[Prompt] May 13 – What Your Character Wants

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

-Kurt Vonnegut

A concrete way to ensure that you are writing a story — not a scene or a character sketch — is to make sure your character wants something. Give your hero a want or a need, then move them towards or away from that thing. Et voilà! You have a  story.

There isn’t much room in a short story. You can’t afford to give your main character two or three things she wants (unless it’s two things that are diametrically opposed). She will have other things that matter to her, of course. It’s just that now — at this moment in her life, the one we’re spying on — she has one overriding want or need that she must resolve.

Secondary characters have wants and needs too, but you don’t have much room to talk about them. If your secondary character is the antagonist (or villain) you can spend more time on their ‘wants’ since exploring them is probably part of explaining why your hero isn’t getting what she wants yet. Otherwise, mentioning their dream in one sentence can be a great way to flesh out secondary characters.

Make Your Characters Want Something

Today, write a story in which you give a character a very specific want or need (you don’t have to spell it out at the start). Move them towards their goal, put rocks in their path, grant or deny their wish.

Give every secondary character a specific need too – even if it never makes it into the story, be sure you know what that person’s dearest wish is.

For more inspiration on this subject, check out Nathan Bransford’s post on the subject.

[Prompt] May 12 – Other Than Human

WRITE ABOUT A NON-HUMAN CHARACTER

Can you write a non-human character without making it react like a human? How would a table/tree/robot/alien think? How would it speak? How would it react compared to the reactions of someone born and raised in the West in the 21st Century?

Can you write a truly non-human character?

Go!

[Prompt] May 11 – Delayed Appearance

DELAY THE APPEARANCE OF THE MAIN CHARACTER

Sometimes it’s a problem to create enough suspense in a short story to keep the reader engaged. An interesting way to do this is to delay the appearance of your main character until quite far into the story. This follows on from yesterday’s prompt where you kept your protagonist off-sceen. This time, however, you can build them up and then allow them to take the stage.

How does this feel? Better? Did you keep the tension going even after the character appeared?

Keep Your Main Character In The Wings

Go!

[Prompt] May 10 – Offstage

NEVER LET YOUR CHARACTER APPEAR

Write a story in which the main, most interesting character never actually appears ‘on-stage’.

Everything the reader learns about the character should come in opinions, comments and conversations between other characters in the story. What do we learn about them? How important do they become? How difficult is it to keep them ‘off-stage”?

The Hidden Protagonist

Go!

Save Our StoryADay!

Sending out an SOS to writers who are struggling with StoryADay this May

sos

Maybe you haven’t started yet. Maybe you’re eight stories in. Maybe you started and then, well, life got in the way and…
But where ever you are, there are still 23 days left in May.
What will you do – in the next 23 days – as your gift to your Writing Self?
Here are 9 Ways To Save (or Support) Your StoryADay May:

1. Reset Your Goals

Only you know what’s going on in your life. If you know (or have discovered) that you simply can’t write a story a day, ask yourself what you could write. Three stories a week? One story, but worked on four days out of the week?
This is your challenge. Make it what you need it to be.

2. Forget The Past

Missed a day (or eight)? Forget it. Forgive it. You have today. Write something today.

3. Forget The Future

31 stories in 31 days sounds like a lot – and it is. What if you’re tired? What if you can’t face the idea of having to do another story tomorrow?
Well, what if the world ends and there is no tomorrow? What if aliens abduct all the writing materials on Earth tonight?
Just write for today.

4. Forget Your Audience

Nothing is more paralysing than thinking about what someone might think of your writing. On a first draft you must shut out all those voices. Don’t worry about the snooty woman in your book club who thinks First Person stories are lazy. Don’t worry that your sister will recognize herself in the portrait of the uptight pain in the posterior you are writing. Write to entertain or amuse yourself, to exorcise your demons, to distract yourself from having that drink or eating that fourth slice of pie. Whatever.
You do not need to share these stories with anyone. Write for yourself.

5. Write Rubbish

Really. You are allowed to write something truly terrible. Because if you allow yourself to write badly, you can laugh at yourself, and laughter is powerful voodoo. And then you can learn what not to do tomorrow.
And, the chances are, somewhere in that steaming midden of middling prose, will be a phrase, a clause, a character, an image — something — that you’re just a little bit proud of and that will make you come back and try again tomorrow.

6. Read & Comment On Someone Else’s Stories

Go to the StoryADay blogs and pick one. Read a story. Leave a comment. Admire the double bravery of your fellow writer who both wrote a story and put it out into the world. Encourage them. Imagine how it might feel to get a little of that love in return. Want it? Write something!

7. Get A Buddy

If you do read and comment on some other StoryADay participants’ stories, you’ll probably find that you’ve just built yourself a personal cheering squad.
It’s a pretty awesome, supportive community over at StoryADay.org. Comment on someone’s story and they’re liable to come looking for yours. Ask them to check in on your progress and they will. Knowing that someone is waiting for your story (or to see your post in the Victory Dance group) can work wonders for your productivity!

8. Use The Prompts

Even if you hate the idea and sit staring at them for ages before anything comes, prompts can be a great way of getting you started on your day’s writing. Even if it’s just to shout, “This is stupid. I’m writing X, instead!”
You can subscribe to the StoryADay Prompts By Email service (this week they’re focusing on ‘character’), or check out these other prompt sites on the Resource Page.

9. Take the StoryADay SOS Course

I’ve run this course in April for the past two years, with good results. It’s a guided writing course with lessons and a dedicated private forum. You write three stories each week, starting with micro-mini stories and building on your successes. If you are really having trouble knuckling down and writing, this might be just the jump-start you need.
I’m going to run the course again starting this Friday, May 11, and it will run through until May 31 as a Save Our StoryADay Rescue course.Click here for more details.
BONUS CONTENT: I’m including in a weekly one-to-one Accountability phone call with me – a 10-15 minute check-in each week to chat about how you’re getting on, and what might be holding you back.

