December 14, 2024 • 25 mins
What's life really like as a writer?
Well, the answer is as varied as the number of writers you ask, but for me, this is how things are going: Listen in, you might be inspired!
LINKS
Join Superstars + I, WRITER Course at a discount before Dec 15, 2024 https://storyaday.org/superstars
Writing Prompts: https://storyaday.org/writing-prompt-archive/
Flash Fiction Primer: https://storyaday.org/flash-fiction-essentials/
The StoryADay blog: https://storyaday.org/blog
CHAPTERS
00:27 Bluesky/BSKY
05:16 Flash Fiction Notes
11:49 The Power Of Others
20:32 Recap
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Good morning, goodevening, good afternoon.
Julie from Story A Day here and thisweek's podcast I'm going to catch you
up with a bunch of things that have beengoing on in my writing week in the hope
that I can inspire you or encourage you tothink about your own writing, maybe give
you a few ideas and just share this thingthat we do, maybe some resources as well.
(00:25):
So I'm Things from my week.
I joined BlueSky and I always liketo investigate new technologies
and platforms and things like that.
And I, Twitter has been increasinglyunusable for the past month.
nine years.
I loved it back in 2007, allthe way through to about 2015.
(00:46):
And then I started to hate it, and I neverreally liked Facebook, but I jumped on
Threads to see what was going on there.
And I've been trying to use Instagram,but for my purposes, it's not really
great, because it's a visual website.
platform and I'm not really in thevisual medium and you can't provide
links because how I always used to usesocial media was to provide links to
resources, places you could submit things,articles I'd written, things like that.
(01:10):
So I jumped on BlueSky whenit launched and I tried
Mastodon, didn't like that much.
Jumped on BlueSky, it was interesting,it felt like Twitter in the old days,
but there weren't that many peoplethere and then something happened.
Last month, in the wake of the USelection, a lot of people in the
(01:30):
arts, who tend to not be super rightwing, let's just say decided that
they didn't want to be left wing.
on the billionaire's platforms as much.
And a lot of us had decided that awhile ago, but there was a huge influx
of people, coming off Twitter/X,and a lot more, publications jumped
(01:52):
over, a lot of writers who had clungon on X for a long time, because
they, that's where they were, andthat's where their community was.
They jumped ship.
And 25 million users are now on BlueSky.
So I am finding that is where thebest conversations are happening.
Threads was good for a while, but it isalso fairly aggressively using algorithms
(02:16):
to downrank things with links in thembecause they take you off their platform.
And BlueSky doesn't seemto be doing that yet.
I find Instagram almost unusablenow because of all the ads.
And also just again, menot a visual creator.
Enjoy other people's visual creations,but I'm not a visual creator.
So the reason I'm telling you this is I'mgoing to be posting more on BlueSky these
(02:39):
days because I really noticed engagementincreasing over the past month or so.
There's a lot more happening.
It's more easy to find the stuffthat you've actually followed.
The downside when not a lot ofpeople were using it was that there
wasn't a lot going on every time Irefreshed and that wasn't, feeding
my little dopamine craving addiction.
So now when I go on,there's more stuff on there.
(03:02):
More likely to get interactionson my posts, more likely to see
interesting posts from people who Iused to follow years ago on Twitter.
I've been finding a whole bunchof the writing community on there.
People I haven't seen for years,I haven't seen their stuff, like
Elizabeth Spann Craig, who alwayshas tons of fantastic links.
People like that who I'mlike, oh, where have you been?
(03:22):
And the truth is, she's beenon Twitter and I haven't.
She's on Blue Sky now and thepublications are on Blue Sky.
There's a thing on Blue Sky called StarterPacks where people put together basically
like lists of accounts that you can followand you can follow them all with one click
and I followed one the other day whichwas a list of a starter pack for flash
(03:43):
fiction publications and oh my heart I'mso happy because now when I open up my
little social media feed to get My hit,which I trained myself to do 12 years ago.
I'm not seeing ads for productsand services and stuff like that.
I'm seeing posts from flash fictionmarkets who are talking about the
(04:06):
stories that they're publishing.
They're talking aboutcalls for submission.
They're talking about contests that theirpublished stories have been selected,
or have won or end of year lists thattheir stories have been listed in.
And this is what's filling up my feed.
It's filling up my feedwith writerly goodness.
And, for now, I'm enjoying that.
I'm not encouraging you to get ontoBlue Sky and spend all your day
(04:28):
scrolling, but if you're looking forsomewhere, if you're looking to find
out where the writing community decampedto, I'm going to suggest Blue Sky.
So it's bsky.
social and you will find me thereat my usual story a day handle.
So storyaday.
bsky.
social.
And
you can follow me, and youcan follow people I follow.
(04:49):
Or you can just ignore the wholething, and get back to your writing.
And I will share with you here, andon my blog , and in my newsletter,
my emails, I will share with youinteresting stuff that I find there.
So that is there's something that, that'sa service that I offer to you, for free.
I troll the, trawl, I should say,not troll, I don't troll, I trawl
(05:10):
the resources and share them withyou so you don't have to, so you
can get back to your writing.
One of the things that the flashfiction surge in my feed has reminded
me that I have wandered away fromflash fiction for a while, because
you can't be doing everything, right?
You can't do everything, everywhere allat once, despite what the film would tell
(05:33):
you ;), I am a huge fan of flash fiction.
