What? A story a day for an entire year? (Generating material)
Yes! A story a day for an entire year.
Generating material is the first step to finding stories. It doesn't matter what you write or how you write it, stories come from ideas. Sometimes the ideas are big, often they're small. Tiny, in fact.
Prolific creators need more than ideas ... We need a pool of material from which to draw. Generating material requires discipline, patience and a good dollop of creativity.
But we all need to convert. Ideas alone do not make a writer.
Friend and colleague Richard Holt set himself the task of writing a story per day for an entire year! To maintain his motivation, he also committed to publishing each story online and, to enhance his focus, he refined the theme of his stories to 'love'. If this post inspires you to play with micro-fiction (aka flash fiction), you might want to enter the inaugural Flashing the Square very short story competition. Entries due March 31.
Thank you, Richard, for being A story to tell's inaugural 'pearl of wisdom'.
In future, each pearl will be less than ten minutes so you can snaffle the wisdom and inspiration in a nice crisp bite. Next post will be the second half of Richard's pearl. It's a pearler.