The Power of Inconvenience

In which I caution you against looking for answers in the wrong places….

Back in the mists of time, when I worked in an office–before remote working, before video conferencing—we worked together, but separately, each in our own little cubicles. 

From time to time we got up and wandered over to the coffee machine for sustenance—both of the caffeine variety and the human variety. 

You’d see someone, ask about their day, laugh about shared customer-challenges, and wander back to your desk refreshed.

It worked because you were seeing people who shared common experiences (You knew the aims of the company, who the good bosses were, and that nobody should ever reheat fish in the office microwave).

Early online communities and social media were like that…but for stuff you actually did for fun.

Twitter, in 2007, was the online equivalent of the office coffee machine, but for writers and other freelancers who worked alone for most of the day; for people who knew nobody else in their zipcode who was still mourning the cancellation of “Firefly”; and where people with the same twist to their sense of humor could find each other.

So why doesn’t StoryADay have a free community, like so many other writing sites?

Well, when I started StoryADay in 2010 it actually did have a free community (a Buddypress forum that felt a lot like a Twitter feed), but it was hard to lock out the spammers, so I shut it down and went back to asking people to leave comments on blog posts.

Here in 2026 I still ask people to check in by leaving comments on blog posts, which feels impossibly retro now and yet, and yet…

I’m increasingly coming to believe in the power of inconvenience.

If someone replies to your blog comment, you have to make the effort to come to the site and find it to reply to it. 

It doesn’t pop up on your phone and pull you away from whatever you were thinking about a moment ago. You have to set aside time to pull up StoryADay.org and find the post and see if anyone replied. 

You can choose not to.

And if you choose not to, what have you really lost?

I, as the host of StoryADay, have lost the opportunity to hook you into my platform day and night, and so, StoryADay has never gone viral, never had a splashy influx of hundreds of thousands of users, never had companies beating down the door to sponsor posts.

And, equally, we’ve never had any problems with bad behaviour, or people losing days–or weeks–to feuds and drama.

What we have had is thousands of writers who drop by to be inspired by a prompt, share a cheery word of encouragement with another writer, or leave a comment to tell me a story they started during a previous StoryADay May is just about to come out in XYZ Magazine.

Maybe I should have built an addiction machine, where I could sell my captive audience into ever-more-expensive programs until I could hire a bunch of coaches to replace me and retire to a windswept island off the coast of Scotland.

At any point, I could have hosted a message board or forum at the site, started a Facebook group or a sub-Reddit, formed a Patreon, or a MightyNetwork, or a Skool, a Substack or a Discord (I mean, doesn’t everyone have a Substack or a Discord, now?)

But, it has always come back to this:

My aim is to encourage you to write more. 

And I’ve never been able to convince myself that creating a fun place for you to hang out in your spare time, instead of writing your next story, was my best move.

(And I certainly didn’t want to spend all my time moderating comments.)

But what about your Superstars Group, I hear you ask; don’t they have a community?

Yes. the StoryADay Superstars group—my subscription-based membership group for writers who want support as they create their writing practice—has a text-based community, but it works for the reasons that the old workplace coffee machine worked:

  • There aren’t very many of us (Superstars will never have more than 150 people in the group, and I suspect the sweet spot is somewhere under 100), so everyone feels seen.
  • We all share the same experiences: writing sprints, workshops, critique weeks, hangouts and coaching
  • We all understand the group’s aims: to get us all writing more, and feeling more successful. 
  • People have made a commitment, in order to be there. By paying a membership fee they have said to themselves: I am a writer. I take this seriously.

It’s fun to pop in and leave a comment or answer a question, and get that deep sense that, no you are not the only one who struggles with this or that aspect of the writing life. 

But the chatter is never overwhelming. 

Just like when I was back at the office, I think we feel the peer pressure of the group subtly saying, ‘ok, that was fun, but isn’t it time to get back to work, now?’

Why am I telling you this?

In part, because I wonder if you think it’s strange that I don’t have a more modern way for you to connect with other writers, and why the most effective way is behind a paywall.

But mostly, I hope you’ll heed this warning: there are a million and one writing communities out there, of varying quality. Some are free. Some promise the world. Some will suck the life right out of you and most will eat all of your free (aka ‘writing’) time.

If you find yourself in writing Discords or Substack communities, or Facebook groups that don’t propel you away from the group, inspired to write; and instead you just keep scrolling, scrolling, scrolling…I’m going to suggest that you step away. 

Maybe just for a day or two. Try it out.

Trust me when I say:

  • You don’t need another tip on how to write dialogue. 
  • You don’t need to know who’s saying what about AI this week.
    You need to write your next story. 
  • You need to finish that chapter. 
  • You might need to go and read a real book, to get inspired. 
  • Or perhaps you need to go outside and feel the wind on your face, and gaze into the deep blue of the twilight sky for an unreasonably long time, and be struck, once again, with awe at your speck-like existence in this improbable, ridiculous universe. 

This is what I remind myself every time I see another writer, or writing teacher, offering an invitation to their free Discord and wonder, “Should I be offering that too?”

And this is what I hope you’ll remind  yourself any time you are temped to go online to find the answer to a question that you know, deep down, can only be found inside yourself, and birthed into the world through the process of you fumbling your way through drafts, and revisions, and through the messy, frustrating joy of this thing we call writing.

Actually-writing harder than scrolling a ‘community’ feed. It’s scarier. And, in the end, sweeter. 

Keep writing,

Julie (signed)

Julie Duffy

How To Be More Disciplined, As A Writer

In an early scene in the ‘fish out of water story’ TV show Ted Lasso, Ted—an American—is offered a cup of tea by his British host. He sips the tea and promptly spits it out…right into the face of his glamorous new boss.  

“It’s horrible,” he says, shaking his head.

Same, Ted. Same.

I have a cup of tea about once a year, just to make sure I’m not missing something. 

Nope. Still horrible.

What Does “Discipline” Taste Like, To A Writer?

When I ask writers about their biggest challenge ‘time’ is always number one, with ‘focus’ or ‘discipline’ or ‘consistency’ running a close second.

But what does ‘more focused’, ‘more disciplined’ or ‘more consistent’ look, smell, feel, and taste like?

As a Brit, ‘tea’, to me, has a narrow definition. “Tea”=black tea…and I do not like it.

But if we allow ‘tea’ the more expansive definition Americans often use, I can like ‘tea’. There are plenty of herbal infusions that give me actual pleasure.

Define The Terms

The ‘Productivity industry’ has a lot to answer for. 

It has pushed a grim vision of ‘discipline’ that says if you don’t show up every day, and suffer a bit, you’re failing. 

I bought into it.

I started the StoryADay May Challenge because I thought I needed to write every day to ‘be a writer’. I couldn’t make myself do it for more than about 12 days and I thought that accountability and the threat of public shame would fix that.

Confession time

Forgive me writers, for I have failed: I have never once created that unbroken streak of days when I started and finished a story for 31 days in a row. 

Not once in 16 years.

Does that mean I’m not disciplined enough to be a writer? 

I’ve certainly wasted enough time worrying about that, over the years. 

Maybe you have, too. 

They Laughed At Me (in the nicest possible way)

It took other people laughing at me (kindly) to make me notice that there is a certain discipline (stubbornness?) and consistency in:

  • Running an annual challenge for 16 years straight; 
  • Writing five novel drafts; 
  • Writing enough short stories—and sending them to enough markets—that some of them have been published;
  • Leading a writing community for 8 years; 
  • Producing almost 340 podcast episodes and writing almost 2,500 blog posts about this writing journey we’re all on.

I still can’t write fiction every day.

 AND I have learned so much.

 ‘Failing’ my own challenge year after year is a delightful reminder to me that ‘disciplined’, ‘consistent’, or ‘focused’ are never going to look, for me, like creating an unbroken streak of days where I write new words. (Your mileage may vary.)

I need days off. I need time to wander around and breathe in life, without the pressure of having to synthesize those experiences and breathe them out into new words, today

.For me, ‘consistency’ and ‘discipline’ will likely always be lumpy, seasonal, cyclical things. 

Sometimes it looks like generating new words. 

Sometimes it looks like learning new skills

Sometimes it looks like taking two steps backwards as I experiment 

Sometimes, yes, it looks like staring out of the window or going on a long walk.

And it all adds up.

Do This Now

If you keep telling yourself you’re ‘failing’ to be consistent or ‘disciplined’ in your writing, look back over your lifetime and notice the times when you were most productive. 

  • What was working for you, then? (And it’s more than ‘I had more time’. It’s also ‘I had something I was trying to achieve’ or ‘I had someone cheering me on’ or even ‘I was paying for a class so I showed up’)
  • Did you ever need to sit at your desk for 3-4 hours every weekday to produce quality writing? (If not, why would you think that’s what a ‘successful writing life’ looks like, now?)
  • Take a look at your upcoming week and ask ‘what’s the tiniest step I could take to show up for my writing this week?’. Then put that on a piece of paper and carry it around with you. Do it. Celebrate with a dance party in the privacy of your bedroom (I suggest listening to music you loved as a teenager). Then come back and do it again. 

Practice joy in your writing life enough, and you’ll start to crave it. 

Consistency and discipline become issues you never have to worry about, because you’re chasing something better.

LEAVE A COMMENT: What has helped you feel more successful/joyful in your writing lately? What is an essential part of your practice? What’s negotiable?

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Why Bother Writing…

…in an age of AI?

Watch The Video Edition

I’m already starting to think about next year’s StoryADay May and, here in this age of AI, I was struck with the awful thought: why bother?

AI means you can generate 31 short story writing prompts in 90 seconds (5 minutes if you’re willing to wait for more polished prompts with a theme and multiple repetition. How do I know this? I asked it.)

It takes me roughly 3 months of (admittedly part-time) work to research guest authors, reach out to them, assemble their responses, curate and cue them up, create pretty images, summaries, and queue everything up.

But the point is that you get a human-created journey through a month of story writing. You get a peek inside the head of other writers. And you get to have the experience, along with other writers in the community.

It’s not for everyone. But I’ll keep doing it for you.

