Story A Day: 2 Days To Go!

AKA: What Was I Thinking?!

OK, I’m a little nervous. Two days until we begin this journey of writing a story a day.

But it’s a good nervous. It’s an energetic nervous. I’m like a stallion in the gate, ready for the off. Quivering a little.

Already I’m noticing benefits from this Story A Day project:

I’m looking at the world in a different way: looking at everything as a story idea, noticing details, smelling things, wondering how I would describe situations, feelings, people, objects.

I’m connecting with other writers.

I’m blogging about writing and making it a priority.

This might get tough around May 13 or so, but I’m ready. I’ve got my family and friends primed to nag me about my writing, I’ve got a little black book of ideas. I have some backup strategies for days when it’s tough (keep watching this blog and your inbox for those strategies as the month rolls along).

What about you? Are you making preparations? Are you winging it? What do you do when you need to write but get stuck? Are you excited?

Let me know!

An Interview NaBloPoMo Creator, Eden Kennedy

National Blog Posting MonthIn 2006 Eden Kennedy, of fussy.org, inspired by National Novel Writing Month started her own ‘month’: National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). For those of us who can’t possibly hope to carve out the time to writ a novel in a month, NaBloPoMo was a great alternative: commit to posting something every day, and see what happened.

I tried it and was pleasantly surprised to come away with both new friends and an increased sense of creativity, as I viewed my world in terms of potential creative writing opportunities.

Now, NaBloPoMo is a year-round event, with hundreds of people posting daily.

NaBloPoMo was a big inspiration for StoryADay.org, so I emailed Eden to ask her a few questions:

How long has NaBloPoMo been running?

[EDEN] I started it in November of 2006, running it off my own site, fussy.org. It was basically just a blogroll and a list of prizes people kept donating for me to hand out to random people who managed to post every day that month. A lot of people liked it because it was an alternative to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), where you write like 6,000 words a day. I, like many others, failed at my NaNo attempt, so it’s like we started a little underachievers club by doing NaBloPoMo. I moved everything over to nablopomo.com in November 2007 so it could become more of a social network, and thousands of new people signed up, to my surprise. Eventually so many people were asking if I could make more events throughout the year, and not just in November, that I decided to just go monthly.

Do you participate every month?

[EDEN] I only participate in November. It’s the original month, and still the month we get the most traffic for, two or three thousand people. The rest of the year we get maybe 400 or 500 people each month.

What have other writers told you they get out of it?

[EDEN] A real sense of satisfaction at having come up with something to say thirty days in a row. Sometimes you have to dig deep to find the will to write something that’s actually worth reading, and not just phone it in or post a YouTube video or something. For most people, one month is enough, but there are several die-hards who go on to post every day for a year or more.

Any tips for keeping going in the middle of the month when the enthusiasm wanes?

[EDEN] Photos. Posting a photo can either be a great writing prompt, because readers will be interested in whatever the story behind it is, or else it can stand by itself as a post and give you the day off. Nothing wrong with that!

Thanks, Eden!

Interesting point about the photos. Who says your Story A Day story couldn’t be a comic strip, a photo essay, a particularly evocative picture?

Four Days Until Story A Day in May – Some Thoughts and Links

So, only four days left until we begin our Story A Day challenge.

Nervous? Thinking about backing out?

Yeah, me too 😉

panicked eye
Don't Panic!

So, only four days left until we begin our Story A Day challenge.

Nervous? Thinking about backing out?   Yeah, me too 😉

Some Things To Expect From Me

Daily Prompts

I’m going to be posting a daily prompt, which you should feel free to use or ignore. The prompt will be on this blog, but you can also

(I think I’ve got most of my bases covered there but if you have somewhere you’d like it to appear, let me know and I’ll look into it.

Articles & Interviews

I’m also going to continue posting articles on the craft of writing.

There might be videos and audio, and you should certainly feel free to post the same kind of things.

I may not post my actual stories every day, but I will be posting a log of my writing at in my personal Story A Day journal.

Places You Can Post Your Progress

If you’d like everyone here to know that you have written your story for the day, post about your progress in the Victory Dance group.

You can also post in your personal Story A Day blog or on your own blog, if you have one.

If you need inspiration, check out the posts on this blog, the resources page, and the various Story A day groups.

An Interview With Robert Brewer, Host of WD’s Poem A Day Challenge

Remember: A little something is still more than a lot of nothing.

Robert Brewer, Poetic AsidesRobert Brewer is the Poetic Asides poetry blogger for Writer’s Digest, and is in the midst of hosting April’s Poem A Day Challenge.

He took a few minutes to talk to me about what this particular creative challenge has meant to him and the poets who took part.

What did you expect to get out of the PAD challenge?

Going into the first challenge, I really didn’t know what to expect. I remember telling my wife (before she was my wife) over the phone the night before the first challenge that I didn’t know if anyone would participate–or even who would participate. Luckily, hundreds of poets participated the very first day, and many of the poems were very good.

What did you actually get out of it?

First, I got 30 poems out of it. Second, I developed a relationship with several poets and found myself with a very active community on the Poetic Asides blog. The best part of these challenges is hearing from first-time poets and poets who have not written in months (or years) who found inspiration in the prompts and then went on to continue writing poems beyond the actual challenge. That’s one of the main things I try to accomplish is to enable poets to easily create their own prompts.

Did you get any surprising feedback from other participants?

I did. The quantity and quality of poems posted always surprises me (even now). Beyond that, I was surprised by how the Poetic Asides community developed as a whole and how some participants created their own Poetic Asides critique groups. One poet even created a database to help poets track their and other poets’ poems.

What should people do to prepare for a creativity challenge like this?

Just try to clear some time each day to write. Outside of that, try to keep an open mind each day, because you never know what the next prompt will be (unless you’re psychic). Also, have fun and don’t worry about revision; there’ll be time for that later.

What are your best tips for keeping going when the novelty wears off around the middle of the month?

I believe in breaking big tasks into smaller tasks. So, think of the month in terms of weeks or 4- to 5-day increments of time. Another trick, write shorter if you’re just struggling in the middle–or get silly. Remember: A little something is still more than a lot of nothing.

—

Thanks Robert!

Don’t Try To Do Too Much in One Short Story

The best short stories can say a lot, but they don’t try to do too much.
A short story is not a novel…

one candle
The best short stories can say a lot, but they don’t try to do too much.

Writing a story a day is going to be a huge challenge. Inventing characters and settings and inhabiting them for just one day? Huge.

Don’t try to do too much.

We don’t have the time or space to tell wandering epics.

We have time for one incident or one central character or theme [1. by the way all of this is also not true. In writing rules are made to be broken. Except that one about the apostrophe. I will hunt you down and smack your palm with a ruler if you put an apostrophe before the “s” in a plural!]

If your story starts to wander towards an interesting side character, slap that character’s hand and promise him he can be the hero of tomorrow’s story. If you find yourself backtracking to show too much of what happened before the ‘now’ of your story, file the idea and write a prequel tomorrow.

The beauty of writing aevery day is that you don’t have to do it all today. You can write tomorrow. In fact, you have to!

Finish Today, Plan For Tomorrow

So finish the story you started (even if you’ve fallen out of love with it) and make note of all the other ideas that were so good they butted in today.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
-Ezra Pound

Writing The Same Story Different Ways

Stuck?

Here’s a secret weapon to keep you writing every day:

Rewrite the same story in different styles.

How?

Is your story refusing to sing? Are you sick of the sound of your own prose?

There are times when every (good) writer feels this way. It could be a moment of great despair, but it could also be an opportunity to try something new.

Continue reading “Writing The Same Story Different Ways”