How To Choose What To Write

I got another great question from the StoryADay community this week and I thought you might be interested in eavesdropping on my answer.

But first, in Notes from Julie’s Desk, I’m going to confess that my own ambitions for One-Story September were derailed by sickness.

 Now that I’m on the mend, however, I can definitively assure you that—even if you start late—the One-Story method is paced to make sure you can still succeed. (Here on Day 5 I’m still fleshing out my story idea, but it’s proving extremely motivating to know I still have 25 days to work on this story, and a guided process to keep me on track. Want to join us? You can still do that, here.)

How To Choose What To Write

The question, paraphrased, was,

“I have so many ideas. How am I supposed to pick which one to work on? Or should I maybe try to incorporate them all into one piece? I don’t know…and then I get paralyzed.”

Sound familiar?

My answer went something like this.

Firstly, good for you for diagnosing the problem—that’s Step 1 in finding a solution. 

Secondly, this probably is much more common than you probably think. 

I firmly believe it’s one of the reasons a lot of writers get more done during challenges like StoryADay and when they have an upcoming deadline for a writing contest or themed anthology: the lack of choice is freeing.

OK, but without an external voice forcing your hand, how DO you choose?

The first thing to understand is that any choice you make is only a choice for now. 

That’s certainly easier to live with (especially during something like One-Story September) than the idea that you have to make the right choice, for all time.

Choose. 

Experiment. 

Examine what happened (and how you felt about it), and then 

Make another choice and run another experiment.

Does that really work?

“Creativity is not some privileged kind of thought free from constraint. Rather, it is normal problem-solving, just directed at a specific and interesting problem.” – Herbert A. Simon, quoted in Inside The Box by David Epstein.

This is both key and incredibly encouraging. Talent is not required. Genius is not required. A world-changing inspirational idea is not required. Just a problem that interests you, and your willingness to keep noodling on it.

There is no ‘right’ answer to ‘what should I write?’. Ever.

There are only these questions:

  • What specific idea do I find interesting, right now?
  • Can give it to a character and have it cause problems for them?
  • Can I sustain my interest in solving each subsequent wrinkle created as my character begins to tackle the main problem…until I reach the end?

Bonus tip: you won’t know if the answer is ‘yes’ until you get out of the abstract thinking phase and into the concrete ‘ideas on paper’ stage.

A short story—even a novel—has an end. The process of writing it has an end.. Any story you start should not become a life-long project.

You are experimenting. You are problem-solving.

So just pick something, and throw problems at your characters until they are smart enough to solve them (potentially happy ending), or have demonstrated that they can’t (potentially bleak ending).

Final caveat: the lure of the new idea is strong, especially when the problem-solving in your current project gets hard. Resist the urge to believe that you’re missing out on a ‘better’ idea, or a better story and abandon the one you’re working on. There’s nothing wrong with switching between projects if that makes your brain happy, but don’t believe the lie that there is a perfect idea, a perfect story out there waiting for you. Just keep solving problems.

Keep writing,

P. S. I’m serious: if you want to be writing and could use a framework to get you through this month, consider jumping in—fashionably late—to the One-Story Challenge.

How do you choose what to write? Does your method differ? Leave a comment here, and let me know.

The Short Story Advantage

If you’re here because you clicked through from my email saying: ‘interested in writing One Story along with me, thanks! Leave a comment, letting us know why you are excited about focusing on one story, for a month, or what you’ve achieved in past challenges.

“But I want to write novels! Why do people keep trying to get me to write short stories?!”

I hear you.

I used to simply answer: “If you don’t want to write short stories, you don’t have. Go, write your novels. Be free!”

Learning About Learning

Then I watched as thousands of writers struggled to get past the 30% mark of their novels, and got discouraged.

And I went and learned a few things about how we, as humans learn.

Turns out: it’s all very well to try new things, but unless you’re able to observe the consequences of your actions, you can’t know if what you’re trying is working.

Telling a story over the course of a novel might take you months or years.

Telling a story over the course of a short story is much faster.

  • You get to see and feel what ‘idea generation’, and ‘writing a bold beginning’ and ‘getting through the middle’ and ‘managing the turn towards the end’ all feel like.
  • You begin to be able the feel a story taking shape and tell if it’s correctly proportioned.
  • You get to find experiment with different styles and genres
  • You get to find out–more often and more quickly–what readers experience when you write different types of stories, characters, endings, and language.

In short, you develop your craft skills more quickly when short stories are part of your practice because you:

  • Experiment more often and more freely,
  • Experience the consequences of those experiences for your characters, stories, and readers.
  • Can adjust course or abandon experiments more often, and try something new.

And don’t even get me started on the value of a having ‘low cost of entry’ ways for new readers to experience your writing and discover they love you; or the marketing options that open up for you if you have ‘teasers’, ‘interludes’, or ‘reader magnets’ in short form, to invite readers in or keep them interested while you’re finishing off the next novel.

You Don’t Have To Love Short Stories…

…but it’s a really great idea to incorporate them into your writing life

(There’s a reason MFA programs feature them so heavily.).

