Start Collecting Story Sparks

Writing a story a day for a month is exhilarating…and a little exhausting.

That’s why I send you writing prompts, but the prompt is just the start.

You have to take that idea and develop it into something that interests YOU, and hat can be hard to do every day, when you’re in a time-crunch.

So let’s do some prep this month.

Start Colleting Story Sparks Today

What is a Story Spark?

Read all about it and download your free Story Sparks Catcher here.

Start collecting three Story Sparks a day today, and you’ll have enough details to draw from throughout the whole month of May

Discussion questions: have you used Story Sparks in past challenges? Did they help? What advice do you have?

Making the Challenge Work For You

Welcome to a new series of tiny tasks to help you prepare for the StoryADay Challenge.

  • If you have signed up for this year’s challenge these tasks will automagically appear in your inbox every morning.
  • Each task should take 5-8 minutes to complete.
  • You can do them as they come in, or save them up and do a couple at a time, if you miss a day.

This challenge—this whole StoryADay venture—is about helping your writing trend towards being a bigger part of your life than you’ve been able to allow it to be, until now.

Miss a day? Don’t despair! Just keep opening the emails. The trend is what matters.

Today’s challenge is to read the Creative Commute lesson and give it a try today.

tl;dr Version:

  • Transitioning from daily life to ‘writing time’ can be hard.
  • Long warm-ups (like my beloved Morning Pages) can steal your time and not prepare you for creative work
  • Set a timer for no more than a third of your available writing time and use it to write about something that you noticed/delighted in over the past 24 hours. Be as writerly as you can.
  • Move on to your project of choice.

For more (including notes on an Evening Commute along with a pretty PDF download) click here.

Then come back and leave a comment: did you try the Creative Commute? Did it work for you? Will you try the Evening Commute?

April Warm Up Tasks

If you’re signed up for StoryADay May I have good news:

Starting tomorrow, I’m planning to send out tiny tasks, every week day in April, to help you warm up and get ready for a fantastic May. They’ll be here on the blog and, if you’re signed up for the challenge, in your inbox too.

They’re optional, should take less than 10 minutes, and can be done in batches at the weekend, if your week gets busy.

Not signed up for May yet? Sign up now:

Writing Prompt: Weather Happens

A 0:00:47-long dose of inspiration


Our characters don’t exist in a vacuum (well, except for the occasional sci-fi character shoved out of an airlock…and they don’t tend to exist for very long). Today’s prompt encourages you to think about the weather and how it might affect your characters’ plans.