Triumph – StoryADay

Too Many Voices

For when you want to Do All The Things…

Are you sick of people telling you what you should be doing? (I know I am!)

There are so many things a writer ‘could’ be doing (social media, courses, mentorships, retreats, conferences, residencies…)

And only one thing a writer must do: write.

It’s easy to be distracted by the former, to the detriment of the latter.

So Much Noise

After the New Year lull, we’re hading into a season where it seems everyone is inviting you to attend a writers’ conference, a course, a retreat, a summit…and you’re going to have to tune most of it out—along with the FOMO—if you want to do any writing.

In my experience, the best way to stay focused and keep making progress is to limit your options: find one group where you belong, one teacher or annual conference that works for you, and then tune out the rest…for now.

Signal vs Noise

How do you identify the places that work for you?

There’s some trial and error, but here are some questions you can use while you’re evaluating different options:

Does showing up for these events make me more productive or just aspire to be more productive?
Do I come away from these events exhausted or exhilarated?
Does belonging to this group fill me with a restless energy to create, or do I feel like showing up at the event/class/conference ticks the creativity box and I can do nothing until the next scheduled event?
Am I inspired to write more, by the people around me?
Do I often learn something new that I can put into practice in my own writing right now, or is the teaching at the wrong level/stage for me?

If the answers to these questions are ‘yes’, stick with those groups, conferences or teachers until you start to answer ‘no’ more often than not.

The Most Valuable Question

That last question (“Do I learn something that I can put into practice in my writing right now”) is the really important one.

You might like the people or the teacher, but find that being with them doesn’t make you more productive. This can happen if:

They’re operating at a different level of ambition than yours
They’re working at a different skill level from yours (either far behind where you are or so far ahead that it’s not inspiring, it’s discouraging.)

It’s Not A Race

There’s so much to learn…but only so much you need to know right now.

Find the spaces that solve the challenges you are facing today.

Make progress on the challenges that face you today. Pause to celebrate and really FEEL that progress.

The rest can wait.

The Superstars Advantage
The fastest way to get better at writing stories is to write more stories — and reflect on them with other writers. That’s what the StoryADay Superstars group was built for.
You could do it alone, but why make it harder than it needs to be?
Find out more

How To Feel Good

…instead of feeling guilty about ‘not-writing’.

A couple of things happened this week that I wanted to share with you, my dear writer friends.

Saying ‘No’ For The Right Reasons

Firstly, we’re gearing up for Critique Week here at StoryADay, which means some writers were saying ‘yes!’ to the opportunity to share their work and get feedback.

And some writers said ‘no’.

They said ‘no’ for all kinds of reasons from: ‘Life is too busy’, to ‘I haven’t written anything for a while’, to ‘I can’t face it’.

But some writers in the StoryADay community let me know they were saying ‘no’ for the best of reasons: because they were busy working on projects that don’t need feedback yet.

(Hooray! More stories!)

There are so many opportunities out there to take classes, join groups, and generally get distracted by busy-work, that I’m celebrating those writers who said ‘not just now. I’m busy, writing!’

Piecing Together A Writing Life

In my eternal quest to help writers Actually Do The Thing (™), I scheduled a few extra ‘write with me’ sessions on Zoom for folks taking part in my Polish & Submit Sprint, leading up to Critique Week.

What happened next?

All those little 25-minute ‘sprints’ added up to 543 words here, 200 words there, a climax written, and stories that had been languishing on a hard drive, actually being finished.

Me? I chipped away at a scene that has bothering me for an embarrassingly long time…and had a breakthrough that allowed me to finish and submit a piece I’m pleased with.

I, and every one of those other writers felt AWESOME, because we showed up for our writing, and made incremental, sometimes startling, progress.

Lesson learned: show up often, focus on finishing things, have the courage to lean on your community…and writing—and sometimes writing breakthroughs–will happen.

What will you do, this week, to give yourself the gift of time to focus on your writing?

Reconnect With Wonder

How cultivating wonder can keep your creative energy flowing, and why it’s so important to nurture it…

This time last year I was able to travel to Scotland for a very happy reason — to party with my my parents on their 60th wedding anniversary.

The journey didn’t exactly go smoothly, but travel always offers the opportunity to see things in a new light: for example our inexplicably cancelled connecting flight from London to Glasgow turned into an impromptu train journey up the west coast of the UK, past Industrial-Revolution-era factory towns¹, old canals, rolling hills, fantasy-inspiring forests, and seas of purple heather.

