Category: Writing Community

The Story-a-Day Challenge and How to Set ABC Goals for Writers

In September, I set out to participate in the Story-a-Day challenge. If you haven’t heard of it, Julie Duffy runs a challenge called Story-a-Day in May and September. As the title implies, she emails you a different prompt each day from which you are challenged to complete an entire story, beginning to end, in one day. These stories can be as short as you want; the only goal is to finish them. Ideally, by the end of the month, you’ll have 30 completed story drafts.

green typewriter on brown wooden table
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If you’re familiar with human nature, you won’t be surprised to hear that I did not end the month with 30 finished stories. I wrote 12 stories, 4 of which were complete drafts and the rest of which were outlines or ideas or the first third of a story before I ran out of time or lost the will to finish.

So do I consider my Story-a-Day experience a failure?

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On the Ethics of Negative Book Reviews

A friend once asked me to review on Goodreads a book she was planning to indie publish in a few weeks. Like a shmuck, I said, “Sure, I’d love to” with no further details. I had briefly workshopped stuff with this friend (before dropping out because I had no energy to write at that point in my life). Her stuff had been mostly fantasy YA, and I had enjoyed it. I was sure I would have no problems reviewing this book positively.

person holding white and brown newspaper
Photo by Ekrulila on Pexels.com

I was so wrong. The book turned out not to be SFF but a romance novella. For me, romance is like salt. I don’t mind a little in my books. Occasionally, it really hits the spot like a good salted caramel. But would I ever eat a pile of salt? Nope.

Not only that, but it turned out that the book was, well, just okay. Like, if my friend was still workshopping the book, I would have had lots of questions and feedback. But my friend was ready to ship the book and just looking for some reviews to get the ball rolling. I had no idea what to do.

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Winter 2020 Writer Goals & Habits

I’m a huge New Year’s resolution maker. Actually, scratch that. I’m a huge all-the-time resolution maker. I absolutely love self-improvement and making plans for change. Following through on them, I’m not always as good at, but by aiming for the moon, I’ve often grabbed a few stars.

I’m pulling ideas from a couple different places to set my writing goals for the next few months. Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport suggested setting your goals on a roughly semester basis, which appeals to the school geek in me, so these Winter 2020 goals extend to May when I’ll select some summer semester projects. Atomic Habits by James Clear encouraged me to focus on the smallest possible unit of action: going small often makes a bigger difference than going big, which is always a temptation for a planner and goal setter like me. And I stole the three areas of my goals from DIY MFA, which suggested them as the benefits provided by an MFA program which you can replicate yourself without the expense of tuition.

So without further ado, my Winter 2020 writing plan:

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