Limited to 20 people so don’t delay!

[Prompt] May 9 – Chatty Cathy

LET YOUR CHARACTER TALK

Tell a story where everything we learn about the character comes from the things they say.
Does what they say match up with what they mean? Iin what ways do they lie about themselves when the speak? How do people react?)

Tell Us About Your Character Through Their Voice

Go!

[Prompt] May 8 – Character From Your Past

This week all the prompts are going to focus on Character. Here’s the first:

REWRITE A CHARACTER FROM YOUR PAST

Pick a character, a real person, from your past. Put them into a story. Be as kind or as cruel as you like (you might want to change their name…)

Use a real character.

Go!

[Prompt] May 7 – Title Recall

PICK A SONG TITLE AND USE IT AS YOUR STORY’S TITLE

Scan this page quickly and pick a title that leaps out at you. Browse around a bit if you need to but use the rule of three: if you haven’t found something on the third page, tough. You’re stuck with it. Pick one and write the story.

Use the title as the title of your story. (It can be very, very tenuously connected to your story.)

Steal someone else’s title for your story

Go!

[Prompt] May 6 – Eavesdropping

STEAL A LINE FROM AN OVERHEARD CONVERSATION

Dialogue and story sparks are all around us. Today, listen for a line in a conversation (if you spend the whole day alone at home, turn on the TV or the radio for three minutes). Pick a phrase that you hear. Use the line somewhere in your story today.

This morning I overheard a woman say,

“Karen, have you been to the new Casino yet?”

I might write about the casino or about Karen, or about a coffee shop in a small town with a regular cast of visitors – one of whom is a street person on her regular round of public spaces.

What will your eavesdropping yield?

Go!

[Prompt] May 5 – Flickr

Get A Graphic Prompt From Flickr

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Pah! I say pictures need us to tell their stories.

Flickr’s “Explore” page is a great place to find arresting images that suggest a scene or a character or a story. Click around, refresh the page, until you find an image that stops you in your tracks. Look at it for five minutes. If, at the end of that time, it hasn’t suggested at least one story or character you could love, move on to another image.

But you can only do this three times. The third time, if you still don’t love the image…tough! You’re stuck with it. Write your story using that picture anyway.

Go!

[Prompt] May 3 – Wikipedia

Daily Prompt Logo

Use Wikipedia’s Front Page To Spark A Story

Go to the front page of Wikipedia.

Quickly scan the “In The News” and “On This Day…” sections, or even the Featured Article.  If something catches your eye, use it as the spark for today’s story.

For example, on the day I’m preparing this prompt I saw “In the News…Two Trains Collide”. That could be a spark for a story about two people on the trains and how they experienced the crash; the story of an investigator sifting through the wreckage – what’s his story?; someone waiting at a station for a passenger who never arrives; a thriller about sabotage.

In “On This Day…” it happened to be the anniversary of the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant. That sparked these ideas for me: school children in a small northern European country who aren’t allowed out to play one afternoon after the explosion because of contamination fears; rescuers going into hell; a researcher walkign through the nature-reclaimed exclusion zone 20 years later; a local, being interviewed. What it did to her life; the power plant’s thoughts as the disaster unfolks; what if it had gone differently: worse?; a satirical story about a disaster at a solar or wind plant instead…

Grab a story spark from the front page of Wikipedia

 Go!

[Prompt] May 2 – Memories

Daily Prompt Logo

Write From Your Memory

Take an incident from your past – one shining afternoon; one horrible moment — and give it to a character (like or unlike you).

 

Play it out as it happened or as you wish it had happened. Take it from the beginning through the middle to the end. Make us see it. Make us care.

Relive a moment in time.

Go!

[Prompt] May 1 – Keep It Short

Daily Prompt LogoHere we go: May 1, the start of StoryADay May!

It’s always tempting to get excited on Day 1 and launch in to a really long, involved story. Or maybe your story-telling muscles are out of shape and you end up writing a long, rambling story because you don’t have a framework and the story runs away from you.

Either way, biting off more than you can chew on May 1 can be a bit discouraging. Especially when you wake on May 2, work the cramp out of your fingers and your brain…and realise you have to do it all again!

So today’s prompt is a simple one:

Write a story of not more than 1,200 words.

That gives you 100 words for intro, 100 words for summing-up (or for the twist) and 1000 words to play with in the middle. (Hint: something should have happened by the time you’re 400 words in, to make me want to keep reading.)

 

That’s it. Happy writing, and see you tomorrow!

Are You A Writer? Prove it!

This light-hearted article has a serious point: you are a writer, and you should stop at nothing to trick yourself into believing it, even on your worst days. Here’s how I did just that.

Defining ourselves as writers when we’re working on speculative manuscripts, short stories, queries — anything we love to write — is difficult. Most of us are conditioned to think that unless someone has given us a contract to write something, it’s not ‘real’.

I’ve been out of the wage-slave business for a long time now. Since leaving corporate life, first I was a freelance business writer, then  a stay-at-home mom and now I’m a mom/writer/part-time-lunch-lady-at-my-kids’-school.

Defining myself as a writer when I was doing freelance business & magazine writing was easy. I wrote something; someone paid me; I was “a writer”.

Defining myself as a mother is inescapable. I have two chatty reminders of it orbiting me at all times except during school hours. And it’s pretty hard to forget you’re a part-time-lunch-lady when hundreds of kids are streaming past, grabbing their yellow or red foodstuffs out of your hands and grunting monosyllabically as they go.

But our writing lives are real. We need to let ourselves take them seriously.

 

The Forehead Stamp

My writer’s group recently hosted Nicole Valentine of Figment.com. As well as running a writer’s site for teens, Nicole is a writer herself, pursuing an MFA. Yet she still has trouble with this question. She joked that she often wants to get a stamp with “writer” on it and stamp it on her forehead, just to remind herself that it’s OK to say it.

