possibly-stream-of-consciousness ‘stuff’ every morning, to warm up.
But some writers become discouraged after doing Morning Pages for a while. It can feel like you’re running on a treadmill to nowhere, never sure if you’re making progress. So how do you know if you’re ‘doing Morning Pages correctly?
I’m sporadic with the ‘morning’ part of Morning Pages, but I do tend to journal most days and/or free-write before I try to write anything ‘proper’.
That’s what I was doing this morning when I came to a realization that I thought you might enjoy sharing. it might even convince you to try Morning pages, yourself.
I am at my desk and facing the classic writers’ dilemma: there is so much I could work on. I can feel the clock ticking away the minutes I have carved out for writing and the first stirrings of panic bubble low in my chest.
I want to write. I don’t want to waste this precious moment but the task seems so huge—and it is! I either find my way back into a dormant story or begin building a whole new world full of decisions about the world (is there gravity? Are we even on earth? Which Earth? When? Where?) and people with full, complex histories before we meet them on the page. And then, how do I make something interesting happen, and keep happening?
The whole thing weighs on me like heavy cloth and I begin to feel the gravitational pull of busywork, the need for the affirmation of a thumbs up or little red heart on social media (It’ll just take a moment to check and I might get an idea for a story!) or perhaps it’s time I learned to use Scrivener properly—whatever that means. (I’m sure I bought a whole course on that.Surely when I have mastered a new tool, THEN it’ll be easier to write…)
Luckily for me, I have been pursuing my writing goals with a will for over a decade now and I know, beyond a doubt, that my only hope of doing anything like ‘good writing’ rests in one practice:
Continue reading “The Value of Morning Pages”I’m guest posting at Writer Unboxed today and it’s all about how to make writing Feel more Fun. Check it out and join in the discussion
I read a lot of blogs and articles, researching the best ideas from creative folks; gems that I can share with my beloved writers.
This holiday season, I’ve definitely seen a theme emerge in posts from writers, coaches, artists, and teachers from all over the English-speaking world:
Acceptance.
And I’m excited about it.
Continue reading “You Can Do It!”I’m chatting about writing, prompts and what it takes to build a writing habit on this weeks’s Pencils&Lipstick #podcast
After a challenge like StoryADay (or a lifetime of writing) you may be asking, “How can I revise my writing so I can get published, without becoming distracted, discouraged or overwhelmed?”
I have a system for figuring out that very thing, that will help you identify and work on the stories that will keep you making consistent progress towards your writing goals.
Part 1 of this process is to assess the material you have, to see what you should work on, first. That’s what this article is about. Part 2 is about identifying what’s working and what needs to be improved in your writing. Part 3 is about strategies and techniques for making those improvements as you revise your writing.
Listen to the accompanying podcast episode
It can be hard to see what’s working and what’s not in your own writing when you’ve stared at it for so long…and that’s when you need to get it in front of fresh eyeballs.
Do you freeze at the thought of revision or feedback, because you think it’s all about seeing how badly you screwed up your story?
Don’t panic!
It’s as important to identify what’s working in your story as what isn’t, to ensure you don’t revise away what made it special.
Continue reading “Getting Great Feedback – A Process”After a challenge like StoryADay (or a lifetime of writing) you may be asking, “How can I revise my writing so I can get published, without becoming distracted, discouraged or overwhelmed?”
For more, listen to episode 226 of the StoryADay podcast
I have a system for figuring out that very thing, that will help you identify and work on the stories that will keep you making consistent progress towards your writing goals.
Part 1 of this process is to assess the material you have, to see what you should work on, first. That’s what this article is about. Part 2 is about identifying what’s working and what needs to be improved in your writing. Part 3 is about strategies and techniques for making those improvements as you revise your writing.
The first thing to do is read through all the stories you think you might want to work on. As you do so, pay attention to your gut and ask yourself a few questions about each story:
Continue reading “Revise Your Writing – A Process”Write a story about someone who has just completed a huge challenge. What have they learned? What did they sacrifice? Was it worth it?
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Julie Duffy has hosted 12 StoryADay Mays and almost as many StoryADay Septembers. That’s quite a lot.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Write a story in three sections, each section recounting the same event from a different character’s point of view
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Julie Duffy is the author of several guides for writers, available on Kindle. She is also an occasional columnist for WriterUnboxed.com
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
“Loretta’s face was hidden by the wide brimmed hat boldly covered in ribbons and one rose. Rising slowly from the fourth pew, she raised her chin towards the minister and declared, “I object.”