I couldn’t stop looking out the window.

The locals? They were watching The Matrix on their phones².

It’s hard to maintain a sense of wonder in your everyday environment. But not impossible…

And that very sense of “wow” is what fuels our writing.

Why Wonder Matters for Writers

When we’re focused on creating the finished product — a story for a market, a novel in a particular genre — it’s easy to become anchored by expectations. That, in turn, kills our curiosity, our willingness to take risks, our sense of having fun.

And it defers all the opportunities to feel accomplished until “The Project Is Over”.

What a drag.

Cultivating a sense of Wonder brings back the fun.

It awakens your curiosity.

It keeps possibility alive.

PLUS behavioral scientists assure us that celebrating those little sparks of joy is what help you stay motivated for the long haul.

Practice Off the Page

Athletes don’t just show up for the game — they drill, train, and practice behind the scenes.

Writers need “practice time” too.

Think of some things you can do this week, away from the page, to exercise your Wonder muscles:

This “non-product-related” time feeds your creative brain.

Ways to Find Wonder

(Without Buying a ~~Plane~~ Train Ticket)

Change your route home from work. Notice what’s different.
Switch your grocery store. See how the new one is arranged.
Wind down the car windows and pay attention: the smells, the temperature, the sounds.
Order something new at your coffee shop, then describe it in writing.
Talk to a stranger. Find out what lights them up.
Visit an odd museum you’ve been ignoring (National Mustard Museum, anyone?).
Pull a random nonfiction book from the library shelves and leaf through it.
Look closely at weeds in a patch of earth — the shapes, the colors, the insects, the cracks they grow through.

This Month’s StoryADay Theme: Triumph

At StoryADay, Triumph means celebrating every tiny win. Spotting wonder counts. So does jotting down a phrase, or noticing a Story Spark like: the exact way you could represent the rhythm of rain on the roof.

Small celebrations keep you energized, curious, and writing.

Your assignment this week

Go somewhere new (or look at somewhere familiar in a new way) and find one small thing worth noticing. Write a few sentences about it — just for you.

Ready to turn those sparks of wonder into finished stories?

Take the 3-Day Challenge and write three short stories this weekend!

find out more

Take the 3-Day Challenge — a short-story writing course you can finish this weekend. Go from “idea” to “The End” in three days, and give yourself the gift of an achievement you can celebrate.

Join the discussion:
Where did you find wonder this week? What tiny moment felt worth celebrating?

Welcome, fellow fans of the board game Brass… ↩︎
Woah! ↩︎

Creativity: Bringing People Together

People are easily led. Let’s lead them to joy, through sharing things they can love.

Last night I got to be part of the audience, doing something like this

Jacob Collier is an extraordinary musician who does not do what he is told, or what others before him have done¹.

A few years ago he started experimenting with asking his audience to sing a note, then conducting them in a multi-part harmony, just by pointing at them. It’s quite something².

Bringing People Together

When so much about our public life is awful, and terrifying, and despair-inducing, it can be tempting to think that taking time out for moments of joy is somehow trivial or disrespectful.

It’s not. It’s essential.

Bringing people from all walks of life together to experience something—collectively, as at a concert or asynchronously, as with reading a good story—is important work.

It’s important that you write your stories.

It’s important that you make them good enough to share.

Because sometimes, when people come together and share a moment of joy—singing in unexpected harmony or sharing their love of a sarcastic security cyborg—it reminds them of how alike we all are.

Bad actors try to assemble their followers into a scared, exclusionary huddle.

It only takes one courageous person’s vision to bring people together for good.

Art matters.

Stories matter.

Your voice matters.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. It can be hard to gather the motivation to do the work in the face of, well, everything. Here’s a brand-new workbook to help you reconnect to your practice or your project. Download it now, as a thank you for following along on this writing journey with me!

Which doesn’t mean he’s a contrarian. His commitment to doing what he does, how he likes it, has led him to friendship with Quincy Jones, and a deal with Martin guitars where they produced a 5-string guitar for him, because he thought ‘why does a guitar have to have six strings?” ↩︎
I’ve been in choirs where we could not sing acapella and stay in tune. Last night, he led thousands of people through a long improvised harmonic thing and then brought back in an actual orchestra…and we were still on pitch! ↩︎

Who’s On Your Internal Coaching Team?

Do you have an inner critic or an inner coach? And which voice will help you become creative, happy, fulfilled writer?

…and is it time to fire them?