I was seriously thinking about how to fashion one of these stamps [1. Maybe with ink that only showed up under blacklight, so we could use it every day, in secret…] when an odd thing happened as I was running from the school to a store and trying to get home in time for the school bus.

In my rush I had forgotten to take off my ID badge. I feel kind of silly wearing it because I’m only a part-time lunch lady. That day I realised that, to anyone walking past, I could have been any working woman on a break from doing something high-powered and ‘important’ [2. I happen to think that being in the lunchroom and trying to slow the de-evolution of our children back to chimp-status is important, but not everyone sees it that way. Just as not everyone sees ‘making up stories with no promise of a paycheck’ as a worthwhile pursuit. Though, strangely, everyone is impressed by a ‘published’ author…]. Having been out of the corporate world for about a decade, I got a real kick out of having that ID card dangling from my pocket again. It was ridiculous.

Then I realized, beyond impressing grocery-store-bound strangers, that ID card had done something else for me: clipping that ridiculous card to my belt made me feel professional – even if I was just going in to sling pizza at pre-teens. If an ID card could make me feel professional about being a part-time lunch lady, then maybe I could go one better than Nicole’s forehead-rubber-stamp idea and issue my writer-self an ID card too.

So I Did

My ID

I know, it’s goofy. It cost me $18 with shipping, and it doesn’t actually change anything. But when I swap out my lunch-lady ID for my Writer ID, it is a tangible reminder to myself to come home and put my writing first. I can be a mom, a wife, a cook, a friend, a slob later. Now is the time for writing. Because see? I’m a writer.

Untitled

If you want your own Writer ID card, you can go here (not an affiliate link). Go on, treat yourself. It’s cheaper than a set of golf clubs, a fancy bike, or even the cost of a sweater and nobody laughs at golfers, cyclists or fashionistas for spending money on their avocation. [3. Well, ok. We do laugh at them. But that just proves that the potential mockery of others from outside your tribe is no reason to hold yourself back.]

So, what do you do to remind yourself it’s OK to say “I’m A Writer”?

[NOTES]

StoryADay May 2012 Registrations Are Open

It’s here: the day you’ve been waiting for. Registrations are now open!

I'm writing a story a day in May 2012

(If you have a username from a previous year, it should still work. Just sign in, above, and make yourself at home.)

What is StoryADay May?

It’s my challenge to you: to challenge YOURSELF to write every day, not “some day”.

Write and finish a story every day this May. That’s it. 

Of course that’s not ‘it’, really. There’s a very welcoming online community I’d love you to be a part of, there are prompts, there is hand-wringing and high-fiving, and an amazing sense of discovery as you push yourself be a more productive, better writer.

Would You Like To Know More?

The Rules are here and there’s a nifty FAQ here, to tell you all about the StoryADay challenge, how to use the site, and where to get you awesome Participant Badge for display other places on the web.

If you would like to register a StoryADay/yourusername blog you can do so during registration. Because of Evil Spammers, however, I’ll turn this feature off when the challenge actually starts (I can only spend so many hours policing this).
So get your blog now if you want one.

Note: you do not have to have a StoryADay blog. Feel free to post about your StADa progress on your personal blog, on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, wherever you like to hang out. You’re more than welcome to simply get a username and drop in to the StADa forums and hang out.

I’ll be posting (optional) daily prompts at the site. You can find them on the home page. If you’d like to receive them by email every day, you can sign up for that here. You should, however, be coming up with your own ideas, too, because a lot of mine will focus on form or a particular technique, and you’ll still need your own Story Sparks for the content.

If you have questions, comments, concerns or find a bug in the site, please email me at julie at storyaday dot org.

I’m getting excited! How about you?

Keep writing,

Julie

Julie Duffy

P.S. Do you have your complimentary Creative Challenge Workbook? Go through it now, to keep you fuelled up throughout May!

[Write On Wednesday] – Leap

Today’s prompt is, rather appropriately, about the moment before something big.

It’s the breath before the scream; the crouch before the leap; the blink before the resolute stare; The moment with her hand on the door frame before she leaves for good.

The Prompt

LEAP!

IMG_1614

Tips

• Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.

The Rules:

1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).

2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.

3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.

4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story: Leap!  #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-leap

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is the deep breath before the plunge! #storyadayhttps://storyaday.org/wow-leap

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-leap

See my story – and write your own, today: Leap at #WriteOnWed #storyaday https://storyaday.org/wow-leap

 

If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.

How To Become An Insanely Productive Writer This May

Seven of the best tips from previous StoryADay participants, to help you become an insanely productive, happy and sane writer.

If you really want to become a good writer, in this lifetime, you have to write. You have to write a lot.

Write First! Write Fast!

Here are seven of the best tips from previous StoryADay participants, to help you become an insanely productive, happy and sane writer. Plus one bonus tip and a question for you, at the end.

Read More

[Interview] – Writing A Story A Day with Vanessa Matthews

if you want to stretch yourself and grow as a writer then go for it! It has been one of the most valuable learning experiences I could have had to develop my writing …it’s really infectious, once you start immersing yourself in writing, the words just keep flowing and flowing.

 

Today I’m interviewing Vanessa Matthews who has just wrapped up her own Story A Day challenge. Vanessa went one better and not only wrote a story a day but submitted one to a contest every day!

If you’ve ever wondered what you might get out of attempting to write a story a day read on!

 

WHAT’S THE MOST SURPRISING THING YOU LEARNED THROUGH THIS CHALLENGE?

Oh, to pick just one!  There have been so many learnings!!  One of the biggest lessons I have learnt is not to write about anything you don’t feel passionate about.  It might sound obvious but during my marketing career I have written with ease about things I liked, and things I didn’t like so much, so I hadn’t anticipated any problem with tackling whatever was thrown at me.  However writing for business and writing for pleasure are very different things!  If you don’t feel compelled to reach the end of your story, drop it and move on to something else.

