In which I tell you the rules for StoryADay May 2024
ntrigued by the StoryADay Challenge but intimidated? Don’t be! In this episode I explain all the rules including the most important rule: Make Your Own Rules!
Do you ever start a story only to get stuck, and find yourself either abandoning it or wondering if it’s really a story at all? First of all: welcome. This means you are a writer. This frustrating phenomenon strikes us all, especially when we are just starting out or just starting to come back to our writing seriously. This doesn’t mean you “aren’t meant to be a writer”. It just means there are some strategies you haven’t discovered–or fully-integrated–yet. This week I have a technique for…
Do you ever start a story only to get stuck, and find yourself either abandoning it or wondering if it’s really a story at all?
First of all: welcome. This means you are a writer.
This frustrating phenomenon strikes us all, especially when we are just starting out or just starting to come back to our writing seriously.
This doesn’t mean you “aren’t meant to be a writer”. It just means there are some strategies you haven’t discovered–or fully-integrated–yet.
This week I have a technique for you, that will help you turn fragments, vignettes, and “I’m not really sure what this is”-se into actual stories.
Try out the technique, using the writing prompt I provide, to feel te difference it makes to your Story Sparks.
Then leave a comment to share what you learned. I can’t wait to hear from you!
Keep writing,
Julie
P. S. If you want more of the nitty-gritty, ‘how to craft a story’ techniques like this, consider taking the 3-Day Challenge, which guides you through the art of writing great openings, middles, and ends, all in easy-to-consume lessons.
“In a digital world saturated with technicolor brilliance and filtered, unobtainable beauty, modern humans seem unmoored and at sea. We crave stories to tell us who we are.” – Min Jin Lee, Best American Short Stories 2023
When I first logged on to the Internet in 1993, I was thrilled by the possibilities of connection.
When, some time later, I clicked on my first hyperlink (on a page that gloried under the catchy address of something like “74.6.143.25”) I distinctly remember thinking,
“This is exactly how I want life to operate,”
and, at the same time,
“I am in sooooo much trouble.”
Picture me, hunched in front of a mushroom-colored 14-inch monitor, clicking and reading, and clicking and reading, and leaping down the rabbit hole
We Were Warned
That first hyperlink was the start of something that changed the world and I was there for it.
But it turns out I was Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s hat, summoning a wave I couldn’t control.
I was the old woman with the magic porridge pot.
I was King Midas.
We all were.
(It’s 1999, and the distractions have only got shinier! Like my cheeks!)
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice thought he wanted power. What he really needed was control.
The old woman with the magic porridge pot thought she wanted an endless supply of food. What she needed was ‘enough’.
We thought we wanted endless facts, exposure to more people, more ideas. What we need is the wisdom that comes from enough knowledge.
The stories tried to warn us.
Writers Have A Head Start
Yes, we get distracted by the glossy online world sometimes, but writers really do have a huge advantage over other mortals.
We go out of our way to make time to create worlds and characters who wrestle with big human questions:
What if I break the rules, just this once?
What if I had everything I ever lacked?
What if they won’t love me?
What’s beyond the fence at the end of the garden?
Believe it or not, most people are rushing through their days NOT staring into space and thinking about these things.
But when they do have time to unwind, they all want to do it with stories: in books, on screens, in song.
Because stories — not facts, not reels, not personality quizzes — tell us who we are.
Your Turn
Make some time for your writing in the next three days.
“You are a writer. Stories are what make us human. Stories keep us safe. Stories show us how to be human. Stories are the way we learn. No matter how ‘big’ or ‘small’ your stories and your subject matter, your stories matter.”
What’s your biggest distraction from your writing? How did you last conquer it. Leave a comment!
In this on-the-road episode, I come to you fresh from a conference, full of new energy and ideas, and I encourage you to find ways to shake up YOUR practice.