I still hate the idea of them being ‘just for practice’, but the reality is that—even though they can be so much more—they actually are really good practice in storytelling.

Fiction Is Hard, Even For Good Writers

If you’re a good writer you might have ended up in a profession that has writing as a part of it, but here’s a hard truth: it may have trained you out of being good at writing fiction.

  • If a life in journalism has stunted your ability to spin out a longer tale
  • If you’ve been away from fiction writing for a while
  • If your day job requires you to manipulate language to sell things to people, or write persuasive copy, or organize technical manuals

…coming back to fiction can be humbling. Being able to string words together in pretty sentences is only one of the skills you’ll need.

Short stories are a great way to level up in all those other skills.

Yes, you may want to write novels—you may have started or even finished a couple.

But if you are finding it slow-going, consider spending a little time with me here, in the One Story Challenge – The Whole Story Edition, coming live in September 2026.

This Is Not The StoryADay Challenge

In fact, it’s kind of the anti-StoryADay Challenge.

I’ve run this twice before, each time forcusing on a different fiction skill (“Show, Don’t Tell”, and “Mastering The Middle”).

Each time, I’ve led a group of writers through a month of bite-sized tasks that took them through the process of

  • coming up with a new story idea
  • fast-drafting a version of the story
  • sticking with it throughout the month to craft a complete story they’re proud of.

Along the way they’ve benefitted from:

  • 3-4 small lessons and prompts a week, to keep them on track
  • A community of other writers going through the process at the same time
  • Bonus writing sprints and Q&A sessions with me
  • Built-in ‘Rest and Recharge’ days every week
  • The limited container of a single month, to create just enough urgency that you get the story finished.

The Whole Story

This year the challenge is focused on ‘The Whole Story’, which means we’ll be making sure each part of the story adds up to a well-structured whole.

By the end of the month you’ll have learned a whole lot about your writing, your skills, your interests, and you’ll have proved to yourself that you can finish, and learn from writing a single story — one that is more complex than the kind of one-day Flash Fiction we often create during StoryADay May.

Sound interesting? Sign up for updates. It’s coming soon.

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What’s Next?

Making progress in your writing life

If you took part in the StoryADay May Challenge you might be finding yourself confused. 

You wrote so much in May and now? Now, it’s hard to get anything done.

You’re Progressing, Not Graduating

As a creative person, there is never a moment that you can point to and say, “That’s it. I’m finished.” We will always strive to be better…and so it’s important to notice the milestones along the way.

Don’t beat yourself up for losing momentum after the challenge (or any big writing push).

It’s possible you needed a break.

But it’s also possible you miss the structure of the challenge.

So, in case Option B applies to you, here’s my suggestion for the next four weeks, so that you can feel yourself making consistent progress without burning out.

Read: Your Four-Week Writing Momentum/Rescue Plan

It takes through a four week plan to:

  • Notice what you achieved
  • Set a short-term goal
  • Work on a specific craft skill
  • Finalize a draft of a single story

Each week I encourage you to focus on one thing (while, obviously, doing many other things at the same time) so that you can feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of a defined period (in this case, the next four weeks).

Give it a try then come back and tell me how it went.

Blank Space

Tomorrow the 2026 StoryADay May Challenge will be over.

There’s an urge to keep running, to decide what to do next, how to keep the momentum rolling…

…But I’m going to encourage you instead to stop.

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Take a moment.

Take a breath.

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…

…

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Think about what you achieved.

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Sit with that for a few days.

Then, let’s plan for what comes next.

A Stupendous Amount of Writing

It’s tempting to think that other writers have it easier, or other times were easier on writers.

  • Wasn’t it easier to get published when there were more independent publishing houses?
  • Wasn’t it easier to make a living at writing in the golden age of magazine publishing?
  • All those other writers who are selling their work must have some kind of cheat code that they’re not sharing with us, right?

This week I read the editorial in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, a relatively new publication at the time. The magazine was making its mark, in part, by offering the highest rates in the market in order to attract the best writers. And they did—publishing Brandbury, Asimov, Clarke, Del Ray, Simak, in their primes.

But here’s a snippet from the editorial that I found weirdly encouraging. Editor H. L. Gold was trying to explain to readers how the economics of the writing business work, but I think he left an important message for us writers, too:

“Counting false starts, stories that won’t work out, stories that shouldn’t have been written at all but seemed good at the time, research, productive labor, etc., it takes a stupendous amount of writing even at the highest rates to support an author and his family on magazine sales alone.”

-H. L. Gold, Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1951

There’s your cheat code: there is no cheat code.

There’s just ‘a stupendous amount of writing’. 

Which we love to do, anyway, right?

Looking At The Wrong Metric

When people think of success as a writer, they tend to measure external, visible rewards: sales, income, awards, praise, etc.

But the rewards, if we’re honest, hit most deeply in those moment when a story draft pivots towards it’s real purpose, when you suddenly know what the story is really about; or when you realize you’ve revised it as far as you can, and it’s ready to be read by someone else.