As for surprises, I have uncovered a passion for writing poetry that I never knew I had, and based on the feedback i’ve been getting from some very talented published poets, i’m even more surprised to find that I might be quite good at it.

 

WHAT MADE YOU START THIS CHALLENGE?

I had heard about a local writing competition taking place for the Daphne du Maurier Festival, which happens in Cornwall every year, and I decided to give it a go. On further research I realised that there were an enormous number of writing competitions going on and the thought just sparked from there.  I had been plugging away at the beginnings of a novel and had found myself lacking in motivation to keep going with it.  As a busy mom of four I just couldn’t seem to find a way to prioritise my writing so this also seemed to be a good way to try and make a habit of writing a little every day.  Although ‘a little’ has so far turned out to be more than 60 pieces of writing… and that excludes my blog posts!

 

HAVE YOU WRITTEN AND SUBMITTED TO A CONTEST EVERY DAY?

Yes, with one very tiny exception… my sci-fi story competition!  sci-fi became my nemesis and despite sitting at my computer for hours trying to build a plot, I found that I just didn’t care about it enough to see it through.  I did write about 500 words and had a basic story map but I just found myself detaching from it the more I tried to write it.  I realised at that point that I was not only wasting my own time, but I was also wasting the time of the competition judges if I submitted a thoughtless piece.  I didn’t want my challenge to end up making a mockery of the art of writing by throwing together any old rubbish just so I could tick the box to say I had done it.  That would have felt disrespectful to me and all of the other writers who had entered with heart.  I plan to post a list of the competitions I have entered on my blog when the challenge is complete. Once the competition deadlines and judging periods have passed I will also post each of my entries so that you can see what I have been up to.

 

DO YOU RECOMMEND SUBMITTING STORIES QUICKLY?

In this instance I do yes.  by submitting things quickly I have forced myself to focus, choose my words carefully and get straight to the heart of what my gut instinct tells me to write.  Once finished it is very easy to overanalyse and become too self-critical but there just hasn’t been the time.  I can already look back and see how I could have done better on some of the entries, but it doesn’t matter.  I did my best on the day, and win or lose, each entry has taught me something new.  However, I would recommend taking more time if I were submitting a novel to a publisher, as you only get one chance to impress and if your story is riddled with repetition, disjointed content and grammatical errors then you won’t stand a chance.  When you are so close to your story, often its only by reading it through several times over several days that those kind of errors emerge.

 

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU HAVE FOR SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO FOLLOW YOUR LEAD?

That depends on your motivation.  If you only want to be in it to win it, then forget it, but if you want to stretch yourself and grow as a writer then go for it!  It has been one of the most valuable learning experiences I could have had to develop my writing and I have felt so creative and inspired by it.  it’s really infectious, once you start immersing yourself in writing, the words just keep flowing and flowing.  I have actually turned into a bit of an insomniac at times because I haven’t been able to quiet my imagination long enough to go to sleep.

 

DID YOU HAVE MUCH SUPPORT? DID IT MATTER?

I have been very lucky to have the support of my husband and family and made sure I had their buy-in before I started. Having a large family with young children, their support did matter, as I knew there would be times when the housework would get neglected, or I would be unavailable because I was at the computer.  But I was only asking for 30 days, and I needed to do something for myself.  Whatever your family circumstances, a challenge like this inevitably takes you through lots of highs and lows so I think it helps to at least have a cheerleader who can keep you motivated on the bad days and maybe even critique your work if you trust them to be fair and honest.   The feedback I get on my blog has also been an incredible boost, people have been so kind and have made really encouraging comments on my work which has kept me going, particularly on the days when writers block and creative insecurities crept in!

 

WHAT’S NEXT?

I didn’t think about that at all when I started, and some of that will depend if anything comes from the competitions I have entered.  Regardless of results though, I do now have a plan that I could never have anticipated.  I am writing a collection of poetry!  I have written about 20 pieces so far with another 50 or so sketched out as titles – and yes, they are all brand new poems that I have written in addition to my competition entries! I hope to submit the collection to publishers over the next few months.

 

Thanks, Vanessa! Inspiring stuff! I’m ready for May now!!

 

Vanessa has worked as a freelance copy writer, food writer, and marketing consultant for approximately 15 years.  If you want to read along through the highs and lows of one author writing a story a day, check out the blog posts as they happened. You can read more about her writing journey at her blog: http://ordinarylifelessordinary.wordpress.com/

You Can’t Write Well Without Writing A Lot

“If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story.”
– Ann Patchett “The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life (Kindle Single)“

 

I had barely started reading Ann Patchett’s short treatise on writing, when I wanted to adopt her.

We, as writers, can spend all day reading about writing (or just reading, for that matter), but there is nothing like the act of writing to teach us how to do the job.

 WRITE A LOT

And not just writing, but writing a lot.  My new buddy Ann puts it perfectly:

“Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment: The only way to get clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stores, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the fresh water underneath.”

 

What?! There’s no reason to apologize or feel bad about all the trite, self-indulgent stories that bubble up to the surface? There is no reason to expect that any of what we write will be good, especially if it has been a while since we did any serious writing-in-quantity? We can write without being perfect? What a concept!

 TEN THOUSAND HOURS

And it’s not just m’buddy Ann.

Malcolm Gladwell points out, in his fascinating book Outliers: The Story of Success, that experts become experts not by being talented or smart, but by loving what they do and putting in lots and lots of practice. He refers to a study into musical talent and preparation by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson:

“Ericsson and his colleagues then compared amateur pianists with professional pianists…The amateurs never practiced more than three hours a week over the course of their childhood, and by the age of twenty they had totaled two thousand hours of practice. The professionals, on the other hand, steadily increased their practice time every year, until by the age of twenty they, like the violinists, had reached ten thousand hours. The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any ‘natural’, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.”

 

(And you thought a story a day sounded like a big commitment!)

Gladwell applies this theory to all kinds of experts and ‘geniuses’ including Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and The Beatles.

