Julie Duffy's Blog, page 7

Set Up Your Log & Workspace

There are two halves to today’s tiny challenge, both designed to make it easier for you to get to work–and feel good about it–every day.

Create a log to capture whatever you decided to track, yesterdaySet up your workspace for the challengeCreate a Log

Depending on what you chose, and how your brain works, your log might look fancy or plain (it might even be a simple notebook page with a heading and a bunch of tally marks).

I created a new bundle of productivity logs and checklists for StoryADay May 2025. Download for free here.

Set Up Your Workspace

Take a moment to set up a digital folder or a notebook (physical or digital), or a three-ring binder, where you can keep all your materials related to StoryADay.

It might not seem important now, but a month from  now, when you are in a completely different place as a writer, you are going to thank Past-You for being kind and making it easy for you to find all the moments of brilliance and insight you racked up.

It doesn’t matter if you choose to write in Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, a notes app in your phone, or a specific notebook. Just choose.

Some days it may not be convenient to write in your preferred way. On those days, I recommend going to your ‘master file’ later, and writing yourself a note (e.g. “Wrote today’s story in my phone notes”). (You can find a sample master file in the downloadable bundle.)

Note: Last month I used a notation like that to find drafts from last May to revise for a contest!

What’s important is that you create easy access to writing time and writing records.

This tiny task helps you:

Remove barriers to getting started
Build your identity as a writer who shows up

Discussion: What’s your writing space like? Are you using a fancy journal, a Google Doc, a spreadsheet? Leave a comment and let us know!

The Superstars Advantage
The fastest way to get better at writing stories is to write more stories — and reflect on them with other writers. That’s what the StoryADay Superstars group was built for.
You could do it alone, but why make it harder than it needs to be?
Find out more

Superstars Strategy: You wouldn’t train for a marathon without a coach and a team. Superstars gives you the structure and encouragement that make showing up easier — and more joyful.

Decide How To Track Your Progress

Today’s challenge:

Decide how you will track your progress during the challenge, in a no-judgment way

Remember when you were young and your parents/teachers said to you: “we just want you to do your best”?

If you were anything like me, that phrase filled you with foreboding because you knew, deep down, that you couldn’t be ‘your best’ every day.

Sometimes you performed spectacularly. If you were expected to live up to that every day, life would be a nightmare.

And, if you were anything like me, it made you try a little less hard, so people didn’t expect too much from you.

Breaking News: “Your Best” Is A Moving Target

We are human. We get tired. We grieve. We have fun. We have hormones, and hunger, and stress, and inspiration, and dry spells.

We are not machines.

One day you can write 2,000 words of flowing prose. The next day, dragging 350 words out of your brain feels like torture.

The goal must be to keep showing up and doing Today’s Best.

Today’s Best won’t look like Yesterday’s Best. It might be 40% or 140% of what Yesterday’s Best looked like. And that’s ok. Because you’re doing Today’s Best.

The trick is to decide to:

Show up for your writing, in some kind of routine way. Be in the moment with your writing for as many moments as you can mange today. Be grateful for whatever Today’s Best looks like (writing it down helps with this)Be a goldfish: When you have written what you can today, let it go, move on, and keep showing up on the next days.Your Rules, Your Log

You make your own rules for StoryADay.

You will ‘fail’ in some way, on many days of a challenge like this.

But that doesn’t mean the venture is a failure. Or that you are.

Today, think about ways that you might log your progress over a month of writing, so you can apply the lessons learned to all the future months of writing you hope to live through.

Some things you might track (I’ll be back tomorrow to help you plan HOW you will log. Today we’re just deciding).

How many stories you write, overallHow many stories you write compared with how many you planned to writeHow many words you write each dayHow many writing sessions you do during the month (and when they occur: mornings? afternoons? evenings? And which felt easiest?)How much energy it takes to write on each day How your energy ebbs and flows between daysYour feelings towards your stories, characters, and/or writing practiceYour reaction to everyday ‘failures’ (these might be disappointments about quality, quantity, intensity or emotion, around the challenge and your expectations).How many new ideas do you generate during the month, while also using up ideas?How many times you attend a writing sprint or check in with a writing buddyHow in control of your routine you feel, on any given daySomething else….

IMPORTANT: do not try to track all these things. Pick 1-2 metrics and decide to keep track of them during the challenge.

Practice

StoryADay is about practicing your craft. Practice, without assessment, is play, and play is fine. (You’re welcome to simply play, during StoryADay)

But if you want feel the progress you’re making, deliberate assessment helps.

In my experience, logging what I write and how I feel about it, helps me to notice that I’m doing MORE than my ‘generalized feelings about my writing’ would allow.

You might find the same.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to help you set up your log.

Want to write today?

Try the  Draft in a Day Workshop
available at a 50% discount until May 1, 2025

Discussion:

What will you log, to help you stay present and do Today’s Best, during the challenge, and moving forward in your writing practice? Leave a comment!

The Superstars Advantage
When you’re part of a supportive community, you write more — and better. Superstars isn’t just a course. It’s a transformation engine.
Join us and stop wondering if you’re doing it right.
Start knowing you are.
Find out more

Challenge Warm-Up Tasks

In case you’ve missed any, here are all the Warm-Up Tiny Tasks from April 2025, to help you get ready for StoryADay May.

None of these is essential, but take a look through the list and click on one or two that seem like they might be helpful to you, wherever you are in your writing journey right now.

Not signed up for the challenge yet? Fix That Here:April Tiny TasksImagine Your Way To Success

Making The Challenge Work For You

Start Collecting Story Sparks

Writing Matters

Story Moods

Get Started on Settings

Brainstorming Characters Pt 1

Refining Your Craft

Brainstorming Characters Pt 2

Personality Traits

Character Speech

Imagine Yourself, Succeeding

Face The Fear

Your Writer Identity

Triumph Over Doubt

The Power of Tiny Wins

Create A Bounce Back Plan

Make Your Rules

Engage With The World of Fiction

Writing The World You Want

Read A Story 

Fast-Draft a Practice Story

Repeat Your Successes, Learn from your Practice

Decide How To Log Your Progress

Set Up Your Log and Workspace (coming April 25)

Ready, Set, Go!

Choose Your Challenge Vibe (coming April 28)

Share Your Bounce Back Plan (coming April 29)

Commit & Join the Movement (coming April 30)

DISCUSSION

Find any of them particularly helpful? Done something like this in the past? Share your tips with the community, below!

Fast-Draft a Practice Story (With Us)

Today’s challenge:

Write a story in 40 minutes.

It doesn’t have to be perfect (in fact, it shouldn’t be!). You’re practicing:

Starting
Trusting your instincts
Letting go of perfection

Want to write together? You’re invited to a public StoryADay workshop this evening, where we’ll draft a story live.

Discussion:

Did you try it? What helped you keep moving forward? Was the ending rushed or just right?

The Superstars Advantage
When you’re part of a supportive community, you write more — and better. Superstars isn’t just a course. It’s a transformation engine.
Join us and stop wondering if you’re doing it right.
Start knowing you are.
Find out more

Fast-Draft a Practice Story

Today’s challenge:

Write a story in 40 minutes.

It doesn’t have to be perfect (in fact, it shouldn’t be!). You’re practicing:

StartingTrusting your instinctsLetting go of perfection

Want to write today?
Try the  Draft in a Day Workshop available at a 50% discount until May 1, 2025

Discussion:

Did you try it? What helped you keep moving forward? Was the ending rushed or just right?

Read A Story

Today’s Tiny Task is:

Read a flash fiction story — preferably under 1,000 words.

Notice:

What makes it work?
How much character/worldbuilding can be conveyed in so few words?
How does it feel satisfying, even though it’s short?

Try out what you’ve learned by writing a story today: purchase the Draft in a Day Workshop at a 50% discount until May 1, 2025.

FLASH FICTION FURTHER READING

Steve Almond, Stop

Erin Morgenstern, The Cat and The Fiddle

Ariel Berry, Useless Things

Naomi Kritzer, Paradox

Josh McColough, Meteor

Jennifer Wortman, Theories of the Point of View Shift in AC/DC’s ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’

Rachel Engelman, Joan of Arc Sits Naked In Her Dorm Room

Or read from these publications

Flash Fiction Online

Every Day Fiction

Uncharted Magazine

Discussion:

What did you read? Drop a link (if it’s online), and tell us one technique the author used that impressed you.

The Superstars Advantage
The fastest way to get better at writing stories is to write more stories — and reflect on them with other writers. That’s what the StoryADay Superstars group was built for.
You could do it alone, but why make it harder than it needs to be?
Find out more

Writing The World You Want

Today’s Tiny Task is:

Make a list of 5 things you’d love to see more of in society

Be Specific.Not just “kindness”, but “a twenty-something with the pink hair and double-septum piercing who ran across a busy street to pick up the oranges that scattered when the old man dropped his grocery bagNot just “beauty”, but “the way the sudden gust of wind through the cherry blossoms makes me giggle as if I’m in a freshly-shaken snowglobe.”Not just “activism”, but extraordinary actions and grand gestures rooted in love, not hate, that help ordinary people see a better way of acting and reacting.

Why? Because the things you want to see more of in the world are a mirror of what matters to you.

And because specificity makes your storytelling relatable to readers.

You can write hopeful stories, critical ones, dark, dystopian tales — but your underlying values will still shine through. So get clear on them now.

Bonus points: Trying to write in isolation is like trying to assemble  the Lego Death Star  without the instructions. Start making a plan now for how you’ll use the community here to gain the support, and the momentum you need to turn your ideas into powerful stories — and keep going.

Discussion:

What surprised you about your list? Are there elements here you’ve already written into your work? Would you like to do it more intentionally?

Make Your Rules

Now that you’ve spent some time thinking about Story Sparks, characters, settings, and the mood of the stories you might want to write, as well as your Writer Identity, Tiny Win Celebrations and Bounce Back Plan, it’s time to get serious about making your rules for StoryADay

My Own Rules?

Yes.

StoryADay May’s original challenge was to write a story a day in May. It’s a huge challenge and thrills a certain type of writer with the massive commitment, the opportunity to outrun the demons of perfectionism, and the opportunity to tell the people who love you “sorry, not this month, I’m focused on my writing.”

But.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Your Tiny Task for today is to

Set Your Rules For StoryADay May

You get to set your own rules. Rules that will:

Push you to write more than you usually wouldHelp you out run pefectionismForce you to keep writing when inspiration has dried up—which usually results in you reaching for the weird ideas that, in turn, re-spark your inspriation. odd, but true.

they might look like this:

I will write a story a day, even if that story is a single sentence that I’m being extremely creative in describing as a story. The point is to think about narrative and try to craft something complete, every day.I will write a story three days a week, starting and finishing a story in a single 24 hour periodI will write every day except these days…(good if you have long-standing commitments in May)I will write a 100 word story every day. No more, no less.

You can even decide to do something completely different, as long as you stick to it. In the past people have used the challenge to

Write a new idea for a picture book every day of the monthWrite backstories for my novel world and its charactersWrite connected stories set in a single apartment buildingRevise a scene from a work in progress every week day.

TIP: Keep the rules simple and few.

Flexibility, Without Fracture

The best type of tree to stand under when it’s windy is a healthy one, and one with plenty of flex. Too rigid, and the limbs will snap off. We don’t want that in a tree or in your StoryADay Challenge!

If you’re nervous that your rules might be too rigid and threaten to break you, make your plan today and commit to sticking to it for one week.
If you are really hating it at the end of that week, tweak the plan for Week 2, then stick to the new plan for a week.
Discover something about your writing practice that makes your Week 2 plan make no sense? Change it for Week 3 and stick to that for at least a week. and so on.

StoryADay May is about finding out how to be a writer, for you, in this moment, not ‘some day’. It’s your challenge. Make commitments, stick to them for long enough to figure out if they’re working, then tweak.

For The Best Experience, Consider Superstars

Want Support During StoryADay May — and Beyond?

StoryADay May is an incredible way to spark your creativity — but it can be intense, and it’s easy to lose momentum without the right support system.

That’s why I created Superstars: a six-month guided experience that gives you community, structure, and resources to support your writing journey through May and beyond.

Find out more and join us, here

When you join Superstars, you’ll get:Daily writing sprints and accountability during May (and all year round!)
A private, off-social-media community of committed writers who “get it”
Access to a library of workshops on craft, mindset, and productivity
Monthly themes to help you stay focused and growing
Critique opportunities to help you revise and share your stories
Encouragement to help you write more, finish more, and feel like a writer

Superstars is about more than just writing more. It’s about writing better, finishing what you start, and moving toward your writing goals in a structured, supported, and sustainable way.

Here’s what your next six months could look like:May: Show up daily, write more than you thought possible, and lean into the challenge with support all around you.
June: Refine – Choose a story from May and revise it with intention. Participate in Critique Week to get thoughtful, constructive feedback.
July: Improve – Strengthen your craft with focused workshops on scene-building, character, pacing, and dialogue.
August: Triumph – Polish a piece and get it ready to share. Learn what success looks like for you, and celebrate your growth.
September: Engage – Make your writing more engaging, and reconnect with readers, fellow writers, and your creative purpose.
October: Imagine – Reconnect with your vision and voice. Participate in a second Critique Week to prepare for what comes next.

Find out more and join us, here

Don’t Go it Alone

I created Superstars after seeing what worked during the StoryADay Challenge:

Writers who engaged and showed up daily? They finished strong.
Writers who kept writing after May? They polished and published.
Writers who tried to go it alone? Too often, they floundered.

Superstars has been helping writers stay focused, finish their work, and live more confidently as writers since 2018.

If you’re ready to turn your May breakthrough into a writing life you love — I’d love to welcome you into Superstars.

You don’t have to do this alone. Let’s keep writing — together.

Find out more and join us, here

Create A Bounce Back Plan

…because setbacks happen.

Every writer hits bumps—on normal writing weeks and especially during a challenge. The trick is to bounce back, quickly.

If you think the point of a challenge like StoryADay is to turn out 31 stories in 31 days then, well, you’ve kind of missed the point.

The real point of StoryADay May is to allow you to teach yourself how to be a writer on good days and bad.

Everyone ‘fails’, when writing. Sometimes that means going for days without writing anything. Sometimes that means writing something you’re not happy with. Sometimes it means not achieving what you set out to do.

But the places where we fail are the places where we learn something interesting: about our habits, about our capacity, about our skills, and about our ability to control our responses.

Your response to a failure should never, ever be to give up.

You can rest. You can reset, but you must not quit.

Today’s tiny task is to:

Create Your Bounce Back Plan

What will you do if you don’t meet your goals for a day during the challenge?

Make a list of all the things that might go wrong on any given day in during the challenge, Then, come up with contingency plans. Think of ways to jumpstart your writing, create a gap in your schedule, or perhaps even a ways to forgive and forget, and move on.Examples

If your goal is to write a short story every day in May and one day you fall asleep before you write your story, how will you respond? Will you—as I strongly recommend—shrug it off and move on to the next day, not going back to ‘catch up’? Or will you allow your subconscious plan to kick in? You know, the one you haven’t acknowledged, but that is secretly lurking there? The one that says “oh, well, I blew my streak, I should just quit and wait for next year?”. Hint: Dont’ do that. Make a proactive, resilient plan like the one I suggested.

If you are failing to get a full story written, because you’re stuck, or because it’s late and you’re tired, what is an acceptable minimum alternative? Will you write a well-crafted 6-word or 100 word story instead of the story you thought you were going to write?

If you hate the day’s prompt but don’t have any ideas of your own, will you skip that day and do something to fill the well (like reading a short story, or going to an art gallery) and call that a win? Or will you have a stash of ‘back up prompts’ from the StoryADay archive to draw on? Or perhaps you’ll dig into your Story Sparks and notes from this month’s warm-up exercises and come up with a story that surprises and delights you, instead? What’s your plan for days like this, when inspiration doesn’t strike straight away?

If you discover that you hate writing at whatever time you had planned out for your StoryADay writing, will you quit? Or will you commit to trying to write at a different time for a few days and see if that shakes anything loose?

If your laptop makes your eyes hurt, or your favorite pen breaks, or you just can’t stand looking at screens anymore. Will you try dictating your story into your phone? Or typing it on an old typewriter?

If you discover you crave a day off, do you have to quit the challenge, or do you decide to give yourself Sundays, or Wednesdays, off? Maybe both? (Full disclosure: I take Sundays off, because otherwise I feel miserable by Week 3.)

Discussion

What is your Bounce Back plan for days when things go awry?

The Power of Tiny Wins

Writing success doesn’t come from heroic marathons—even though we are about to embark on one.

The truth is that success comes from the steps you take to implement what you learn during the challenge. Showing up again and again, long after May is over, is what will drive you to your definition of success, whatever that is (more on that, next week).

And the way to keep showing up (aka ‘build a habit’) is to create an outsized celebration for every tiny step you take towards creating that habit.

Decide, Do, CelebrateChoose one tiny writing task today—setting your intentions for your writing today; deciding to write one paragraph or sentence in your work in progress; opening your manuscript; noticing three Story Sparks, whatever. Just keep it tin.Choose a celebration to do—it might be punching the air, doing a literal victory dance, spending two minutes coloring in a picture, laughing out loud, patting yourself on the back, eating a single delicious chocolate truffle or in-season strawberry that you have put on your desk before you started. Whatever you choose it should be absolutely immediate (no searching for stickers or promising yourself an ice cream later) and it should be something (like the a big grin or the victory dance) that changes your physical state. When you do the good behavior, take the reward—We’re ‘burning in’ the ‘good behavior=reward’ pathway, as if we were puppies. And why not? It works for puppies, and it works for us too.Further Reading/Listening

Listen to my podcast episode about the power of tiny wins and the Fogg Behavioral Model

Discussion

Did you choose an immediate reward? Did you choose a tiny task? Did you do both, one after the other? Did it feel silly? If so you’re doing it right! Tell us what you did: