I Wrote a Story Every Day in May!

And I'm Featured in The Writer magazine...

Dear Readers,

I still can’t believe it and I’m pinching myself about it. I will outline the journey of how this came about later this month, but for now, I am a featured article in The Writer magazine. READ IT HERE.

Image from my iPhone Apple News app.

It is the oldest magazine for writers currently being published, and one of the oldest continually published magazines in the U.S. It is targeted at writers, and includes articles offering advice for writing and resources for publishing. - Wikipedia

I honestly never imagined this happening and now that it has my mind is racing with “what’s next” for me? I am, of course, working behind the scenes on my curio fiction collection while also working on my 100 Words Daily goal too. It just feels really nice and so surreal to see my name in print and that possibly some new subscriptions to my Substack will come from that article I wrote.

For context on what kind of eyeballs will potentially be on my story, here are “the numbers” as last reported in 2019/2020:

Their print issue has a 32k circulation. 3:1 female to male readership. Average household income $82k/yr.

Have I made it? Not by a long shot. I need more published articles under my belt and more experience leveraging having this kind of access. But the level of confidence I’ve gained to put myself out there and await the ‘no’ as well as the ‘yes’ is definitely higher than it was a few months ago.

If you want to read the digital version of the article, here is the link as I have it from Apple News. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a direct from The Writer website link. But if it becomes available I will be sure to share that in my next issue.

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100 Words Daily (Challenge/Goal)

3,100. That’s how many words I’ve written in May towards my 100-Words Daily goal. Some more useless pieces of information around my May accomplishment is that it takes, on average, about 30 seconds to read each 100-word story. Which means if you were to sit down and read all 31 stories I’ve written so far, it would take you about 15min 30sec. But don’t do that. Each one is meant to get you thinking far beyond those 30 seconds. Another strange fact you might forget immediately after I tell you is that it took me about 10 minutes to write each story. 310 minutes (ish). A little more than 5 hours in total. Not too shabby.

I move on to June with excitement as it’s my birthday month. There is so much news to share in June and exciting things I hope to get done. But first, I want to quickly mention paid subscriptions. Nothing you receive will ever be put behind a paywall, however, after one full month has passed all of my 100-Words Daily for the previous month will be archived for Paid Subs only. So, if you want to read my 31 May Stories, as of today, you’ll need to be paid. And since it’s my birthday month, for the ENTIRE month of June the annual Subscription is 50% off! That’s just $25 for an entire year!

Yesterday you may have already gotten an email from me about my idea to use a brand new deck of tarot cards I received from a Kickstarter for my 30 June stories. The Literary Tarot will be my inspiration for seventy-eight 100 word stories as part of my 100 Words Daily goal. You can find more about it below in my WRITING ROUND UP. Just remember, July 1st all 30 June stories will be for paid subs only.

Enough about that. Another change you’ll notice is that Wednesday, May 24th was the last 100 Word Stories email I’ll be sending. It was, let’s face it, too complicated to keep separate from my 100 Words Daily. I did that confusion to myself. This means the prompts on Mondays and Wednesdays have come and gone. I know many of you used my prompts to help with your own writing journey, which is why I will keep the Free Writing Fridays! These posts will never be put behind a paywall. Plus, the word count limit is removed. Feel free to write whatever story you want at whatever length. You’ll notice the change in rules with tomorrow’s Free Writing Friday post.

I encourage anyone who was participating in the 100 Word Stories to continue to do so by using my one word prompt story titles that I send daily and writing your story in your own Substack/newsletter.

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WRITING ROUND UP

FICTION

Catch up on my 100-Words Daily stories here. (Starting today Paid Subscribers get access to 31 May Stories)

NON-FICTION

I Haven’t Used Elon Musk’s Twitter in Over a Month - Find out what life without social media apps (not just Twitter) is like for me and how you can easily do the same thing. We don’t need social media but social media really needs us in order to exist.

You Need to Set-Up Google Analytics on Your Substack - A quick how-to for Google Search Console if you’re at all interested in SEO and crap like that.

How Many Emails is Too Many to Send? - One of the most commonly asked questions among other ‘Stackers has to do with frequency of email delivery. These are my thoughts on the matter.

10 Tips for Writing a Newsletter People Want to Read - It can be overwhelming to start and maintain a newsletter. The short answer is that there’s no blueprint or secret formula except to do what you can with it and treat it like a necessary part of your creative work not a hinderance. These tips are not Hoyle but meant to be helpful.

My Tarot Deck Collection - Updating periodically. This is just a place for me to keep track of what decks I have that I will most likely use as inspiration for future stories.

I Had the Urge to Merge - In the last two years that I’ve been on Substack I’ve created as many as 8 publications, 6 of which were active at one time. My crazy has since been tamed and I’m down to just 3. This tells you about my madness and the choices I made to make my writing life easier.

The Pros and Cons of Having More Than One Substack - Having multiple ‘Stacks is not all bad, there are some net positives after all, but you should always consider the negatives when taking on anything new.

No One Reads Fiction Anymore So Why Bother Writing It - Every now and then a discussion crops up where I have so much to say I decide to write it all down like this rather than leave a comment wall on some poor unsuspecting soul. You’re welcome.

The Literary Tarot 100 Words Daily Starts Tomorrow - A look at what this challenge is all about and how you can join me too!

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HEARD ROUND THE ‘STACKS

Notes has introduced me to so many new Substacks I can’t keep up. I’m so thankful to have my clean inbox that allows me to get through and read all of them so I can continue to subscribe and share some hidden gems with you:

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WHAT I’M READING

In May I started reading the 2nd book in the Oz series, The Marvelous Land of Oz. This is exciting to me because it’s my first time reading beyond The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Hence the reason for the name of my other Substack. If you’d like to join us, feel free to sign up. We’re only 1/3 of the way through the book, it’s free to read online or any e-reader device, and each chapter is fairly short:

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YOUTUBE WORTH THE WATCH

I feel like the level of videos I watch on a monthly basis is so stellar that I want to expand this to a weekly thing as a way for me to have a library to look back on. Therefore, I’m retiring this section of my monthly updates and moving it to its own section on my Substack to release whenever I find something interesting accompanied by my written thoughts. It’s already begun as of May 6th and you can update your subscription by clicking the button at the beginning of this email and clicking