StADa: When did you first participate in StoryADay?
SC: My first StoryADay was in May 2013. I wasn’t really much of a short fiction writer, but I thought it seemed like a great creative challenge.
StADa: How did StoryADay affect your writing?
SC: I had written a novel and had queried agents to a chorus of rejections and was feeling in a real creative slump. I was working on another novel, but wasn’t happy with the progress. So when the StoryADay challenge came up I thought I could manage to write short pieces for a month, and it would be a change. Give me a chance to get some creative energy flowing, which it did. I had great fun with it, and now write quite a lot of flash fiction.
StADa: What advice do you have for writers thinking about jumping in to StoryADay May?
SC: I think writers should just approach it with the spirit of adventure. It’s a challenge, but great fun. Plus you always have wonderful prompts which writers can follow or not. There’s something very satisfying about finishing a piece of fiction and saying, “Ta da! I did it.” And once you get through the month, you’ll have thirty-one (or however many) stories that you can polish up and submit. Or just put them out on your blog. That’s amazing.
StADa: How’s your writing going now?
SC: Happily, I did find an agent and my novel, The Eighth Circle, a noir thriller, did find a home. It will be published in January 2016 by Crooked Lane Books. Sometimes you just need a spark to get everything moving. I’m now working on a sequel to that novel, and I will be doing StoryADay May this year.