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Leslie Stack is a writer, musician, camper, and teacher who loves being on the water or in a museum. You can usually find her doing research behind dark glasses on a park bench. She lives in a house with her husband where the books are plotting a takeover.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Write a story for children. Prompt is “The Golden Rule,” treat others are you wish to be treated.
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Miriam is a best-selling children’s author who loves to empower children to believe in themselves. She does this through her own books and by helping other authors write and publish their books.
Learn the formula Miriam uses for outlining every single one of her award-winning books:
The Children’s Book Blueprint [free training & PDF]
www.miriamlaundry.com/blueprint
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Like the list story, this prompt encourages you to break the narrative rules. Let the story unfold through a series of updates, memos, social media posts, a technical manual, or some other document that creates gaps the reader must fill in.
Remember that each memo will be written in real time, reporting on an event, before the character experiences the next ‘episode’ and writes about it.
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Julie Duffy’s Gallup Strengths finders results accuse her of sometimes making logical leaps that other people find it hard to follow…
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Someone finds two dates listed on a piece of paper. The dates are in their own handwriting, but they do not know what the dates mean. They have to find out what the dates signify.
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Anita G. Gorman grew up in Queens and now lives in northeast Ohio. Since 2014 she has had 85 short stories and 20 essays accepted for publication. Her one-act play, Astrid: or, My Swedish Mama, produced at Youngstown Ohio’s Hopewell Theatre in March 2018, starred Anita and her daughter Ingrid.
Anita’s website is anitaggorman.com
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
I love concept albums, albums in which a singular story is told throughout the tracks. Some are silly, some are deep, but all of them are fascinating. Write the story that comes to you out of this lyric from Eagles’ Desperado album:
“The towns lay out across the dusty plains like graveyards filled with tombstones waiting for the names.”
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Fleet is a queer trans author usually found hanging out around the DC fandom waiting to be picked to write comics. Zie also does original work, some of which zie posts on Archive of Our Own (AO3). When not writing, zie can be found reading, thinking about writing, or slipping slowly into madness in Southern California.
Original work can be found here:
https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetSparrow/works?fandom_id=2692
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Two options today: write a story in the form of a list, OR use this list of words in your story: gallery, contemplated, identity, point, behind, tastes, followed, forty, like, generations.
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Julie Duffy loves to make lists.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
The banging on the cabin’s door is incessant. Your character throws the soufflé into the oven and rushes to open the door. No one is there, but on the floor, they see three antique brass keys and a Tarot card (JUSTICE, MAIDEN OF CUPS, or any other card). Write what happens next.
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Soleah K. Sadge is a contemporary fantasy author. She enjoys traveling to places tied to legends and folklore that she can use in her stories.
She resides in the United States where she reads, writes, knits, and teaches. Her work includes flash fiction and short stories.
For more information, visit Soleah’s website at https://soleahkennasadge.com
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Write about the boy you see on either side of the reflection.
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
C.McKane writes flash fiction, enjoys Italian poetry, and blogs about herbalism and aging. You can find her at @cmckane on Twitter or at https://cmckane.com.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Food can trigger visceral memories and strong emotions. Think of your favorite thing to eat and also your least favorite. Today, write a story inspired by food. Maybe your character is at a grocery store, or maybe they’re cooking at home with the kids. Maybe they’ve come across a fruit stand on the side of the road. The item you choose can be of central importance to the story or not. Anything goes!
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Windy Lynn Harris is the author of Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays: The Essential Guide to Getting Your Work Published (Writer’s Digest Books). She’s a prolific writer, a trusted mentor, and a frequent speaker at literary events. Her long list of short stories and personal essays have been published in literary, trade, and women’s magazines across the U.S. and Canada in places like The Literary Review, The Sunlight Press, and Literary Mama, among many other journals.
P. S. A little bird tells me it’s Windy’s birthday today, so feel free to celebrate in the comments! – Julie
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Buy Now
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Venture into an unfamiliar thrift shop or antiques market and find an object you’ve never seen before. Even better–one whose function you can only guess! Then, tell a story in which that object plays a key role. Perhaps you can explain how it arrived there; perhaps it’s a lost heirloom or the key to unimaginable power. Or perhaps the object itself isn’t as important as how it brings two strangers together–or sunders a seemingly impenetrable bond.
