Julie Duffy's Blog, page 160

Revisiting Morning Pages – Charlotte Rains Dixon

If you haven’t tried Morning Pages, you are likely grousing that you don’t have time for such thing. I hear you.  But I say you’ll create time by doing them.  Because you’ll have more clarity, less anxiety and more of an ability to focus on what you really want to do throughout the day.  So try it:

via Revisiting Morning Pages – Charlotte Rains Dixon.

I first heard about Morning Pages and The Artist’s Way [af] from a co-workers in 1999 — not a writer, by the way, just a guy trying to get his stuff together.

I started turning my sporadic-journalling into Morning Pages and, like Charlotte, have revisited them over the years. It sounds too simple to be any use, but seriously: write three pages of stream of consciousness stuff as close to the start of your day as you can (even if you have to write “I can’t think of anything to write” over and over until you get so sick of yourself that you DO think of something to write) and you will fine yourself more creative, more calm and ready for anything.

I highly recommend the Artist’s Dates that Cameron talks about too. More on that later.

The Top Three Benefits of Writing Flash Fiction – DIY MFA : DIY MFA

The benefits of writing flash fiction can’t be denied. In addition to testing and sharing new story ideas and formats, flash fiction can teach you, as a writer, lessons you may not otherwise learn without hours and hours of classes and hundreds or thousands of dollars.

via The Top Three Benefits of Writing Flash Fiction – DIY MFA : DIY MFA.

 

You know how you sometimes have an idea that is interesting but you’re not sure if it’s a story? Take a leaf out of Alicia’s book and write it up as a Flash Fiction story, test it on some writer/reader friends. If they are hungry for more (backstory, front story or just MORE story) think about expanding it to a short story, novella or even a novel!

The Price Of Quitting

I was lucky enough to go to see Cabaret on Broadway this past December. The Emcee was played by Alan Cumming who, like me, is from Scotland.

I was absolutely transfixed by his performance and I couldn’t help being so very grateful that he had stuck with his talent through what must have been a challenging road from Carnoustie to Studio 54 in NYC, in part so that I, a total stranger, could experience a few moments of joy.

(Is there a reader out there, waiting for your story?)

It struck me:

What if he had decided not to leave home to go to theater school because it was too far away?
What if he had quit after a failed audition?
What if he had cared about all those people who make fun of boys who like the theater?
What if he had been scared to sing in public that first time?
What if he had let bad reviews get to him?
What if he had decided coming back to Broadway all these years later, would make him look foolish?
What if he had decided not to work so hard, to be mediocre, to be lazy because artistic success is difficult and chancy and really, why not just be cynical about it instead of working hard?

If he had let all those doubts, naysayers, fears and nerves gang up on him, I would have missed out on an absolutely transcendent moment.

Alan Cumming can’t possibly know what my trip to NYC and the fabulous performances in that show meant to me (unless he’s reading this. Hi, Alan!). But he did his bit, for 35 or so years, to become the performer he is today, and I thank him for that.

Where Do Your Talents Lie?

Do you understand that you can’t know who your stories will touch?

Are you brave enough to write the best stories you can, the truest stories you can muster, and put them out into the world to find their audience?

Are you strong enough to keep writing, year after year, using your gifts just for their own sake?

I hope so.

Because you never know who is out there, needing to hear your story.

Always Striving

StoryADay May helps you continue to develop as a writer. Sign up now: http://storyaday.org

[Write on Wednesday] Day 1 Of Your New Routine: Madlibs

I know, it’s January 14 and you haven’t quite got that whole ‘Write Every Day’ thing down yet. I’m not sure many of us have.

So here’s a ‘story formula’ prompt to get you going again. Today is Day One of your new routine. Yes, you! You know I’m talking to you!

(Take heart! Any day can be Day One!).

Go through this exercise quickly and then write a fast & messy story from it. Have fun. No pressure! No standards! Post it, if you dare, in the comments!

Go!

 

Follow along with this exercise to get your creative juices flowing:

(e.g. Why do corporate raiders never fall in love with the woman who owns the indy bookstore they are about to destroy? OR, my husband’s suggestion: “Why do chemists never eat broccoli?”)

(e.g. What would happen if Tom Hanks fell in love with the adorkable indy bookseller? OR What would happen if a chemist suddenly tempted fate by eating the forbidden brassica?)

(e.g. What if Tom Hanks resists Meg Ryan’s charms? OR What if Tom’s bosses tell him to break it off, but he doesn’t? Two different stories, no?)

(Imagine Tom’s bosses, or our chemist’s colleagues, sitting around in a room, ready to lay out the stakes for Tom, the chemist, and the story, not to mention the adorkable lady bookseller and/or the diminishing stores of broccolonium, the one potential source of Everything This Planet Needs, that non-chemists are wantonly chowing down on, right left and center!)