“And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyeone else. They work much, much harder.”

THE JOY OF WORK

But don’t let that word “work” scare you. After all, you are a writer. You love to write (or at the very least, you love having written!).

The reason the Bills, Steves, John-Paul-George-and-Ringoes and Yo-Yo Mas of the world “work” so hard to become world-class at what they do, is precisely because they don’t see it as “work”. They love what they do.

 

Not every second, I would imagine — any more than you love those moments when you want to bang your head off the desk then throw your computer out of the window. But we love what we do, in the sense that we will do it forever, for the joy of it, whether or not anyone ever pays us for it.

 LEARNING TO DO IT WELL

So we might as well do it well.

The consensus seems to be that to do something well, you have to do lots of it. You have to practice. And you have to learn to love the practice, not just the promise of future rewards. Steve Jobs famously celebrated his meandering approach to education, saying that if he had never stumbled into a typography class (and loved it), the Mac would never have become what it did – and nor would Apple, and nor would Steve Jobs.

StoryADay is here to help you get back into the habit of practicing your writing. It’s not here to promise you publication, or fame or riches. It’s not here to promise you’ll write anything throughout the whole month that will be worthy of publishing. But StoryADay May is coming to help you push yourself to practice. Think of StADa as the parent who made you play scales between piano lessons; the coach who inspired you throw endless pitches at the side of your house in the evenings; the teacher who made you do fractions over and over and over again until it finally clicked and you started to see the music between the numbers.

Use StoryADay in place of the teacher Ann Patchett still celebrates for teaching her,

“..how to love the practice and how to write in a quantity that would allow me to figure out for myself what I was actually good at. I got better at closing the gap between my hand and my head by clocking in the hours, stacking up the pages.”

 

Are you ready to start stacking up the pages?

[Write On Wednesday] Location As Character

Sherlock Holmes has Victorian London.

John Irving has New England.

John O’Hara’s short stories couldn’t work without their small-town Pennsylvania backdrop.

Even fantasy settings need to feel real in order to succeed (think Middle Earth, or Earthsea, or Deep Space Nine). So today we’re going to practise writing stories in which the location is as vivid as any character.

 

And in this age of Google Maps, Wikipedia, Flickr, Pinterest, a billion hobby blogs and online tourist information sites, there is no excuse for writing a thin, anemic version of any place you can imagine. (Even if you write fantasy, you can base the details in something real.)

The Prompt

Simcoe St in Toronto

Simcoe St in downtown Toronto, ON.

  • Pick a place you have never been (preferably somewhere you have a friend – online or otherwise).
  • Spend no more than 30 minutes researching it. Use Google Street View, search for blogs based there and ‘listen’ to how its residents talk, scan newspaper archives and obituaries, look at the high school and local library’s websites.
  • Set a story in the location you have learned about. Paint a vivid picture of the place; weave it through your action; salt your character’s dialogue with local flavor.
  • Then ask your long-distance friend how close you came to getting it right? What bloopers did you make? What slang did you get wrong? Was it too generic? Was it spot on?

Tips 

  • Remember to tell a story about characters in your location. This is not a travel brochure.
  • Write fast. It’s just a fun exercise.
  • Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.

The Rules:

  1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
  2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
  3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
  4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story: Location, Location, Location!  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-qb

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is to write in a concrete location! #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-qb

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-qb

See my story – and write your own, today: Location As Character at #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-qb

If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.


[Tuesday Reading Room] “A Telephone Call” by Dorothy Parker

A guest post by regular contributor Jami who is reading a story a day throughout 2012.. This week: “A Telephone Call” by Dorothy Parker.

This week’s post is a guest post by regular contributor Jami
who is reading a story a day throughout 2012 over at Worth The Effort. This week: “A Telephone Call” by Dorothy Parker.

Suffering.

A woman questions God about why a lover hasn’t called her at the time he said he’d call. The pleading and negotiating she does which is clearly inner dialogue is painfully realistic and honest and it exposes the vulnerable side of every woman when she is in the first phase of a relationship.

Will he call?
Should I call him?
What will he think if I call him?
Will he hate me if I call?
How long should I wait for his call?
What happens if he doesn’t call?
Why didn’t he call?

WOW, Dorothy Parker really blew me away with this story. It was made more potent with its brevity and with an ending that leaves the reader counting down the seconds until the woman makes a decision and answers her own questions.

My guess about the ultimate resolution?

She calls.
He doesn’t answer.

Here is a link:
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/teleycal.html

(c)2012 Jami Balkom

Reading A Story A Day…For A Year – An Interview

…Reading these short stories has made me realize that it’s a place I can go, a place I should go in my own fiction. …

Today I’m posting an interview with Jami, who blogs about her adventures reading a story a day in 2012 at Worth The Effort.

 

You’ll be seeing some of her posts here over the next few months, in the regular Tuesday Reading Room series. I highly recommend you visit/bookmark/subscribe to her blog. It’s a great resource and a fascinating look at the benefits of immersing yourself in the literature while continuing to write.

 

1. Why did you decide to read a story a day?

I wanted a goal, a realistic goal. Last year I committed myself to reading a novel a week but by year’s end I’d only read 41 novels [“only”?! – Ed.]. So, I wanted to do something different and my brother, who is a fantastic writer of short stories actually, encouraged me to read more short stories. Then it occurred to me that I really hadn’t balanced my reading and that shorter fiction would be a good change for me. That’s how it happened. I decided to set a goal, a short story a day for the entire year, blogging short reviews along the way.

2. How many have you read so far?

I’ve read 102 stories at this point as I’ve managed to keep up with my goal. I’ve read a short story a day for the entire year thus far.

3. Are you discovering a style you love?

Not really, or at least not as it relates to style. I do find that stories rich in tiny and interesting details keep my attention and make me want to read more. Other than that, I’m reading almost exclusively what might be categorized as literary fiction. Though I have a science fiction week planned for the month of June so we’ll see how my answer might change after that.