Go deeper with enhanced content, videos, & training from StoryADay’s Julie Duffy
Michele E. Reisinger’s short fiction has been featured online and in print, most recently in editions of Stories That Need to be Told, Sunspot Literary Journal, and Dreamers Creative Writing.
She studied English and Political Science at the Pennsylvania State University and received an MA in English Literature from the University of Delaware. She teaches senior and AP English at a New Jersey high school and lives near Philadelphia with her family. You can find her online at mereisinger.com.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
There is a llama sitting on the seat beside you, drinking coffee. No one else finds this odd. He turns to you, about to speak.
Rin Chupeco has written obscure manuals for complicated computer programs, talked people out of their money at event shows, and done many other terrible things. They now write about ghosts and fantastic worlds but are still sometimes mistaken for a revenant. They are the author of The Girl from the Well, its sequel, The Suffering, and the Bone Witch trilogy. Find them at www.rinchupeco.com.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Here’s a prompt from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem Travel:
. . . there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.
Create a character who cannot wait to leave their town. Why do they want to leave? What or whom will they leave behind? Will the decision to start anew prove to be a good one?
Robin Stein writes fiction and memoir in Newton, MA. Her inspiration comes from music, family and nature. For information on her children’s book, My Two Cities, and her workshops, please visit robinsteincreative.com.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
It’s a sign!
This prompt idea came from an episode of Valley 101, a podcast about Arizona This episode was about who writes their funny highway signs, the history of them and what sort of messages they deliver. The idea of constraints appealed to me, often it drives creativity in unexpected directions.
Arizona’s highway sign messages are three lines long, with up to 18 characters per line. You can have commas, spaces, apostrophes, and dashes, which all count toward the 18 character limit. Now 18×3 characters isn’t long to tell a story, but it is long enough to deliver an important message. So the prompt is this:
Your character is in the middle of doing something mundane when they see a message that causes them to change course. The message could be something they see on a highway sign, a sign on the window of a store, a dashboard displayed in an office, or even a text message, but the limit is 18×3 characters and the message causes the character to change what they were doing/going to do.
Janine Griffin writes fiction and non-fiction, and things that fall in between.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
At the midpoint of May, I want you to write a story where your character is half way between one thing and another — at a transition. This can be literal, emotional, or metaphorical.
Julie Duffy is a writer and the founder and host of StoryADay. She sounds Scottish to her American friends, and American to her Scottish friends. Everyone else assumes she’s Canadian, which is no bad thing…follow her on Twitter and Instagram @storyadaymay
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Your character is doing something innocuous and habitual like washing dishes or driving in a car or picking up dry cleaning or taking a walk in the neighborhood when a ghost/spirit appears to them. Whether it is human, animal, or other, what is it saying and why has it appeared to the character at this moment?
(This is good for dredging up something from the character’s subconscious and also for throwing your character off track with something unexpected.)
CAROLINE KIM was born in Busan, South Korea but moved to America at an early age. She has lived on the East Coast, Midwest, and Texas but now makes her home in Northern California with her family.
Her poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in TriQuarterly, The Rumpus, Pleiades, Porter House Review, MANOA, The Michigan Quarterly Review, Spinning Jenny, Meridian, Faultline, Pidgeonholes, Cosmonaut’s Avenue, Ms. Aligned 3, and elsewhere. Her collection of short stories, The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories, won the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection.
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
Write a story from the perspective of a character that is not a human or other animal.
The character could be something from nature, like a rock or a puddle or a tree, or it could be something built (for example, a lamp or a shoe or a fountain pen).
To consider:
How does your character think? And what do they think about it?
What is most important to them?
What happens to them and how are they able, or not able, to react?
How do they feel about this?
Monique Cuillerier is a science fiction writer living in Ottawa. When not writing, she likes to run, knit, garden, and get angry on Twitter (@MoniqueAC). Her most recent story was published by Diabolical Plots this month. Past work can be found at NotWhereILive.ca
This year’s StoryADay May official bookseller is Reads & Company, a privately-owned indie bookseller in Pennsylvania. Any purchase from the site this month supports Reads & Co.
Leave a comment and let us know how you used the prompt, and how you’re celebrating!
A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts July 28, 2023
![[Reading Room] Cosmogramma by Courttia Newland](https://storyaday.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Reading-Room-Newland-1200x675.png)