(Take a moment to picture this in your mind. Who’s there? Who does it matter to?)

(Who is there? Where are they? Standing? Sitting? What does their posture tell us? Where is our hero? What’s in the room with them? What does that lend to the atmosphere? What do the objects in the room tell us about the overall setting of the story? What do the objects tell us about the tone of the scene? Corporate furniture=an ambush. Cosy bookstore=Our hero on home turf)

(What details can you draw on to color in the scene for the reader?)

(Is the atmosphere convivial? Is it adversarial? Are people witty? Are there undercurrents? What are those undercurrents?)

 (Write anything! Except the broccoli story. That one’s mine!)

Bonus Points: Post your story in the comments. Read and comment on other people’s stories.

How did they turn out? Did you get something original and *you*? Did you write something different from everyone else?

SWAGr January 2015 Check In

First up: Here’s what happened here at StoryADay in 2014.

Now, on to 2015.

This month, it’s a special Serious Writer’s Accountability Group: a brand new year is upon us. List your resolutions for the month (or the year) here and check in again next month to update us all!

Remember the SMART acronym: make your goals Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely (remember to build in a ‘when’, for when you’ll do all the writing you set yourself)

 

Leave a comment below telling us how you got on last month, and what you plan to do next month, then check back in on the first of each month, to see how everyone’s doing.

(It doesn’t have to be fiction. Feel free to use this group to push you in whatever creative direction you need.)

Don’t remember what you promised to do? Check out the comments on previous SWAGr posts.

And don’t forget to celebrate with/encourage your fellow SWAGr-ers on their progress!

****

Examples of Goals Set By SWAGr-ers in previous months

Complete a draft of a story – Ashley
Write 1 blog post a week – Cris
Write 10,000 (fiction) words this month.” – Julie
Read a new short story every day.” – Julie
Track my time and see what’s getting in the way of my writing – Alex
Revise two short stories and research possible markets – Jeannie
 Schedule “me time” to recharge my creative juices  – Jeannie
Finish one of my other short stories and send it out – Maureen
Write at least 500 words a day on any project – Maureen
Write 1,500 words a day on my book. On weekends … write 2,500 words a day – Jeffrey
Writing the synopsis for my novel – Misa
Finish one story draft each month – Carol

 So, what will you do this month? Leave your comment below:

(Next check-in, Feb 1, 2015. Tell your friends. )

Don’t forget, if you need inspiration for a story you can still get ALL THE PROMPTS from StoryADay May 2014 and support the running of the StoryADay challenge at the same time. Give a little, get a little  Click here.

2014 – A Smashing StoryADay Year

First: Thank you.

 

Thank you for being part of this wonderful community of writers: writing for the joy of being creative, writing for the love of the short story, writing because we just can’t help ourselves!

2014 was the fifth year of StoryADay and you helped make it a doozy.

StoryADay 2014 In Review
MOAR WRITERS

This time last year we were a pretty big writing army.

This year, there is a full 33% increase in the number of people who have joined our movement. Thank you and keep spreading the word. The bigger our tribe, the more peer pressure we have to stick to our goals! There are well over 1000 writers routinely hanging out and taking part in challenges at StoryADay now. Wow.

NEIL GAIMAN

Yeah, Neil Gaiman gave us a writing prompt to kick off StoryADay May this year. Neil Gaiman.

Also: we had guest prompts from the lovely and talented:

Heidi Durrow, NYT-bestselling author of the The Girl Who Fell From The Sky
Therese Walsh, novelist and founder of WriterUnboxed.com
Mary Robinette Kowal, Hugo-award winning writer, novelist and co-host of the Writing Excuses podcast.
Debbie Ridpath Ohi, writer and illustrator (most recently of the new edition of Judy Blume’s books)
Elizabeth Spann Craig, mystery writer and blogger supreme
Charlotte Rains Dixon, writer and host of the wonderful Wordstrumpet blog (she hosts writing retreats in the South of France. Check it out!)
Gabriela Pereira, host of the marvelous DIYMFA site
Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman, co-authors of The Emotion Thesaurus series of writing guidebooks and hosts of Writers Helping Writers1

SWAGr

After the party in May was over, people wanted to stay connected, to keep each other honest, to support each other, and I couldn’t have been happier. So, I launched the monthly (and sardonically-named) Serious Writers’ Group (SWAGr).

On the first of each month you’re invited to come to the blog, post your achievements for the past month, goals for the next, and support for your fellow writers. It helps. You should try it.

SPREADING THE WORD

I was fortunate enough to be asked to talk about creativity and short stories at a number of venues this year (WANACon, DIYMFA‘s online conference, and the Main Line Writers Group).

I love getting together with writers and talking about what I’ve learned about creativity since I started writing a StoryADay In May back in 2010. Maybe I’ll turn up in your neck of the woods this year and we can hang out?

If you know of conferences or events you’d like to see me, drop me a line or, better yet, tell the organizers why you think I’d be a good guest.

TUESDAY READING ROOM AND WRITE ON WEDNESDAY

Every Tuesday and Wednesday here at StoryADay.org I bring you regular features:

Tuesday Reading Room, is a weekly review of a short story I’ve read and my thoughts about it, from a  writers’ point of view. Reading short stories is a wonderful way to warm up your brain and loosen up your creative muscles. The Tuesday Reading Room aims to provide you with a reading list of sorts, if you’re having trouble deciding where to start.

If you would like to submit a review of a short story for the Reading Room, submit it here.

Write On Wednesday is a weekly writing prompt, designed to keep you writing even when you don’t have a clue what to write about.

For extra credit, write the story within 24 hours, post it in the comments (understanding that doing so means your story has been ‘published’ and may not be eligible for publication elsewhere). This is a wonderful way to share your work with other writers. It’s not a contest, but an exercise in quick creativity.

If you’d like to submit a writing prompt, do so here.

COURSES, WORKBOOKS AND CONSULTING

I’m not going to lie to you, running StoryADay is not free. There’s hosting fees ($300 a year or so), domain registrations, technical support services for when the glitches get too much for me, fees for cloud storage, photo hosting etc etc etc. And my time.

So, although participation in StoryADay May will always remain free, I also offer courses and workbooks, the collected StoryADay May 2014 Writing Prompts ebook, and some consulting services. You’ll occasionally see emails from me about Things You Can Buy to support StoryADay, but if you ever feel I’m leaning too heavily on the commercial side, let me know. Just reply to any email from me and tell me what you need.

As I plan for 2015, and StoryADay continues to grow, I’m thinking about other options to keep the budget ticking over here. Ideas include sponsorship, partnering with larger organizations, taking donations, offering premium content for a fee (though I don’t love that idea), and developing new courses and workbooks. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you would value/hate/love.

OTHER WAYS TO GET A LITTLE StADa IN YOUR LIFE

Don’t forget you can follow writing news and blogs by following StoryADay on Twitter @storyadaymay

I post quotes from writers and writing craft articles/books at Tumblr

Get short story recommendations from our sister site: ShortStoryMonth.com (which is looking for volunteers to help update listings, gather review copies of upcoming short story collections, etc. Let me know if you’re interested!)

MOAR WRITING

Apart from the Write on Wednesday challenges and the 2015 StoryADay May, what are you planning to write this coming year?

Lots and lots of short stories? A novel? Blogs?

If you could use the support of your community to keep you honest while you try to reach your goals, check back in tomorrow for the very first Serious Writers’ Group Check In of 2015.

 

 Happy New Year And All The Best For You And Your Writing In 2015!!!!

 

From 

Julie Duffy

Director, StoryADay.org

 

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[Reading Room] Strike and Fade by Henry Dumas

Whoa.

Henri Dumas’s story, Strike and Fade, about a ‘cat’ during the Harlem Riots of the 1960s is raw, unapologetic, and rises to a spine-tingling finale. (I actually said ‘wow’ out loud, when it ended.)

This must have been like a literary ice bucket challenge when it was first published. What a voice. And all the more poignant when you consider the author was, himself, killed by police at a relatively young age.

And in this season of unrest, it is a worthwhile reminder than we can’t know what other people are going through until we listen to their stories. And that every one should strive to tell the stories that only they can tell, no matter what reality they reflect.

Essential Guide To the Best Short Stories of 2014

If one of your resolutions for next year is to read more short stories (and it should be!), it can be hard to know where to start.

You want to cultivate a modern style, the kind of thing that reflects your voice AND the kind of stories people want to read.

The problem with a do-it-yourself reading masterclass, is that anthologies tend to contain a vast range of stories, chronologically arranged from the late 1800s to the mid 1960s. These stories have stood the test of time and are therefore considered classics, but their style can seem pretty dated.

On the other hand, you could grow old reading a random selection of the multitudinous modern short stories available online. So what’s a serious writer to do?

Let other people recommend stories to you.

I’ve trawled the end-of-year roundups and found a number of recommendations for your further reading. Most of these are stories from this century, with a few must-read classics sprinkled in here and there. Names that kept cropping up on list after list: B. J. Novak, Lorrie Moore, Lydia Davis, Elizabeth McCracken, Phil Klay, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro.

Treat yourself to a volume or two, or trot off down to your local library to look for some of these titles.