4. Are you trying to read outside that style anyway?

Yes, I’m always looking for new styles. Sometimes, the story I’m reading is heavy in dialogue. Other times, there is little to no dialogue but plenty of voice in the first person narrative. I like them all so long as the story itself is worth the read.

5. What patterns are emerging, as you read?

I’ve come across a lot of stories that deal with family and I find that interesting, particularly because in my own writing I’ve always shied away from those types of stories. Reading these short stories has made me realize that it’s a place I can go, a place I should go in my own fiction. And, it helps that the authors I’m reading do this very well. Judy Troy is a good example of this type of writer. I could read her stories as long as she writes them. She doesn’t bore me and I never find her writing flat. There are some though in this first 100 days that I was disappointed in and those stories consistently failed to draw me in from the start. A beginning is crucial.

6. Would you recommend other people try this? Why?

Absolutely. Reading a short story by a particular author is like getting to taste test a dish at a fine dining restaurant. Why spend the money on a pricey entree if the appetizer isn’t worth the cash you drop on it. A short story is a good foray into any writer’s longer fiction. Besides, short stories are easy to digest in quick bursts. A reader can make decisions for future reading based on these short stories. For me, that is a huge bonus.

7. What are your plans for the future?

I plan on continuing with reading a short story a day for the year 2012. I also plan to continue writing fiction daily, focusing my attention on developing and staying true to my own voice even if I am reading a different one every day. There’s also novel length fiction and I’m still reading my fair share of that as well. That won’t stop. I still plan on hitting around 25 novels this year. That’s the plan at least.

 

Thanks, Jami!

Check back in next Tuesday to read her first guest-post in the Reading Room.

Are you reading enough? Do you read short stories? Are you  reading them more as you prepare for StoryADay May?

Where To Find The World’s Greatest Writing Teachers

…but for the average working/studying/parenting/pulled-in-fifteen-directions aspiring writer, who will inspire us? Who will teach us our trade? Who will be our mentors?

If you were a Renaissance artist your mentor would be your master. He would teach you your craft and employ you until you, too, were a master.

If you were Stephen Sondheim you would have Oscar Hammerstein for a neighbor and he’d take an interest in you, and you’d have your mentor.

If you were in an MFA program, you’d be paying handsomely for access to a working writer who would mentor you.

 

But the average working/studying/parenting/pulled-in-fifteen-directions aspiring writer, doesn’t have time to talk to her best friend never mind find and domesticate a wild working writer.

 

So who will inspire us? Who will teach us our trade? Who will be our mentors?

The only possible answer is to look to a book.

It’s all there. Every writer you’ve ever admired has shown you what they do, in every work they write.

“When a writer writes anything about anything at all, he gives himself away and what he has to say comes out.” – Oscar Hammerstein II

 

Gather up their stories. Read them. Re-read them. Blog about why you loved them (or why you didn’t). Write down story sparks inspired by their works (what if you had a heroine like that? Would she have chosen him? What if you set a story in a record shop? What if your idea of a happy ending involves the bad guy getting away with it?).

The Good, The Bad And The “I Could SO Do That”

Read stories by writers you worship. Read stories by writers you think are pretty good. Read stories by writers you know you could do better than.

Make a list and think of these writers as your own, personal mentors. On a day when you’re struggling to put pen to paper, read one of those bottom-tier authors and fire yourself up with rage that they are producing more work than you! Or look to the top tier to remind you of what excites you, as a reader.

 Your Mission, Should You Choose To Accept It

In this last few weeks before StoryADay May begins, read. Read! READ!

 Further Reading

If you’re not already read short stories try these as a few places to start:

Nanoism.net (for Twitter-length stories)

Fifty Great Short Stories – stories from the first half of the 20th Century

Great English Short Stories – more early 20th Century short fiction

Project Gutenberg’s Short Story Shelf – public domain stories

Ploughshares Literary Magazine – literary fiction

Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine – science fiction

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine – crime/mystery fiction

Storyville – an iPhone app that sends you stories every week

OneStory – One short story emailed (or sent to your gadget of choice) every three weeks

 

[Write On Wednesday] – Style Switch

The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt.

This week’s prompt was inspired by yesterday’s Tuesday Reading Room story, The  Sellout by Mike Cooper. In that story, the author uses traditional hard-boiled detective tropes, but his detective is investigating… accounting fraud.  

The Prompt – Style Switcheroo





Write a story where you use a familiar style of writing (Romance, space opera, Western, literary fiction, YA paranormal, political thriller, whatever you’re most familiar with) but use it to treat a subject that is outwith the normal subject matter  for that genre.

(Think: Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, or Tom Clancy trying to write a bodice-ripper, FF. Scott Fitzgerald on a space station…)

What will you write?

Tips

  • Don’t worry about your audience and who might read it. 
  • Do feel free to cross over into parody or be ridiculous. It’s just a fun exercise.
  • Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.

The Rules:

  1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
  2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
  3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
  4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story: [style] meets [subject]  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-qb

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is a style switch! #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-qb

Come and write with us! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-qb 

See my story – and write your own, today: Style Switch at #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-qb

If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.

[Tuesday Reading Room] – The Sellout by Mike Cooper

This story comes from the June 2012 edition of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. It features an unnamed protagnoist who is also the hero of a forthcoming book by the same author, Mike Cooper.

This story starts strong, with a clear sense of place and time, not to mention a few hints as to the type of story (and protagonist) we’re dealing with.

“Now, the subway station that was sharp thinking. A decade after 9/11 the MTA still hadn’t installed its fancy new cameras. So unlike any other crowded public space in Manhattan, the Fulton Street C Line platform was free of electronic surveillance. It was a nice solution for a total-deniability-type meet-up.”

Just a few lines in and we know this is set in the modern day, that the protagonist doesn’t have a lot of respect for bureaucrats, and that his dealings are likely quite shady.

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking: hit-man. Right?

