095 – Flash Fiction Part 1

February is the shortest month, so we’re focusing on the shortest of fiction: flash! 

(And, yes, I know there are shorter forms, but this is the particular short-short form I picked, ok?)

This week I talk about what flash is and why you might want to be writing it. Includes bonus trivia about Impressionism.

 

LINKS

Last week’s flash fiction writing prompt: https://storyaday.org/wow-make-it-flash/

The latest Reading Room review featuring flash fiction: https://storyaday.org/rr-meteor-mccolough/

This month’s Accountability Group post: https://storyaday.org/swagr-feb-2017/

Follow StoryADay on Twitter: @storyadaymay

 

Another new episode of Write Every Day, Not “Some Day”

085 – Refilling The Well

This month’s theme at StoryADay is “Refilling The Well”, in which I encourage you to find many ways of rebooting your creativity…largely by taking a break from your writing.

 

Links:

Bookriot’s Best Books of 2017, So Far

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams (af)

 

Another new episode of Write Every Day, Not “Some Day”

001 – Don’t Let Guilt & Shame Derail Your Writing

Audio Player

Not living up to your writing resolutions? Learn how to harness guilt, dismiss shame, and focus on the things that will help you be more productive and creative.

May 6 – Ripped From The Headlines

The Prompt

Steal a story from another source, and use it as inspiration

Tips

Great places to look for stories like this include:

  • News sites. Subjective sites like TMZ and Unworthy give you more editorial and emotion to work with. Harder news sites like The New York Times or the BBC, or the front page of Wikipedia, will give you more facts and less interpretation. Depending on your personality, one or other approach might be more inspiring to you.
  • Obituaries and alumni magazines are great places to find character studies. Obits give you a person’s life, summed up and including the one or two personal details someone else thought were the most interesting. Alumni magazines offer an insight into character in a different way: what kind of person updates their alumni magazine on ‘what I’ve been up to’? What kinds of things do these people think are worthy of report. What does that say about them?

GO!

Post a comment at the blog to let us know you’ve written today, or join the community and post in the Victory Dance Group.

The Time You Spend Waiting To Begin

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

via Neil Gaimans Journal.

This except comes from a compendium of New Year’s Wishes from the master of modern storytelling, and champion of creatives, Neil Gaiman.

All of the New Year’s wishes are inspirational but this one struck me particularly.

  • We struggle to find time to write.
  • We make excuses for not doing the thing we love, in case we’re not good enough.
  • We say we’ll be creative another day, just as soon as we’ve cleared out plates of these urgent (but not necessarily important) tasks.

So try.

Try to do something creative today.

Then do the same tomorrow.

It’s worth it. I promise.

Need help getting started? Breaking Writers’ Block: A StoryADay.org Guideis chock-full of 60+ suggestions for ways to get started, even on the hardest day.