Powell’s Short List 2014
Powell’s audaciously posted a “best of” list in time for Short Story Month in May this year (N.B. Did we make May the month for short stories? I don’t remember anyone calling it that before we started this crazy thing in 2010. Pat yourselves on the backs, StoryADay-nauts! I think we created a Thing!)
NOT a list of the best short story collections this year, it is however a list of excellent short story collections from the century so far:
http://www.powells.com/the-short-list/

The Guardian’s Ill-Defined “Best” List
Not sure what the category here is —  I suspect it’s the editors’ favorites list, rather than a true ‘best of’ — but I’m betting there are some collections (and authors) you might have missed in this British-based list.
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/oct/17/the-10-best-short-story-collections

Paris Review’s Prize Winning Stories of The Year
Two stories are in the Best American Short Story Anthology this year and nine were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Read some at the Paris Review site.
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/04/02/prized/

The Independent’s Best Stories of the Year
Another list from a British newspaper. Includes Hilary Mantel’s controversial “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher”, some Margaret Atwood and a collection by Tom Barbash, a fave of mine.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/books-of-the-year-2014-the-best-short-stories-9903465.html

The Huffington Post’s 10 Best Short Stories You’ve Never Read
Take the HuffPo challenge. Have you read them? I felt quite smug when I discovered I had read the first one on their list…then I looked at the rest of them. Ahem…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arna-bontemps-hemenway/the-10-best-short-stories_b_5571764.html

Electric Literature’s Best Short Story Collections of 2014
25 recommended story collections from Donald Antrim to Lorrie Moore with some names that didn’t hit any other lists I saw.
http://electricliterature.com/electric-literatures-25-best-story-collections-of-2014/

Readers’ Digest 8 of the Best
RD recommended these eight collections in the spring (another shout out for May as Short Story Month!). Some familiar names on this one…
http://www.rd.com/slideshows/best-short-stories-spring-2014

BookTrust Recommendations From Short Story Authors
BookTrust asked prize-winning writers to pick THEIR favorite collections. Seems sensible…
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/teenagers/bbc-young-writers-award/recommended-short-stories/
Also, check out BookTrust’s online library of short stories here:
http://www.booktrust.org.uk/books/adults/short-stories/stories/

Longreads Best of the Year
A subjective list of the best short stories of the year. As good a place as any to start
http://blog.longreads.com/2014/12/01/longreads-best-of-2014-here-are-all-of-our-no-1-story-picks-from-this-year/

The Quivering Pen Great Big Roundup
A fine list of short story collections from David Abrams. Compiled in June, it contains some interesting titles.

Hugo Award Nominees 2014
If all that up there is wa-ay too much literary fiction for you, how about taking a look at the Hugo Award nominees of the year for some speculative fiction-y goodness?
http://io9.com/announcing-the-2014-hugo-award-nominees-1565144494

Stacked’s Young Adult Short Story Recommendations
Doesn’t it seem like YA would be a great category for short fiction? Well, Stacked has a list of some YA short story collections from the past few years.
http://www.stackedbooks.org/2014/01/get-genrefied-short-stories.html

Fantastic Stories of the Imagination’s Short Genre Fiction Recommendations for 2014
Finally! A collection that includes Speculative and horror short stories. Only four stories in this list, but they are different enough to be worth checking out.
http://www.fantasticstoriesoftheimagination.com/new-and-noteworthy-short-fiction/

More Genre Fiction from Jonathan Strahan
This list is way out of date, but worth looking at just because genre gets so little respect in the other lists. All titles are from the first decade of the 21st century. Good additional recommendations in the comments section.
http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/2009/12/13/top-10-genre-short-story-collections-of-the-decade/

Jason Sanford’s Sci-Fi Picks for 2014
An author and reader picks his best bets for next year’s awards lists.
http://www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2014/9/best-short-stories-of-the-year-so-far


Then of course, there is always the Best American Short Stories annual anthology, The Best British Short Stories 2014, and I highly recommend the Selected Shorts podcast as a way to have new and notable short stories read to you by great actors, wherever you are.

Side note: apparently Brits take the short story much more seriously than folks anywhere else in the English-speaking parts of the planet. Prizes, end-of-year round ups, they dominate them!
Lets all don fake-British accents (except for me, of course who still has a semi-authentic one) and cheer the patron saints of the short story: the good folk of the UK!

So, what short stories have you read this year that you’d recommend? Share in the comments!

[Reading Room] This Old House Erotic Fan Fiction by Rebecca Scherm

I approached this humorous piece with a doubtful look. Satire is so hard to pull off and I often find stories published in McSweeneys miss the mark for me.

Not this one though.

In This Old House Erotic Fan Fiction, Rebecca Sherm takes on two of the biggest genres to storm the internet: erotica and fan fiction. And she blends it with This Old House! Talk about your Fifty Shades of Grey!

Sherm uses the language of erotic fan fiction and ladles on the innuendo, but never crosses the line into crudity (or, actually, erotica). That tension is what makes the piece so entertaining.

Recommended!