And also for me.

Because the work is not just about the prompts. It’s never just about the output, the end product.

Writing Changes Us

The struggle, the striving, the research, the craft, the failure, the resilience, the patience, the growth…It’s personal development at its finest.

How To Bother, in an age of AI

I’ve been preaching this for a decade and a half (and now I have the experience of leading a group for 8 years to back up my hypothesis). 

The most important foundation you can give your writing is to:

  1. Define success

If you don’t know what success means for you, how are you ever going to know if you’ve attained it.

Not someone else’s vision of success.

Yours.

And that means asking some questions about why you’re doing this.

  • Are you doing it to be published?
  • Are you trying to support yourself from your fiction writing?
  • Are you building a daily practice for self-development?
  • Are you trying to improve a particular craft skill?
  • Are you keeping a promise you made to yourself as a child?
  • Are you setting an example for a younger person in your life who needs to see what ‘self-respect’ looks like?

This is Step One. 

Without it, you will never be—or feel—successful, no matter what external measures of success you hit.

If you skip this step-–or if you think this remains static forever—it’s almost impossible to be productive, motivated, or fulfilled by writing. If you’re simply on a treadmill, turning out words, you’ll be consumed by the idea that it’s never enough—that you’re not enough.

Do This Now

If you haven’t taken the time to examine your definition of success lately—and perhaps to notice how it has changed since you were 14, 25, 35, 45—put down your pen, push away the keyboard, and spend the next week just noodling on these questions:

  • What does success look like for you, in the next few years?
  • In order to get there, what milestones would you have to hit, if any?
  • What would you have to do regularly, to feel successful when you look back at your month?
  • What does that look like, for today?

If you do this exercise right, you’ll notice that it becomes easier to show up for your writing and enjoy yourself.

Without taking this step, your internal ‘motivation process’ can look like this:

“Today I have to work on finishing the novel so that I can get it out into the world and quit my job and prove to [that friend/family member] that I haven’t been wasting my time all these years.” [Sighs. Drags self to coalface….]

Not only is that demotivating since your inner critic is bound to kick in and try to keep you safe by pointing out how hard it is to do what you’ve outlined. It’s also doomed to fail, as a path to success today, because it’s impossible to figure out what first step to take today. 

And so it’s impossible to know when you’ve finished your work for the day. Without a clear definition of what success looks like to you, you’re likely to do nothing, or to keep working until you’re so exhausted you have to stop. Neither of which makes you feel successful, or advance you towards external success. 

So you pick up your phone and doomscroll and go to bed promising to do twice as much tomorrow, still without a clear idea of what that looks like.

No More Doomscrolling

If you have done the work to figure out what ‘success’ looks like for you—for now—your internal motivational conversation goes more like one of this:

“I know I want to finish this novel, because I want to prove to myself that I can write something I’m proud of. I need to finish the scene where the protagonist confronts the bad guy, but I’m having trouble doing it. Maybe I need to back up and do some character exercises (from that course/book I bought and never finished) to figure out the characters’ real motivations. OK, that won’t add to the manuscript’s word count today, but I’ll learn more about the characters, which might free me up to write the actual scene tomorrow. So today’s task is: find that character exercise I remember liking in that course I took, and go through it slowly. When I’ve done that I’ll summarise my thoughts, for next time, then my reward will be to take a walk outside.”

(Notice the reward. That’s a key part of building a satisfying practice and feeling successful in it.)

Picture The Day

Imagine yourself at the end of a day when you’ve ground through 2,000 words or four scenes, because “that’s what successful writers do”, and then collapsed on the couch with a whisky, ‘to recover’. 

No imagine yourself at the end of a day when you took a small concrete step that aligns with your goals and your current energy, and that you can put a checkmark next to as ‘accomplished today’. You bound out of your chair with energy left over to hang with the kids or the spouse, knowing that you’ll be back in a day or two to tackle the next task.

Doesn’t that feel like a successful writing life, regardless of external rewards or judgment?

So should you bother writing, in an age of AI, even if the external rewards you once hoped for aren’t guaranteed?

I, for one, say “yes”.

Need help tracking your successes? Get the Planning & Tracking Bundle

LINKS

LINKS

StoryADay Challenge archive: https://storyaday.org/writing-prompt-archive/

SWAGr monthly accountability posts: https://storyaday.org/category/swagr

‘Define Success’ article: https://storyaday.org/how-to-become-a-highly-successful-writer/

The Dream of being a Writer, article: https://storyaday.org/the-dream/

Permission to Write article (and certificate): https://storyaday.org/write-more-permission-to-write/

The I, WRITER Framework for a Successful Productive Writing Life, article: https://storyaday.org/i-writer-framework/

Planning & Tracking Worksheets Bundle: https://storyaday.kit.com/products/story-a-day-planning-tracking-worksheets

StoryADay Superstars group: https://storyaday.org/superstars

Book a 1:1 Writing Strategy Session with Julie: https://members.storyaday.org/creative-coaching

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.

…

…

…

Take a moment.

Take a breath.

…

…

…

…

…

…

Think about what you achieved.

…

…

…

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

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