The real reward is in the writing. 

What stalls a lot of people is the sense that you’re doing it wrong if you’re making ‘false starts, stories that won’t work out, stories that shouldn’t have been written at all but seemed good at the time…’

If you feel like you’re ‘not a real writer’ because it requires a stupendous amount of writing to generate the occasional piece that works, H. L. Gold would like a word…

He left those words in his editorial to justify paying the highest rates on the market; and they serve to remind us writers, that this was never easy. And that’s OK. 

Write a stupendous amount this week

If you’re an ambitious* writer, you have to write a stupendous amount to reap the rewards you’re after.  It’s not a race or a competition. You don’t have to burn out. But you do have to write. Probably more than is comfortable.

(*And ‘ambitious’ doesn’t have to mean ‘support myself financially via my writing’. That might be part of your ambition. But I suspect the true ambition is to do the best work you’re capable of.)

StoryADay May is an opportunity for you to find out what ‘a stupendous amount of writing’ feels like, over one month’s time. Are you capable of pushing through, writing when you don’t feel like it, and giving up on those ‘stories that should never have been written’?

If you want to feel the sharp satisfaction of success – whether that ‘success’ is ‘a day of good writing’ or ‘a story sold’, both are valid – remember that ‘a stupendous amount of writing’ is the baseline. It’s the thing that helps you find the stories, tell them well, and sense your own progress.

It’s OK if you don’t want to do all that work. If you have better things to do with your time, by all means do them.

But if you’re floating through life waiting for it to become easy I have some bad news: the struggle is frustrating, and annoying, and sometimes painful, but it’s also where the rewards lives.

What will you write, this week?

Here are the most recent prompts from the StoryADay challenge

Day 17 – A Critical Day, from Mary Robinette Kowal

Day 18 – Expanded Idioms, from Julie Duffy

Day 19 – Inspired by Artemis II, from Julie Duffy

Day 20 – Making a Grocery List, from Brenda Rech

Day 21 – The Nitty Gritty, from Ruby G. Dubois

Day 22 – The Hero of their Own Story, from Julie Duffy

Day 23 – Beyond Sound and Vision, from Elizabeth Twist

Not sure how to get started with prompts? The StoryADay 2026 Handbook has custom warm-ups and brainstorming exercises designed to catapult you into your day’s writing. Get it now
(NOTICE: PRICE WILL INCREASE ON JUNE 1, 2026)

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Get the StoryADay Challenge Handbook for 2026 – custom warm-up and brainstorming exercises for every prompt, delivered as a private podcast with transcripts.
SUBSCRIBE NOW

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Get the Essential StoryADay Challenge Handbook (the one that’s a short story course disguised as a challenge) from 2024. Video, audio, written lessons & captions
START HERE

Failing at Writing? Now What?

There comes a time in every writing push when it feels like you’re failing. 

Whatever goal you set, you’re not meeting it. 

You’re imperfect. And your best intentions, it turns out, aren’t enough.

If this is you, you are not alone…and I have a fix: Instead of hoping to find time for writing, you must take concrete steps to make sure writing happens.

Startitis

We start projects (stories, a novel, a challenge) with the best of intentions. 

This time, we say…This time I’ll do it perfectly. If I just work harder, I won’t have bad days.

Yeah…that’s not a thing.

When It Gets Tough

Writers aren’t machines. 

We do have to keep showing up even when it doesn’t feel easy, but to do that and stay productive, you must show up with a boatload of compassion and joy. 

That is  easier to do a, when there are fewer decisions to make and b, when you’re around other people who get it.

Not “Will I Write?” But “When Will I Write?”

I’m as allergic to being told what to do and when to do it, as the next neurodiverse/creative person.

And yet.

Writing time doesn’t just appear because we want it to.

If you’re having trouble showing up for your writing right now (looks in the mirror. Nods.) you might need to take a look at your schedule and see if you have planned time where the writing can happen.

Without a plan, it won’t happen.

Even if you plan to write on Friday afternoon but get suddenly inspired as soon as you wake up, that’s fine. Flexibility is good. 

But having a plan–even one you react against–is a powerful way to limit the number of decision you have to make in the moment, and hoard your creativity for the actual writing..

Making time for your writing a gift

… to yourself and the world. 

It’s not about creating a rigid conveyor-belt-of-words you must staff at all times. 

It is about making your writing a priority, before other people’s priorities steal all your time away from you.

So. I’m off to put some potential writing times on my calendar. How about you?

Inspiration Corner

Here are some prompts that you might have missed, this month, to get your creative wheels turning.

Days 1-9

Day 10 – Darkness to Light, from Renan Bernardo

Day 11 – Inhumanity, from Julie Duffy

Day 12 – The Visitor, from Debbie Ohi Ridpath

Day 13 – Here’s a Quarter…, from Michele Reisinger

Day 14 – Mine your Emotions, from Jluie Duffy

Day 15 – Anarchic Archetype, from Julie Duffy

Day 16 – I Think I Can, from Somto Ihueze

Keep writing,

Julie