Classes – Page 4 – StoryADay

Big News and New Things

I have BIG NEWS.

Celebrity Guest Prompters

Firstly — and I have to put this first because otherwise my head will explode — our first Guest Prompter for the month of May is none other than rock star author NEIL GAIMAN!!!

He’s providing the writing prompt for May 1, so don’t be late! (You can sign up to getPrompts By Email, if you haven’t already).

There are lots of other published authors and writing teachers lined up to share writing prompts during this Fifth Anniversary StoryADay May, so don’t miss out.

A Month Of Prompts…Today!

New this year, I’m offering you the chance to plan ahead, with the brand new Month Of Writing Prompts ebook for 2014!

The idea of sitting down to write a new story everyday, cold, is pretty terrifying. But it’s less terrifying with a bit of forward planning.

For the past few StoryADay challenges, participants have told me that it’s really useful to be able to peek ahead at the upcoming writing prompts. Last May and September I supplied a week’s worth of prompts at a time to people on thePrompt By Email list.

This time, however, you can get the whole month worth of prompts today. Use them this coming May, or at any time in future.

(If you don’t have a Kindle, you can get a free reading app for your favorite gadget, here. Also, the ebook will not have the celebrity guest prompts, only the 31 written by yours truly. You’ll have to come to the site for the guest prompts.)

To celebrate the launch of this new ebook, it’s going on sale today at $0.99. The price will slowly creep back up to its list price of $6.99 by April 30, (this is an Amazon Countdown Deal, if you’re interested in that kind of thing), so get your copy sooner rather than later.

Are You Ready?

Now, before you let your nerves get the better of you, remember that YOU SET THE RULES for yourself. If you think five days a week, or one story a week is what you can manage, that’s fine. Come along for the ride anyway. Take advantage of the community (I’ll open up the site for new registrations on April 25. Mark your calendars!) and tell your friends, because peer pressure is a wonderful thing!

Don’t forget to grab your graphics to let people know you’re taking part and browse the resource section for inspiration.

Need to Warm Up?

If you’ve bought the Warm Up Course Home Study version before, now’s the time to dust off your copy. Or if you’d like your own copy, there is a 10-day accelerated version too, perfect for warming up before May 2014. I’ve opened a new group in the community for anyone who wants to go through the course now. Let me know if you need access and don’t have a username yet (julie@storyaday.org).

Here’s what the course does for you:

Start writing in small, manageable chunks that will boost your confidence,
Generate 45 Story Sparks that you can turn into short stories,
Learn to carve out time for your writing, and break through your fear and block, by writing straight away,

When the course is over you will have:

10 completed stories,
More story ideas than you can use during the StoryADay challenge, so you never sit down to a blank page,
The confidence to know you can make writing an on-going part of your life,
Practice and discovery of your best working habits.

Get access now

In the mean time, I apologize for the extreme fan-girling at the start of this email (but I’d do it again) and:
Keep writing,

Julie

Julie Duffy
P.S. Remember that all these tools (including the daily prompts) are optional. Access to the site and the community remain free, forever. StoryADay May exists to encourage you to give yourself permission to tell your stories!

A Month Of Writing Prompts – The eBook!

A Month Of Writing Prompts 2014

Writing a story a day for a month is a crazy endeavour, but one that hundreds of writers have signed up for every May since 2010. During month of courageous creativity, writers learn how to write every day (not ‘someday’), how to craft a story, how to write in different forms, how to fail and dust themselves off, and write again.
Are you ready to join them?
The StoryADay Month of Writing Prompts book shares the daily writing prompts for StoryADay May 2014: 31 writing prompts, meditations, lessons and pep talks to accompany on your journey to becoming a more prolific, creative and fulfilled writer.
Use these prompts during the StoryADay challenge, or any time you need a creativity boost.

Win A Trip To WANACon 2014

WANACon (run behind the minds behind the We Are Not Alone Tribe for writers) is coming!

The World Wide Writers Conference You Can Attend In Your PJs runs February 21-22, 2014 and it is going to be great.

I say this, in all modesty, as one of the speakers 🙂 I’ll be speaking with Gabriela Pereira of DIYMFA.com on “A Simple System To Rock Your Revisions” that works for novels AND short stories.

You can WIN a FREE pass to the conference here:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Publish Your Own Short Story Collection

Around here we’re all about creativity. I don’t talk much about publishing because:
a, there’s plenty of material online about how to publish/get published and
b, Worrying about the publishing part before the writing part seems like putting the cart before the horse.

However, many of you have come along on the StoryADay May creativity binge a few times now and are starting to wonder “What Next?”

I strongly advocate trying many different things to get your work into the hands of readers, from submitting to traditionally-published magazines, publishing online, and yes, even self-publishing.

This summer and autumn I focused on putting together batches of stories that could be packaged together and sold as ebooks. Then I published them myself.

I’ve never felt more inspired, so I wanted to share the steps with you.

Why Write & Publish A Short Story Collection eBook?

It imposes deadlines and a finite end to each project
It can inspired you to finish and polish your stories
Setting my own them and writing my own ‘themed anthology’ helped me focus on what to do every time I scheduled a writing session.
Because I was sick of only writing to someone else’s specifications and then spending weeks waiting to hear back to hear that I hadn’t quite hit what they needed [1. I won’t stop submitting to magazines and online publications. I just needed another outlet too!]. I wanted to feel like I was spending more time writing than researching markets.
To build an audience of readers, not just other writers (much as I love my online writing buddies, we all need readers!).
To build a track record of publications with reviews and feedback.

Was It A Success?

A resounding success.

My experiment is still a bit of a work in progress as I have only released a few things, and my marketing is designed to produce results over the long haul. But I can tell you that I have never been more inspired or productive in my writing life. Just the thought of taking control, seeking feedback from trusted writing friends, polishing and releasing these stories, has filled me with drive and broken through any number of writing blocks in the past few months.

Because my marketing plan isn’t fully in place yet (and relies on more collections being released over the next year), I’m not going to talk about sales figures yet.

Get The Blueprint – Free!

I am, however, going to share how I got the books out into the world, created mechanisms for gathering reader feedback and began to share my stories with the world.

If you’re already on the StoryADay mailing list you should have received a copy of the lesson I put together, sharing what I did (check your email).

It contains everything from:

How (And Why) To Write & Polish a Themed Batch Of Stories
My Timeline For Putting Together An eBook
Preparing for Publishing (including preparing the text and cover, and what you must include to ensure readers connect with you)
Working with Amazon to Create A Kindle Edition (including a walk-through of the publishing process)
Working With Smashwords To Create Other eBook Formats (including technical details and tips on how to use Smashwords to increase your book’s reach)
What I Did To “Release” The Book (includes how I sought reviews, spread the word and gathered feedback)
What Next? (Includes tips for ongoing marketing, and planning the next collection)
Your Turn (A pep-talk on the three most important steps you must take if you’re going to try this)
Resources (includes links to all the services I use for publication and promotion.

If you’re not on the mailing list you can add yourself now and receive your free copy of my detailed guide to Publishing Your Own Short Story Ebook Collection

Short Story Bootcamp

It’s November and the writing blogs have all turned their attention to the novel. What’s a short story writer to do?

For while we love our novel-writing fellows, we lovers of the short story don’t always want to write novels in November. Or maybe we’re just not in a novel-place right now. Sometimes we just want to write stories. Sometimes it’s just as hard to sit down and write a short story as it is to sit down and write a novel. And we get grumpy in November, when we’re forgotten about.

Well grump no more.

The StoryADay Warm Up Course is back, but this time it’s personal.

Seriously.

I’ve beefed up the course with personal coaching calls and expanded materials, without losing any of the awesome results-driven focus of the original course. This time you get at least one personal call with me as well as a Q&A teleseminar. You also get worksheets to keep track of your progress (and I’ll be asking to see them!)

That’s right, it’s a Bootcamp and I’m your drill sergeant, only friendlier. A friend-sergeant. A drill-friend. Something.

Interested?

The course starts on Monday November 18, 2013. Three weeks later you’ll have:

10 completed stories under your belt,
More story ideas than you can use in a month, and a method for generating them forever, so you need never again fear the blank page,
The confidence to know you can make writing an on-going part of your life,
Practice and discovery of your best working habits.
Coaching that cuts through your excuses and helps you find a way to write every day, not someday.

~~$147~~ $97
(until midnight Sunday, 17, 2013)

need more information?

But wait, there’s more

(Yeah, I said it)

Bonus Coaching Sessions

You can also add on four additional coaching sessions (one for each of the second and third weeks of the course, one at the end to launch you into the next phase of your writing life, and another one a few weeks later to make sure you’re still on track).

During these 45 minute sessions we can tackle:

Productivity
Creative blocks
Time management
Story points
Your plan for developing your writing career

And I will critique one of your stories each week, to review your progress and help with your writing development.

If you’re really serious about getting your writing life in gear, this kind accountability will make the difference between wishing and doing.

Just the course? ~~$147~~ $97

Add on the Bonus Coaching now? $147

Announcing the 7DayStory Webinar

In case you missed the last post:

As you’ve probably noticed I’ve been working on a little side project called The 7Day Story(write, revise and release a short story in 7 days).

It’s like a graduation gift for people who have been through StoryADay: a little more time to work on a single story; a little more help with the ‘what now?’ after you’re finished your first draft.

I’m working with Gabriela Pereira of DIYMFA.com and we recently ran a challenge where we guided people through the process of writing, revision and releasing a story in 7 days. The feedback was phenomenal, so we’re running the challenge again, starting on July 1. You can sign up here.

But this time we’re previewing the whole thing in a free webinar, next Wednesday. Join us, live online, for the webinar, and we’ll take you through our week-long inspiration, drafting, and tiered revision process — a process that you can use over and over again to turn out polished short stories in next-to-no-time. We’ll take questions during the webinar, so do sign up if you have any questions to ask us about the process, or tips for first-timers. We’ll also be making a big announcement during the webinar that I think you’re really going to like (we’re putting the final touches to that right now. Shhhh!).

A little bit about my co-conspirator: Gabriela Pereira (who actually has a fancy, traditional MFA) has made it her mission to show the rest of us how to get all the good parts of a University-based MFA, without the time-wasting and crippling tuition bills. She has loads of enlightening things to say about the revision process, which really complement what I try to do here at StoryADay.org (which is mostly about inspiring you and empowering you to get those first drafts done). I’ve learned a lot from her already and, in The 7DayStory, we’ve put together a set of tools which take you that next mile along the writing road.

Join us for the 7DayStory webinar, on Wednesday, June 26, 2013, at 1PM (EST, GMT -5).

(If you can’t make it to the webinar, make sure you’re on the mailing list so you hear about our Big Announcement, when it’s ready!)