I love it.
This year has been moreabout writing longer works.
So at the beginning of the year Iwas writing, focusing on novels.
In the, for Story A Day May, obviouslyI was writing flash pieces and short
pieces, but I wasn't really worryingabout them, I wasn't crafting them, I
(05:55):
was just writing them as raw material.
Later in the year, I've beenfocusing on the skill of
telling a slightly longer story.
A short story, but one of those,4, 000 word short stories, which
has never been my natural length.
So I'm exploring how to deepen storiesin my own writing without weighing
(06:17):
them down too much, without turningthem, without letting them expand
to novel scope, even novella length.
novellas yet, be honesttotally honest with you.
I don't really know whatgoes into a novella.
That's something that's on my list toinvestigate, but it's not something
I've researched and practiced yet.
(06:38):
What I have practiced a lot isflash fiction and short stories
and I've written five novels.
So those are the lengthsthat I am familiar with.
I won't say comfortable because Istill find novels a real struggle.
It's hard.
It's hard work.
I'm not a natural epic novelist.
I don't know if you are.
(06:58):
Some people find short stories reallyhard because they are naturally novelists.
So, Fine.
Anyway, flash fiction is on my mindbecause I've been looking at all of
these markets that are coming out andit reminded me that I have a flash
fiction workshop which I'm reallyproud of and it's inside the iWriter
course and you can also get access toit if you're in the Superstars group.
(07:21):
But I'm really proud of it because Icreated this flash fiction workshop which
is about 90 minutes long when I was inthe thick of just writing short stories.
I'd been doing story a day for abouteight years at the time, I think
maybe eight or nine years at the time.
And I created this workshop whichis just everything I'd learned about
(07:43):
flash fiction, which is quite a lot.
And there's a question thatpeople have about flash, right?
How do you get depth into a story that'sonly a thousand words or 500 words or
even maybe shorter if it's microfiction?
And there's a technique that Iuncovered, share in that workshop
that I haven't seen anyone else share.
(08:05):
And it's pretty simple and it'spretty straightforward and a lot of
people have found it quite powerful.
And it's just one of the six differentaspects of short story writing
that I focus on in the iWritercourse, which is guess what what?
Open for registration now.
Now you can get, you can actuallyget the iWriter course at any time of
(08:27):
the year, but what you can't get arelive meetings with me and a cohort
of people who are going through it.
That only happens a few times ayear, and it's coming up in January.
If you are interested in learningtechniques like flash fiction, so that
you can write a story whenever you're inthe mood, and make it something that's
actually, potentially publishing qualityfor all of these hundreds and thousands of
(08:51):
flash fiction markets which are everywhereand relatively easy to get published in.
They're not easy to get rich from.
They are not easy to get published in.
You still have to write good storiesand you still have to do the work to get
your stories out there, but compared togetting a 4, 000 or 6, 000 word short
story or a novel to market, getting flashfiction to readers is relatively easier.
(09:17):
There are lots of markets, the work isshorter, the readers at the publication
can read your work faster, they canmake decisions faster, it gives you
successes, it gives you things to put inyour portfolio, it lets you experiment
with characters and situations andvoices that you might not otherwise do.
(09:38):
So this is why I'm always encouragingpeople to play with short stories, in
general and flash fiction in particular.
So that flash fiction workshopis in the iWriter workshop
which is available right now.
I'm also right this week
offering
a bundle to join the superstarscommunity and get the iWriter
(10:01):
course at a massive discount.
So if you want six weeks of writing craftand lessons on how to build your writing
practice and weekly Q& A meetings withme, I would encourage you to come over
to storyaday.org/superstars and that willtake you to a page which shows you this
(10:23):
offer for joining our Superstars groupand getting the iWriter Course, which
has that flash fiction course in it.
It has one about writingcompelling characters.
It has the most popular workshopI've ever done, which is called
the copycat writing workshop.
It's
a time tested technique for learningas much as you can about how to write
short stories in the shortest amountof time and then implementing it.
(10:46):
And every time I run this course, peoplelove the Copycat Writing Workshop.
It's work.
It takes some time.
You have to carve sometime out of your week.
But, people love it.
And I use the techniques in it all thetime and I had people years later come
back to me and say "I was stuck and Iwent back to the techniques I learned
in the copycat writing workshop and Igot unstuck and now I have a story."
(11:08):
I'm just saying, there's that one, there'sthe compelling characters workshop,
there's the flash fiction workshop, whichI'm really proud of, and a bunch of other
workshops in there which are based on,each week we focus on a different thing.
Conflict
is one of them, which is really important.
And you have to get some tensionsome friction into your stories.
So we talk about that.
(11:29):
I am a huge fan of disaster moviesand adventure stories and heists and
spy thrillers and all of those kindsof stories, but that's not something
that you need to be writing in orderto get conflict into your stories.
So we, we take a look at that in thecourse and every week there's a lesson
about how to build your writing practice.
So this is turning into an ad.
Sorry about that.
Didn't mean to do that.
(11:49):
Let me talk about another thing that Idiscovered in my writing week this week.
And it's not really a discovery.
It's a rediscovery.
I'm finding that life isa series of rediscoveries.
Sometimes you learn something new.
Sometimes you practice somethingand new lessons come from it.
You would think.