Remember the ancient times of last summer, during the Olympic games in Paris, when the media was flooding us with feel-good stories about quirky folks who had dedicated their life to pursuing excellence in one, extremely niche activity…and everyone thought it was cool?

Good times.

One story that stood out to me was the US Gymnastics team’s commentary on how much happier they were now that they had new coaches—coaches who motivated them with praise and love, rather than fear and shame.

Oh, and they still somehow managed to win the gold medal.

Who are your internal coaches modeled on?

When you’re trying to motivate yourself to write, do you have:

A big, scary guy with a megaphone, barking at you and shaming you for not being perfect?
An indulgent hippy mom who says ‘that’s ok, whatever you feel like doing is fine’—even if that ‘whatever’ isn’t helping you reach your goals OR feel fine?
Or have you worked to install a positive, loving voice that tells you to set tiny goals that you can exceed and who encourages you to celebrate like mad when you reach or exceed them.

Guess which voice I’m going to recommend recruiting to your internal coaching team…

Celebrate Success, Every Day

Habit experts, like BJ Fogg, tell us that outsized celebrations for achievable goals are key to maintaining a new habit.

Lay down those dopamine pathways in the brain by getting up and punching the air every time you meet your new wordcount! (It feels silly, but it helps your brain associate ‘writing time’ with ‘feel-good time’.)

Productivity experts, like Adam Grant, tell us that striving for perfection is a fool’s errand.

Instead, of aiming for ‘perfect’, try to make your work ‘perfectly acceptable’—that’s what experts and high-performing professionals do!

Cal Newport tells us it’s OK to slow down, to take one task at a time and do it as well as we can, today.

Performance experts, like Jim Murphy, tell us that “judgement and curiosity cannot co-exist. When we judge someone or something, curiosity goes out the window, and with it, creativity.”

Is It Time To Fire Your Inner Coach?

If the voice in your head is an old-school, 1970s-style gym teacher, screaming in your face every time you perform less than perfectly, perhaps it’s time to consider firing your inner coach.

Instead, invite in a more modern approach, like those used by high-performance athletes, executives, and, yes, writers, today.

Voices that say“

It’s ok to take your time; just keep moving
It’s good to rest; just make a plan for when you’ll start up again
Don’t judge; instead, be curious
Don’t try to be perfect; just try to trend upwards
Don’t compare yourself to anyone except you: yesterday, a year ago, ten years ago. Remember how far you’ve come
Be inspired by other people’s success, not envious or threatened; they’re raising the standards and giving you a reason to strive to be better
Celebrate every tiny triumph along the way; got to your desk? Punch the air! Opened your manuscript? Pat yourself on the back. Met your word count for today? Dance party in the kitchen!

Fear, shame, and bullying can get results for coaches, but not for long.

And you’re in this for the long haul, right?

Start cultivating modern, fair-but-firm internal coaching voices, that encourage you to live up to what you know you’re capable of, and who also remind you that one bad day is not the end of the world.

Join the discussion: What do your internal voices sound like? Where do you think they came from? What might a more-positive, productive voice say, instead?

The Power of Tiny Wins

Writing success doesn’t come from heroic marathons—even though we are about to embark on one.

The truth is that success comes from the steps you take to implement what you learn during the challenge. Showing up again and again, long after May is over, is what will drive you to your definition of success, whatever that is (more on that, next week).

And the way to keep showing up (aka ‘build a habit’) is to create an outsized celebration for every tiny step you take towards creating that habit.

Decide, Do, Celebrate

Choose one tiny writing task today—setting your intentions for your writing today; deciding to write one paragraph or sentence in your work in progress; opening your manuscript; noticing three Story Sparks, whatever. Just keep it tin.
Choose a celebration to do—it might be punching the air, doing a literal victory dance, spending two minutes coloring in a picture, laughing out loud, patting yourself on the back, eating a single delicious chocolate truffle or in-season strawberry that you have put on your desk before you started. Whatever you choose it should be absolutely immediate (no searching for stickers or promising yourself an ice cream later) and it should be something (like the a big grin or the victory dance) that changes your physical state.
When you do the good behavior, take the reward—We’re ‘burning in’ the ‘good behavior=reward’ pathway, as if we were puppies. And why not? It works for puppies, and it works for us too.

Discussion

Did you choose an immediate reward? Did you choose a tiny task? Did you do both, one after the other? Did it feel silly? If so you’re doing it right! Tell us what you did: