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I’m already starting to think about next year’s StoryADay May and, here in this age of AI, I was struck with the awful thought: why bother?

AI means you can generate 31 short story writing prompts in 90 seconds (5 minutes if you’re willing to wait for more polished prompts with a theme and multiple repetition. How do I know this? I asked it.)

It takes me roughly 3 months of (admittedly part-time) work to research guest authors, reach out to them, assemble their responses, curate and cue them up, create pretty images, summaries, and queue everything up.

But the point is that you get a human-created journey through a month of story writing. You get a peek inside the head of other writers. And you get to have the experience, along with other writers in the community.

It’s not for everyone. But I’ll keep doing it for you.

And also for me.

Because the work is not just about the prompts. It’s never just about the output, the end product.

Writing Changes Us

The struggle, the striving, the research, the craft, the failure, the resilience, the patience, the growth…It’s personal development at its finest.

How To Bother Writing, in an age of AI

I’ve been preaching this for a decade and a half (and now I have the experience of leading a group for 8 years to back up my hypothesis). 

The most important foundation you can give your writing is to:

Define success

If you don’t know what success means for you, how are you ever going to know if you’ve attained it.

Not someone else’s vision of success.

Yours.

And that means asking some questions about why you’re doing this.

• Are you doing it to be published?
• Are you trying to support yourself from your fiction writing?
• Are you building a daily practice for self-development?
• Are you trying to improve a particular craft skill?
• Are you keeping a promise you made to yourself as a child?
• Are you setting an example for a younger person in your life who needs to see what ‘self-respect’ looks like?

This is Step One. 

Without it, you will never be—or feel—successful, no matter what external measures of success you hit.

If you skip this step-–or if you think this remains static forever—it’s almost impossible to be productive, motivated, or fulfilled by writing. If you’re simply on a treadmill, turning out words, you’ll be consumed by the idea that it’s never enough—that you’re not enough.

Do This Now

If you haven’t taken the time to examine your definition of success lately—and perhaps to notice how it has changed since you were 14, 25, 35, 45—put down your pen, push away the keyboard, and spend the next week just noodling on these questions:

• What does success look like for you, in the next few years?
• In order to get there, what milestones would you have to hit, if any?
• What would you have to do regularly, to feel successful when you look back at your month?
• What does that look like, for today?

If you do this exercise right, you’ll notice that it becomes easier to show up for your writing and enjoy yourself.

Without taking this step, your internal ‘motivation process’ can look like this:

“Today I have to work on finishing the novel so that I can get it out into the world and quit my job and prove to [that friend/family member] that I haven’t been wasting my time all these years.” [Sighs. Drags self to coalface….]

Not only is that demotivating since your inner critic is bound to kick in and try to keep you safe by pointing out how hard it is to do what you’ve outlined. It’s also doomed to fail, as a path to success today, because it’s impossible to figure out what first step to take today. 

And so it’s impossible to know when you’ve finished your work for the day. Without a clear definition of what success looks like to you, you’re likely to do nothing, or to keep working until you’re so exhausted you have to stop. Neither of which makes you feel successful, or advance you towards external success. 

So you pick up your phone and doomscroll and go to bed promising to do twice as much tomorrow, still without a clear idea of what that looks like.

No More Doomscrolling

If you have done the work to figure out what ‘success’ looks like for you—for now—your internal motivational conversation goes more like one of this:

“I know I want to finish this novel, because I want to prove to myself that I can write something I’m proud of. I need to finish the scene where the protagonist confronts the bad guy, but I’m having trouble doing it. Maybe I need to back up and do some character exercises (from that course/book I bought and never finished) to figure out the characters’ real motivations. OK, that won’t add to the manuscript’s word count today, but I’ll learn more about the characters, which might free me up to write the actual scene tomorrow. So today’s task is: find that character exercise I remember liking in that course I took, and go through it slowly. When I’ve done that I’ll summarise my thoughts, for next time, then my reward will be to take a walk outside.”

(Notice the reward. That’s a key part of building a satisfying practice and feeling successful in it.)

Picture The Day

Imagine yourself at the end of a day when you’ve ground through 2,000 words or four scenes, because “that’s what successful writers do”, and then collapsed on the couch with a whisky, ‘to recover’. 

No imagine yourself at the end of a day when you took a small concrete step that aligns with your goals and your current energy, and that you can put a checkmark next to as ‘accomplished today’. You bound out of your chair with energy left over to hang with the kids or the spouse, knowing that you’ll be back in a day or two to tackle the next task.

Doesn’t that feel like a successful writing life, regardless of external rewards or judgment?

So should you bother writing, in an age of AI, even if the external rewards you once hoped for aren’t guaranteed?

I, for one, say “yes”.

Need help tracking your successes? Get the Planning & Tracking Bundle

Keep writing,

Julie

::LINKS::

StoryADay Challenge archive: https://storyaday.org/writing-prompt-archive/

SWAGr monthly accountability posts: https://storyaday.org/category/swagr

‘Define Success’ article: https://storyaday.org/how-to-become-a-highly-successful-writer/

The Dream of being a Writer, article: https://storyaday.org/the-dream/

Permission to Write article (and certificate): https://storyaday.org/write-more-permission-to-write/

The I, WRITER Framework for a Successful Productive Writing Life, article: https://storyaday.org/i-writer-framework/

Planning & Tracking Worksheets Bundle: https://storyaday.kit.com/products/story-a-day-planning-tracking-worksheets

StoryADay Superstars group: https://storyaday.org/superstars

Book a 1:1 Writing Strategy Session with Julie: https://members.storyaday.org/creative-coaching