(12:11):
Because I do this all the time, right?
I'm dedicated to Story A Day.
I write about writing.
I write my own stories.
I lead a community of writers wherewe get together and have discussions.
We write together.
We do workshops together.
All of this stuff.
This is my gig.
This is what I do.
(12:32):
You
would think that every day I would get upFull of the joys, I get to write today!
Oh, fantastic!
And I would sit down at my desk and theideas would come and I would have all
this mental space and I would just sithere at my nice white desk with my nice
white bookshelves behind me and a niceblank wall over there that I can stare
at when I'm trying to come up with ideas.
(12:53):
You would think that every day wasa joy for me and I was so grateful
and the ideas just poured out of myfingertips into my computer right now.
Yeah, that's not how creativity works.
And that's not how being human works.
So there are days when I get up andI'm tired and I'm grumpy and I'm
convinced that nothing I have everwritten has been worth anything at
(13:17):
all in spite of everything everyonehas told me about my writing.
You've had complimentson your writing, right?
And it doesn't actually helpwhen you sit down to write.
It can.
But it doesn't always and there are dayswhen you get up and you have a writing
session on your calendar And there isnothing you would Less rather do It feels
(13:39):
like a physical trial To get to the deskand sit there and open your laptop and
type some words It's ridiculous, but it'strue and it happens to me More than once
a week So this week, I turned up anyway.
Because, when you're trying topursue something, and you're striving
(13:59):
to improve, you show up anyway,whether you're in the mood or not.
Which is a hard lessonto learn, but you do it.
So I showed up anyway,and I was still grumpy.
But I showed up for a writing sprint,which is one of the things we do in
the Story A Day Superstars group.
We get on Zoom, and we write together.
And sometimes we talk,and sometimes we don't.
Nobody talks.
(14:20):
And whoever's hosting the meeting islike, Hey, how's everyone doing today?
And everyone just stares at them.
And we go, okay, we'lljust get started then.
And some days we talk.
We talked a lot on thisparticular day this week.
We talked about What did we talk about?
We talked about the weather.
We talked about the easy draw that Swedengot in the World Cup qualifying pools.
And we talked about, Idon't know, something else.
(14:42):
And just in that five minutes beforewe started to write, just seeing
all these other writers popping intotheir little Zoom squares just made
it all seem more possible for me.
It gave me that kind of peerpressure that says you're here
and these people are here.
to do this writing thing.
And so you should reallydo this writing thing.
(15:04):
It's you're fortunateto be able to do this.
You've got support.
What the heck are you doingbeing grumpy about it?
Which is fine.
You can tell yourself that in yourhead, but when you have other people
around who are like demonstratingit they're showing you what you're
trying to tell yourself in your head,
(15:25):
It's harder
to turn away from it, but best of all,because we had that little bit of chit
chat, it completely changed my state.
We are social beings.
Regardless of how introvertedyou are, we need people.
And just that five minutes of being sillyabout the weather and laughing about
(15:45):
soccer and the fact that most of thepeople in the room didn't even know what
we were talking about, but two of us did,and, just laughing together and showing
up and smiling because other people areon camera and you're making an effort.
It's
incredibly powerful.
So I have no excuses not to write.
I have time.
I have Sometimes, the motivation.
(16:05):
I have works that I'm working on.
I have knowledge.
I have practiced.
I have got my kids off to college.
There's nobody knockingon my door during the day.
I have no excuses.
And yet, it is still hard.
And the thing that makes itless hard is having other people
around who are also doing this.
to just pull
(16:26):
people to just be pull you out of yourhead for a minute because what we do
is so in our heads that it's dangerous.
Our inner voices are socreative and so powerful because
this is what we do for fun.
This is what we've practicedall our lives is creating vivid,
(16:49):
believable imaginary voices.
So for us, when our imaginaryvoices, when our inner voice starts
criticizing us and saying, ohyou're so lazy, oh your writing's
terrible, we, they're convincing.
So it really helps to have people aroundyou who will pull you out of that.
It doesn't have to be other writers.
(17:10):
It can be other people whoare excelling at something.
If you want an accountability groupwhere you check in with other people
every week and someone is pursuinga particular area, finishing their
first marathon and they tell you abouttheir training practice and you think,
oh my goodness, that's so inspiringthat they would be that dedicated.
Somebody shared with me this week picturesof bodybuilders and I did not like the
(17:33):
pictures and I was not impressed by that.
She was super impressed by thelevel of dedication because
she was in the room with it.
The level of dedication in that roomwas impressive and that I understand.
When I go to see musicals I thinkabout the hours and lifetimes of
work that the performers on thestage have put in to get there.
(17:54):
The dance classes, the singing classes,the auditions, the endless rejection
the being made fun of by theirpeers, the, all the stuff they went
through at school when they were theoddball, and the decision every day.
to get up and do this thingwhere there are no guarantees.
And they end up on my stagein Philadelphia, which isn't
(18:16):
Broadway, but it's a Broadwayproduction, touring production.
It's still looked down upon by some peoplebecause it's not THE Broadway production.
And they're traveling and they're sleepingin weird hotels every night and they're
turning up and they are showing all ofthis effort in order to entertain me.
And I really appreciate thatand I'm inspired by that.
(18:39):
So
Find what inspires you andhang out with those people.
If you can get into a room withpeople like that, if you can talk
to people who are striving, do it.
If you don't have a group like that,you know what I'm going to say.
Come and join us in Superstars.
I've worked hard to make Superstars aplace that is welcoming, It gives you
(19:00):
opportunities, it gives you time towrite, it gives you connection with
other writers, it gives you skills thatyou can join in, and I'm keeping it at a
reasonable cost because I want people tostay and work on their writing long term.
And
they do.
There are people who've beenwith me since the beginning.
There are people who joinedthis year who've just renewed.
(19:23):
There are people who are justjoining now who are bringing
new energy to the whole thing.
It's fabulous.
If you're looking for somewhere whereyou can be a writer, And not be quite
as anonymous as you might be in aFacebook group, or just following
people on a social media platform.
Maybe you joined Blue Sky, maybeyou love it, but you can still be
anonymous and you can still hide there.
(19:44):
If you show up inside our community,people will notice you, people will
welcome you, people will ask you how it'sgoing, and then you have to tell them.
And then you have to get thatvalidation that comes from talking
about your writing with other people.
And it makes you take itmore seriously, even for me.
And I do this.
This is what I've dedicatedmyself to for the past 15 years.
(20:05):
It's still hard.
And it's super hard to do alone.
And I am an introvert.
And I need a lot of downtime and quiet.
And I need space for my ideas, butthe thing about being in Superstars is
you get that space because you've gotwriting dates that you can turn up for.
And you can just sit there and read.
Somebody was reading the other morningwhen I was on a writing sprint.
(20:26):
They were like, yep, I'mjust reading this morning.
Great.
Reading is part of being a writer.
So those are my threethings from this week.
Blue Sky is booming and it's a,if you're looking for a social
media place where all the writershave gone, that's where they are.
If you're not, if you don't enjoy socialmedia, if it makes you feel bad when
you get off, if it wastes your time.
time.
If it doesn't inspire you,ignore that part of this podcast.
(20:47):
My flash fiction workshop is inside theiWriter course and I encourage you to
have a look at flash fiction as a form.
It's short.
It's punchy.
It's concise.
There's tons of articles.
There's a flash fiction primerat the story a day website.
I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
It's a really great forum.
It gives you that quick hit of finishingthings, which if you're working on a
(21:10):
novel, sometimes the idea of finishingsomething is really appealing and it
reminds you that you can do it and itreminds you that stories have an arc.
Stories have a journey to go onand when you're in the midst of a
novel, it can be easy to just bewriting scenes and forget about that.
So I encourage you to have alook at Flash Fiction as a form.
(21:30):
There's the primer on thewebsite, there's the iWriter
course, all of these things are
in links
.In the show notes so click on them.
And if you're looking for a way tostay more connected to your community
next year, to yourself as a writer,consider the Story A Day Superstars.
If you want to talk to me aboutthat, just get in touch, and
I will tell you all about it.
And we'll figure outwhether it's right for you.
(21:50):
It's not right for everyone.
It really isn't.
But it might be right for you.
I'm enjoying writing,even though it's hard.
I never regret time spent writing.
I hope you find the same thing.
I hope you give yourselfsome of that time this week.
And we are starting, in the Story A DaySuperstars, we're starting a book club.
On Monday we're havingour first meeting of that.
If you join us before then,you can get in on that.
(22:11):
But we're reading the, thisyear's Best American Short Story
Collection, which is really good.
We're going to talk about the firstfour stories in that collection.
on Monday, and I'm lookingforward to that discussion.
It's something we've done a little ad hocbefore, but we're actually going to go
through this whole collection and figureout what we can learn, why we like these
stories, why we don't like these stories,and what we can learn from them, what they
(22:33):
have in common, all of that kind of stuff.
Studying.
Studying the market, studying thestate of the art, is so valuable.
And when I talk to people about shortstories, they often talk to me about,
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, or A GoodMan is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor.
These are classic stories, butthey're not always selling right now.
(22:55):
So it's really valuable tobe reading what's current.
So we're starting with the BestAmerican Short Stories of 2024
which is literary, largely.
And my, my my hope for this ventureis that we will venture out into
other genres because there's arobust short story culture out there.
(23:16):
in many genres sciencefiction and fantasy, mystery
all of these areas.
So that's what we're up toinside the Superstars this month.
I hope that's inspired you for this week.
I hope you're writing.
If you don't have time to write much overthe holidays, make sure you're reading.
And make sure you'rereading with intention.
You can read fluffy stuff,absolutely, but pay attention
(23:38):
just to why you're enjoying it.
What is it about everything you read?
I'm not asking you to write a bookreport, I'm not asking you to analyse
anything, but have your antenna outfor what you are enjoying and why.
Okay, that's what Ihave for you this week.
I hope you're having a wonderfulDecember or whatever month it
(23:59):
is when you're listening to thisif you're coming to it later.
And I will be back with you soon withmore writing advice and inspiration.
And if you need some inspiration, don'tforget there are 15 years worth of writing
prompts at the Story A Day website.
So go to the click on blog, click onwriting prompts, and you'll see They're
(24:21):
in categories of whether you want to writea character story, whether you want to
write a story with a particular type oflimit, whether, all kinds of stuff there.
Whether you want to focus ondescription, point of view.
There's also just like theyears of the challenges.
So you can go back to 2010 and lookat the very first prompts that we did.
Or you can look at last year's prompts.
Up to you.
If you need some inspiration,something to get you catapulted into
(24:43):
your writing sessions this week, 15years worth of writing prompts there.
Use them.
Ignore them, bend them, break them,whatever it takes to get you writing.
Have a great creative week,and most of all, keep writing.
Good morning, goodevening, good afternoon.
Julie from Story A Day here and thisweek's podcast I'm going to catch you
up with a bunch of things that have beengoing on in my writing week in the hope
that I can inspire you or encourage you tothink about your own writing, maybe give
you a few ideas and just share this thingthat we do, maybe some resources as well.
(00:25):
So I'm Things from my week.
I joined BlueSky and I always liketo investigate new technologies
and platforms and things like that.
And I, Twitter has been increasinglyunusable for the past month.
nine years.
I loved it back in 2007, allthe way through to about 2015.
(00:46):
And then I started to hate it, and I neverreally liked Facebook, but I jumped on
Threads to see what was going on there.
And I've been trying to use Instagram,but for my purposes, it's not really
great, because it's a visual website.
platform and I'm not really in thevisual medium and you can't provide
links because how I always used to usesocial media was to provide links to
resources, places you could submit things,articles I'd written, things like that.
(01:10):
So I jumped on BlueSky whenit launched and I tried
Mastodon, didn't like that much.
Jumped on BlueSky, it was interesting,it felt like Twitter in the old days,
but there weren't that many peoplethere and then something happened.
Last month, in the wake of the USelection, a lot of people in the
(01:30):
arts, who tend to not be super rightwing, let's just say decided that
they didn't want to be left wing.
on the billionaire's platforms as much.
And a lot of us had decided that awhile ago, but there was a huge influx
of people, coming off Twitter/X,and a lot more, publications jumped
(01:52):
over, a lot of writers who had clungon on X for a long time, because
they, that's where they were, andthat's where their community was.
They jumped ship.
And 25 million users are now on BlueSky.
So I am finding that is where thebest conversations are happening.
Threads was good for a while, but it isalso fairly aggressively using algorithms
(02:16):
to downrank things with links in thembecause they take you off their platform.
And BlueSky doesn't seemto be doing that yet.
I find Instagram almost unusablenow because of all the ads.
And also just again, menot a visual creator.
Enjoy other people's visual creations,but I'm not a visual creator.
So the reason I'm telling you this is I'mgoing to be posting more on BlueSky these
(02:39):
days because I really noticed engagementincreasing over the past month or so.
There's a lot more happening.
It's more easy to find the stuffthat you've actually followed.
The downside when not a lot ofpeople were using it was that there
wasn't a lot going on every time Irefreshed and that wasn't, feeding
my little dopamine craving addiction.
So now when I go on,there's more stuff on there.
(03:02):
More likely to get interactionson my posts, more likely to see
interesting posts from people who Iused to follow years ago on Twitter.
I've been finding a whole bunchof the writing community on there.
People I haven't seen for years,I haven't seen their stuff, like
Elizabeth Spann Craig, who alwayshas tons of fantastic links.
People like that who I'mlike, oh, where have you been?
(03:22):
And the truth is, she's beenon Twitter and I haven't.
She's on Blue Sky now and thepublications are on Blue Sky.
There's a thing on Blue Sky called StarterPacks where people put together basically
like lists of accounts that you can followand you can follow them all with one click
and I followed one the other day whichwas a list of a starter pack for flash
(03:43):
fiction publications and oh my heart I'mso happy because now when I open up my
little social media feed to get My hit,which I trained myself to do 12 years ago.
I'm not seeing ads for productsand services and stuff like that.
I'm seeing posts from flash fictionmarkets who are talking about the
(04:06):
stories that they're publishing.
They're talking aboutcalls for submission.
They're talking about contests that theirpublished stories have been selected,
or have won or end of year lists thattheir stories have been listed in.
And this is what's filling up my feed.
It's filling up my feedwith writerly goodness.
And, for now, I'm enjoying that.
I'm not encouraging you to get ontoBlue Sky and spend all your day
(04:28):
scrolling, but if you're looking forsomewhere, if you're looking to find
out where the writing community decampedto, I'm going to suggest Blue Sky.
So it's bsky.
social and you will find me thereat my usual story a day handle.
So storyaday.
bsky.
social.
And
you can follow me, and youcan follow people I follow.
(04:49):
Or you can just ignore the wholething, and get back to your writing.
And I will share with you here, andon my blog , and in my newsletter,
my emails, I will share with youinteresting stuff that I find there.
So that is there's something that, that'sa service that I offer to you, for free.
I troll the, trawl, I should say,not troll, I don't troll, I trawl
(05:10):
the resources and share them withyou so you don't have to, so you
can get back to your writing.
One of the things that the flashfiction surge in my feed has reminded
me that I have wandered away fromflash fiction for a while, because
you can't be doing everything, right?
You can't do everything, everywhere allat once, despite what the film would tell
(05:33):
you ;), I am a huge fan of flash fiction.
I love it.
This year has been moreabout writing longer works.
So at the beginning of the year Iwas writing, focusing on novels.
In the, for Story A Day May, obviouslyI was writing flash pieces and short
pieces, but I wasn't really worryingabout them, I wasn't crafting them, I
(05:55):
was just writing them as raw material.
Later in the year, I've beenfocusing on the skill of
telling a slightly longer story.
A short story, but one of those,4, 000 word short stories, which
has never been my natural length.
So I'm exploring how to deepen storiesin my own writing without weighing
(06:17):
them down too much, without turningthem, without letting them expand
to novel scope, even novella length.
novellas yet, be honesttotally honest with you.
I don't really know whatgoes into a novella.
That's something that's on my list toinvestigate, but it's not something
I've researched and practiced yet.
(06:38):
What I have practiced a lot isflash fiction and short stories
and I've written five novels.
So those are the lengthsthat I am familiar with.
I won't say comfortable because Istill find novels a real struggle.
It's hard.
It's hard work.
I'm not a natural epic novelist.
I don't know if you are.
(06:58):
Some people find short stories reallyhard because they are naturally novelists.
So, Fine.
Anyway, flash fiction is on my mindbecause I've been looking at all of
these markets that are coming out andit reminded me that I have a flash
fiction workshop which I'm reallyproud of and it's inside the iWriter
course and you can also get access toit if you're in the Superstars group.
(07:21):
But I'm really proud of it because Icreated this flash fiction workshop which
is about 90 minutes long when I was inthe thick of just writing short stories.
I'd been doing story a day for abouteight years at the time, I think
maybe eight or nine years at the time.
And I created this workshop whichis just everything I'd learned about
(07:43):
flash fiction, which is quite a lot.
And there's a question thatpeople have about flash, right?
How do you get depth into a story that'sonly a thousand words or 500 words or
even maybe shorter if it's microfiction?
And there's a technique that Iuncovered, share in that workshop
that I haven't seen anyone else share.
(08:05):
And it's pretty simple and it'spretty straightforward and a lot of
people have found it quite powerful.
And it's just one of the six differentaspects of short story writing
that I focus on in the iWritercourse, which is guess what what?
Open for registration now.
Now you can get, you can actuallyget the iWriter course at any time of
(08:27):
the year, but what you can't get arelive meetings with me and a cohort
of people who are going through it.
That only happens a few times ayear, and it's coming up in January.
If you are interested in learningtechniques like flash fiction, so that
you can write a story whenever you're inthe mood, and make it something that's
actually, potentially publishing qualityfor all of these hundreds and thousands of
(08:51):
flash fiction markets which are everywhereand relatively easy to get published in.
They're not easy to get rich from.
They are not easy to get published in.
You still have to write good storiesand you still have to do the work to get
your stories out there, but compared togetting a 4, 000 or 6, 000 word short
story or a novel to market, getting flashfiction to readers is relatively easier.
(09:17):
There are lots of markets, the work isshorter, the readers at the publication
can read your work faster, they canmake decisions faster, it gives you
successes, it gives you things to put inyour portfolio, it lets you experiment
with characters and situations andvoices that you might not otherwise do.
(09:38):
So this is why I'm always encouragingpeople to play with short stories, in
general and flash fiction in particular.
So that flash fiction workshopis in the iWriter workshop
which is available right now.
I'm also right this week
offering
a bundle to join the superstarscommunity and get the iWriter
(10:01):
course at a massive discount.
So if you want six weeks of writing craftand lessons on how to build your writing
practice and weekly Q& A meetings withme, I would encourage you to come over
to storyaday.org/superstars and that willtake you to a page which shows you this
(10:23):
offer for joining our Superstars groupand getting the iWriter Course, which
has that flash fiction course in it.
It has one about writingcompelling characters.
It has the most popular workshopI've ever done, which is called
the copycat writing workshop.
It's
a time tested technique for learningas much as you can about how to write
short stories in the shortest amountof time and then implementing it.
(10:46):
And every time I run this course, peoplelove the Copycat Writing Workshop.
It's work.
It takes some time.
You have to carve sometime out of your week.
But, people love it.
And I use the techniques in it all thetime and I had people years later come
back to me and say "I was stuck and Iwent back to the techniques I learned
in the copycat writing workshop and Igot unstuck and now I have a story."
(11:08):
I'm just saying, there's that one, there'sthe compelling characters workshop,
there's the flash fiction workshop, whichI'm really proud of, and a bunch of other
workshops in there which are based on,each week we focus on a different thing.
Conflict
is one of them, which is really important.
And you have to get some tensionsome friction into your stories.
So we talk about that.
(11:29):
I am a huge fan of disaster moviesand adventure stories and heists and
spy thrillers and all of those kindsof stories, but that's not something
that you need to be writing in orderto get conflict into your stories.
So we, we take a look at that in thecourse and every week there's a lesson
about how to build your writing practice.
So this is turning into an ad.
Sorry about that.
Didn't mean to do that.
(11:49):
Let me talk about another thing that Idiscovered in my writing week this week.
And it's not really a discovery.
It's a rediscovery.
I'm finding that life isa series of rediscoveries.
Sometimes you learn something new.
Sometimes you practice somethingand new lessons come from it.
You would think.
(12:11):
Because I do this all the time, right?
I'm dedicated to Story A Day.
I write about writing.
I write my own stories.
I lead a community of writers wherewe get together and have discussions.
We write together.
We do workshops together.
All of this stuff.
This is my gig.
This is what I do.
(12:32):
You
would think that every day I would get upFull of the joys, I get to write today!
Oh, fantastic!
And I would sit down at my desk and theideas would come and I would have all
this mental space and I would just sithere at my nice white desk with my nice
white bookshelves behind me and a niceblank wall over there that I can stare
at when I'm trying to come up with ideas.
(12:53):
You would think that every day wasa joy for me and I was so grateful
and the ideas just poured out of myfingertips into my computer right now.
Yeah, that's not how creativity works.
And that's not how being human works.
So there are days when I get up andI'm tired and I'm grumpy and I'm
convinced that nothing I have everwritten has been worth anything at
(13:17):
all in spite of everything everyonehas told me about my writing.
You've had complimentson your writing, right?
And it doesn't actually helpwhen you sit down to write.
It can.
But it doesn't always and there are dayswhen you get up and you have a writing
session on your calendar And there isnothing you would Less rather do It feels
(13:39):
like a physical trial To get to the deskand sit there and open your laptop and
type some words It's ridiculous, but it'strue and it happens to me More than once
a week So this week, I turned up anyway.
Because, when you're trying topursue something, and you're striving
(13:59):
to improve, you show up anyway,whether you're in the mood or not.
Which is a hard lessonto learn, but you do it.
So I showed up anyway,and I was still grumpy.
But I showed up for a writing sprint,which is one of the things we do in
the Story A Day Superstars group.
We get on Zoom, and we write together.
And sometimes we talk,and sometimes we don't.
Nobody talks.
(14:20):
And whoever's hosting the meeting islike, Hey, how's everyone doing today?
And everyone just stares at them.
And we go, okay, we'lljust get started then.
And some days we talk.
We talked a lot on thisparticular day this week.
We talked about What did we talk about?
We talked about the weather.
We talked about the easy draw that Swedengot in the World Cup qualifying pools.
And we talked about, Idon't know, something else.
(14:42):
And just in that five minutes beforewe started to write, just seeing
all these other writers popping intotheir little Zoom squares just made
it all seem more possible for me.
It gave me that kind of peerpressure that says you're here
and these people are here.
to do this writing thing.
And so you should reallydo this writing thing.
(15:04):
It's you're fortunateto be able to do this.
You've got support.
What the heck are you doingbeing grumpy about it?
Which is fine.
You can tell yourself that in yourhead, but when you have other people
around who are like demonstratingit they're showing you what you're
trying to tell yourself in your head,
(15:25):
It's harder
to turn away from it, but best of all,because we had that little bit of chit
chat, it completely changed my state.
We are social beings.
Regardless of how introvertedyou are, we need people.
And just that five minutes of being sillyabout the weather and laughing about
(15:45):
soccer and the fact that most of thepeople in the room didn't even know what
we were talking about, but two of us did,and, just laughing together and showing
up and smiling because other people areon camera and you're making an effort.
It's
incredibly powerful.
So I have no excuses not to write.
I have time.
I have Sometimes, the motivation.
(16:05):
I have works that I'm working on.
I have knowledge.
I have practiced.
I have got my kids off to college.
There's nobody knockingon my door during the day.
I have no excuses.
And yet, it is still hard.
And the thing that makes itless hard is having other people
around who are also doing this.
to just pull
(16:26):
people to just be pull you out of yourhead for a minute because what we do
is so in our heads that it's dangerous.
Our inner voices are socreative and so powerful because
this is what we do for fun.
This is what we've practicedall our lives is creating vivid,
(16:49):
believable imaginary voices.
So for us, when our imaginaryvoices, when our inner voice starts
criticizing us and saying, ohyou're so lazy, oh your writing's
terrible, we, they're convincing.
So it really helps to have people aroundyou who will pull you out of that.
It doesn't have to be other writers.
(17:10):
It can be other people whoare excelling at something.
If you want an accountability groupwhere you check in with other people
every week and someone is pursuinga particular area, finishing their
first marathon and they tell you abouttheir training practice and you think,
oh my goodness, that's so inspiringthat they would be that dedicated.
Somebody shared with me this week picturesof bodybuilders and I did not like the
(17:33):
pictures and I was not impressed by that.
She was super impressed by thelevel of dedication because
she was in the room with it.
The level of dedication in that roomwas impressive and that I understand.
When I go to see musicals I thinkabout the hours and lifetimes of
work that the performers on thestage have put in to get there.
(17:54):
The dance classes, the singing classes,the auditions, the endless rejection
the being made fun of by theirpeers, the, all the stuff they went
through at school when they were theoddball, and the decision every day.
to get up and do this thingwhere there are no guarantees.
And they end up on my stagein Philadelphia, which isn't
(18:16):
Broadway, but it's a Broadwayproduction, touring production.
It's still looked down upon by some peoplebecause it's not THE Broadway production.
And they're traveling and they're sleepingin weird hotels every night and they're
turning up and they are showing all ofthis effort in order to entertain me.
And I really appreciate thatand I'm inspired by that.
(18:39):
So
Find what inspires you andhang out with those people.
If you can get into a room withpeople like that, if you can talk
to people who are striving, do it.
If you don't have a group like that,you know what I'm going to say.
Come and join us in Superstars.
I've worked hard to make Superstars aplace that is welcoming, It gives you
(19:00):
opportunities, it gives you time towrite, it gives you connection with
other writers, it gives you skills thatyou can join in, and I'm keeping it at a
reasonable cost because I want people tostay and work on their writing long term.