A few sentences later when our hero’s client says, “I need an audit done,” the reader is (a-hem) arrested by the unusual choice of word but assumes the client is just being colorful.

Wrong.

It turns out (slight spoiler alert) that our hero is a kind of tough-guy forensic CPA-for-hire, It is, as the hero notes, “a small niche, though a necessary one.” And I can totally see why some publisher looked at this idea, blinked twice and read on. It’s not an idea you hear too often and you almost have to read on to see how he’s going to make this work.

And Cooper makes it work by sticking with the traditional hardboiled detective style. He sets his hero up as a tough-guy with a dangerous past, not afraid to use his fists (in accountancy? Oh yeah!) and repeatedly uses military imagery to back up his protagonist’s view of himself:

“Sometimes you need someone packing a P226, not an HP12c, if you know what I mean” (which of course, most of us don’t.)
“If you capture a terrorist…you don’t read him his rights and call Legal Aid.”
“Okay, Waterboard Spin Metal’s CFO. Got it.”
“If I had a logo it might be a green eyeshade crossed by a nine mil. But I don’t.”
“A little recon first seemed like a good idea.”

The way the character talks to himself, sees himself, reinforces everything we’ve been shown about him. This is one hard man and he never lapses into soft metaphors or overt sympathy for anyone. He is cynical, even when the author is inviting us to be sympathetic to the other characters. The protagonist shows us people and events through his own skeptical filter, the author manipulates us to see them through our own.

It’s skillfully done.

I didn’t love this story because it’s not really my style. But I do bow the the author’s ability to make me even sort of care about the inner financial dealings of a corporate take over. Sort of.

And I do think this was an excellent piece of characterization.

20120409-133700.jpg

[Write On Wednesday] Trapped

The Write On Wednesday story prompts are designed to prompt quickly-written stories that you can share in the comments. It’s a warm-up exercise, to loosen up your creativity muscles. Come back every Wednesday to see a new prompt.

If you’d like more accountability, support and structure as you warm up your writing for StoryADay May 2012, why not join the Warm-Up Writing Course?  Click here for details.

This week’s prompt was conceived as a character study, but the more I think about it, I realise it can focus on descriptive writing, point of view, or almost anything!

The Prompt – Trapped

Trapped #1
“Trapped #1” by Waltimo

Write a story where the main (or only) character is trapped, literally or figuratively.

Literal traps can be prisons, a locked room, the side of a mountain, inside an alien spaceship, a bear trap, a maze, anything you can imagine!   (Personally, I’d love to see someone write a claustrophobic locked-in-a-box story with only one character, and see how you manage to sustain that — great opportunity for character and description!)

Figurative traps could be anything from a bad marriage to con and could be a fairly conventional short story that lets you work on your dialogue or plotting.

What will you write?

Tips

  • Don’t worry about your audience and who might read it
  • Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.

The Rules:

  1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
  2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
  3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
  4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my short story: Trapped  #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-pA

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is a cool old map! #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-pA

Come and write with us: Trapped! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-pA

See my story – and write your own, today: Trapped! #WriteOnWed #storyaday http://wp.me/p1PnSG-pA

If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.

[Write On Wednesday] Story Sparks

“Where do you get your ideas?”

Every established writer has a tale to tell about being asked that question.

Some of them lie and tell people they order them from an Idea store. Some wearily answer that they think really hard until the ideas come. Still others joyfully shout that ideas are everywhere, what are you crazy? Don’t you see them?!

The truth is, the more you look for ideas, the more you’ll see them. But you do have to look

The Prompt

This week’s prompt is not a writing prompt, but a prompt-prompt. This week you’re going to look for Story Sparks.

book with sparks in glasses photo by Julie Duffy

We’re just over a month away from StoryADay May. You’re going to need at least 31 ideas (more in case a few don’t work out).  I’m not talking about outlining your stories, or even coming  up with great ideas, just about writing a list of sparks for stories, or places you can find those sparks.

Ray Bradbury in Zen In The Art of Writing, talks about one method of gathering what I’ve come to think of as “story sparks”:

“I began to gather long lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These nouns were provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface.”

Today, set a timer for as long as you can manage (ten minutes? 20? Half an hour?) and then use that time to write down as many Story Sparks as you can.

Write down:

  • Lists of nouns (things that scare you, matter to you, frustrate you)
  • Your favorite colorful metaphors. (Consider them as titles for a story)
  • Aphorisms you can play with (“See No Evil” “A Bird In The Hand”)
  • The names of the weirdest people you have met in your life (or a quick description if you can’t remember their real names)
  • Lyrics and lines from poetry that have stuck in your brain for years
  • The titles of your favorite artworks
  • The most striking places you’ve visited (potential settings)
  • Historical tidbits you’ve learned on trips (or in your own town)

Extra Credit

Capture three more story sparks every day for the next week: eavesdrop, read obituaries, browse the front page of Wikipedia, bookmark quirky photographs, read poetry, delve into medical textbooks, looks, listen, smell, breathe in the world around you. Capture three sparks from all that living you do every day.

Need a way to capture sparks?
Download three printable logs now!

Share in the comments a source of story sparks that you discovered or found most productive.

Need more help? Get the ebook that grew out of this article: Breaking Writers’ Block, A StoryADay Guide

Have Fun Storming The Castle – Writing Lessons From The Princess Bride

Writing and crafting a good story is hard work. But there is joy in it too. Otherwise what would be the point?

I was reminded of this when quoting one of my favourite lines from the movie, The Princess Bride.

The heroes are off to take on bad guys. The odds are against them and they have a hard, painful and probably futile fight ahead of them. Neverless Miracle Max and his wife Valerie wave them off cheerfully, crying,

“Bye, boys! Have fun storming the castle!”

Writing a story is a lot like storming a castle and there is a lot we writers could learn from Wesley, Inigo, Fezzik, Buttercup and yes, even Vizzini, as we storm the gates of our stories.

Have a good reason to storm the castle

Castles are strong. They were built specifically to withstand a good storming, employing all kinds of tricks to repel attackers. You had to have a damned good reason to want to storm a castle. As we know, Wesley had the most important reason to storm his castle (‘true love’). No lesser cause would have compelled him to overcome the difficulties of overpowering enemy manpower, a locked gate with only one key, and having been mostly dead all day.

You need a good reason to write. Even if you lose faith at times, at one point you believed enough in this story, this character or the lesson you felt you could share, to begin the audacious process of breaking through fear, apathy and laziness and begin writing this story. Hold fast to that reason. Your story is worth fighting for.

Formulate A Plan

It may not seem like the heroes have much going for them, but they take stock of their resources (“If only we had a wheelbarrow”), examine their strengths (“your brains, Fezzik’s strength, my steel”), and come up with a plan, long before they take their first step towards the castle gate.

Don’t assume that, just because you like to write, you can sit down and create a whole story without doing any planning. You don’t have to know what will happen at every step of your plan but you need something to build on. Every story needs a hero, a setting, and some movement (something must happen or change between the beginning and the end). Do you know what must change for your character? (even if you don’t know *how* it will change).

You don’t even have to form a plan before you begin writing (the heroes have left to storm the castle before Wesley even wakes up, never mind begins to form his plan), but perhaps, like Wesley and his friends, you should pause at the edge of the woods to take stock, and plan the next stage of  your battle every so often.

Be Flexible

WESLEY: Now, there may be problems once we’re inside.

INIGO: I’ll say. How do I find the Count? Once I do, how do I find you again? Once I find you again how do we escape?”

FEZZIK: Don’t pester him. He’s had a hard day.

Just because I’m saying you should plan a little, doesn’t mean you need to be rigid. Once you have stormed the gates of your story (the beginning), you still have to find your enemy, rescue the princess and find a way out. You do not need to know how all these things happen before you start to write. You may find that circumstances within your story take you in unexpected directions. You will need to be flexible. But bend too far and your story can break.

To avoid this that each of your characters, and you as the writer, stay true to your goals.

Stay True To Your Goal

When Count Rugen is at the point of Inigo’s sword, he offers Inigo money, power, all that he has and more, anything he asks for. It’s a pretty tempting offer for a drunk with no prospects (“there is not a lot of money in revenge”). Inigo, however, does not hesitate. He knows exactly what he wants, and that is: to avenge his father.

As you are writing, your story and your characters will offer you little side trips, new characters may pop up and tempt you with their fascinating foibles, new elements may demand to be included. Take some advice from Vizzini (“When a job goes wrong, you go back to the beginning”). Take a breath and ask yourself what was your goal for this story?

However much it loves being endlessly written, this story’s fate (like Count Rugen’s) is to be finished off. Stay focused on the main idea, the main theme, the main direction of the action, and ignore all its false promises of goodies if you just keep writing it, if you let it live, forever. You know, as well as Inigo, that the only way to satisfaction is to stick with your goal until the end.

Trust That An Ending Will Present Itself If You Keep Moving Towards It

At the climax of The Princess Bride, things are in a bit of a mess for our heroes. Sure, they have successfully stormed the castle and Inigo has his revenge, but it seems that Buttercup has married the evil prince after all, Fezzik has disappeared and Inigo can’t find Wesley. Buttercup is about to kill herself, Wesley cannot move and is at the point of Prince Humperdink’s sword in a tower room with no apparent exit.

Does Wesley give up? No, he does not. Instead, he vamps.

That’s right, he keeps talking, until something changes, until he finds the strength to take action. And when that moment comes, everything changes for the better: Humperdink surrenders, Inigo reappears and Fezzik turns up with the perfect means of escape.

The “all-is-lost” point is a classic narrative technique. Unfortunately it tends to hit us writers hard, too. The only piece of advice I have ever heard about how to get out of the pit of despair while writing a story, is to keep writing. It’s about as appetizing as that Miracle Pill cooked up by Miracle Max, and ultimately just as effective.

Even if you stumble, like Wesley, or end up editing out some of what you write, keep moving and a solution will spring from your characters, your situation or both.  Trust me on this. Just keep writing and an ending will appear. If you start to question this advice, remind yourself of what Buttercup says to Wesley when he first reappears in her life:

“I will never doubt again.”

StoryADay.org's Have Fun Storming The Castle

There are so many wonderful moments in this movie that I’m sure I could have kept writing on this theme all day.  What writing lessons would you draw from the characters and scenes in The Princess Bride? Please do share your Princess Bride writing tips in the comments 🙂

[Write On Wednesday] Digital Story Cubes

OK, so I’ve used my real-life Story Cubes to generate a prompt once before, but now the cute game has an even cuter app, and who am I to resist?

So, behold: this week’s story prompt comes from the Rory’s Story Cubes app.

 

storycubesapp

I’ll leave it up to you whether you use ALL the cubes, but I think I have to insist that you use at least five. Good luck!

(P.S. With a shooting star, a magic wand, a turtle and a world, how many of you are going to be writing Discworld fan-fic?)

 

Tips

  • Don’t worry about your audience and who might read it
  • Make sure your story travels from start to end: don’t just write a scene, make someone or something change between the first word and the last.

The Rules:

  1. You should use the prompt in your story (however tenuous the connection).
  2. You must write the story in one 24 hr period – the faster the better.
  3. Post the story in the comments — if you’re brave enough.
  4. Find something nice to say about someone else’s story and leave a comment. Everybody needs a little support!

Optional Extras:

Share this challenge on Twitter or Facebook

Some tweets/updates you might use:

Don’t miss my StoryCube-inspired short story:  #WriteOnWed #storyaday

This week’s #WriteOnWed short story prompt is dice-based! #storyaday

Come and write with us:  #WriteOnWed #storyaday

See my story – and write your own, today:  #WriteOnWed #storyaday

If you would like to be the Guest Prompter, click here.