And
they do.
There are people who've beenwith me since the beginning.
There are people who joinedthis year who've just renewed.
(19:23):
There are people who are justjoining now who are bringing
new energy to the whole thing.
It's fabulous.
If you're looking for somewhere whereyou can be a writer, And not be quite
as anonymous as you might be in aFacebook group, or just following
people on a social media platform.
Maybe you joined Blue Sky, maybeyou love it, but you can still be
anonymous and you can still hide there.
(19:44):
If you show up inside our community,people will notice you, people will
welcome you, people will ask you how it'sgoing, and then you have to tell them.
And then you have to get thatvalidation that comes from talking
about your writing with other people.
And it makes you take itmore seriously, even for me.
And I do this.
This is what I've dedicatedmyself to for the past 15 years.
(20:05):
It's still hard.
And it's super hard to do alone.
And I am an introvert.
And I need a lot of downtime and quiet.
And I need space for my ideas, butthe thing about being in Superstars is
you get that space because you've gotwriting dates that you can turn up for.
And you can just sit there and read.
Somebody was reading the other morningwhen I was on a writing sprint.
(20:26):
They were like, yep, I'mjust reading this morning.
Great.
Reading is part of being a writer.
So those are my threethings from this week.
Blue Sky is booming and it's a,if you're looking for a social
media place where all the writershave gone, that's where they are.
If you're not, if you don't enjoy socialmedia, if it makes you feel bad when
you get off, if it wastes your time.
time.
If it doesn't inspire you,ignore that part of this podcast.
(20:47):
My flash fiction workshop is inside theiWriter course and I encourage you to
have a look at flash fiction as a form.
It's short.
It's punchy.
It's concise.
There's tons of articles.
There's a flash fiction primerat the story a day website.
I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
It's a really great forum.
It gives you that quick hit of finishingthings, which if you're working on a
(21:10):
novel, sometimes the idea of finishingsomething is really appealing and it
reminds you that you can do it and itreminds you that stories have an arc.
Stories have a journey to go onand when you're in the midst of a
novel, it can be easy to just bewriting scenes and forget about that.
So I encourage you to have alook at Flash Fiction as a form.
(21:30):
There's the primer on thewebsite, there's the iWriter
course, all of these things are
in links
.In the show notes so click on them.
And if you're looking for a way tostay more connected to your community
next year, to yourself as a writer,consider the Story A Day Superstars.
If you want to talk to me aboutthat, just get in touch, and
I will tell you all about it.
And we'll figure outwhether it's right for you.
(21:50):
It's not right for everyone.
It really isn't.
But it might be right for you.
I'm enjoying writing,even though it's hard.
I never regret time spent writing.
I hope you find the same thing.
I hope you give yourselfsome of that time this week.
And we are starting, in the Story A DaySuperstars, we're starting a book club.
On Monday we're havingour first meeting of that.
If you join us before then,you can get in on that.
(22:11):
But we're reading the, thisyear's Best American Short Story
Collection, which is really good.
We're going to talk about the firstfour stories in that collection.
on Monday, and I'm lookingforward to that discussion.
It's something we've done a little ad hocbefore, but we're actually going to go
through this whole collection and figureout what we can learn, why we like these
stories, why we don't like these stories,and what we can learn from them, what they
(22:33):
have in common, all of that kind of stuff.
Studying.
Studying the market, studying thestate of the art, is so valuable.
And when I talk to people about shortstories, they often talk to me about,
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, or A GoodMan is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor.
These are classic stories, butthey're not always selling right now.
(22:55):
So it's really valuable tobe reading what's current.
So we're starting with the BestAmerican Short Stories of 2024
which is literary, largely.
And my, my my hope for this ventureis that we will venture out into
other genres because there's arobust short story culture out there.
(23:16):
in many genres sciencefiction and fantasy, mystery
all of these areas.
So that's what we're up toinside the Superstars this month.
I hope that's inspired you for this week.
I hope you're writing.
If you don't have time to write much overthe holidays, make sure you're reading.
And make sure you'rereading with intention.
You can read fluffy stuff,absolutely, but pay attention
(23:38):
just to why you're enjoying it.
What is it about everything you read?
I'm not asking you to write a bookreport, I'm not asking you to analyse
anything, but have your antenna outfor what you are enjoying and why.
Okay, that's what Ihave for you this week.
I hope you're having a wonderfulDecember or whatever month it
(23:59):
is when you're listening to thisif you're coming to it later.
And I will be back with you soon withmore writing advice and inspiration.
And if you need some inspiration, don'tforget there are 15 years worth of writing
prompts at the Story A Day website.
So go to the click on blog, click onwriting prompts, and you'll see They're
(24:21):
in categories of whether you want to writea character story, whether you want to
write a story with a particular type oflimit, whether, all kinds of stuff there.
Whether you want to focus ondescription, point of view.
There's also just like theyears of the challenges.
So you can go back to 2010 and lookat the very first prompts that we did.
Or you can look at last year's prompts.
Up to you.
If you need some inspiration,something to get you catapulted into
(24:43):
your writing sessions this week, 15years worth of writing prompts there.
Use them.
Ignore them, bend them, break them,whatever it takes to get you writing.
Have a great creative week,and most of all, keep writing.
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