You know, sometimes cats make great assistants, and sometimes, no matter how hard they try, they’re not up for the task. Angel tried to help me with my writing challenge in December, but it didn’t work. First of all, I gave up writing on yellow legal pads in the seventh grade. (Although I did write something like six novels on them, mostly fan fic, because…hello!…I was twelve.)
Anyway, I had a challenge with folks to write three short stories in December. Some writers did that. All the writers who joined and finished a story beat me. Because currently, the story I started is 43,000 words long. Yep, I’m working on a surprise novel. But the December challenge got me back to short fiction—and I wanted to do something similar all year.
I have a lot of novels to write in 2025. They’re pent up, because as of August or so, I couldn’t really concentrate. Too busy saving the business, moving WMG to Nevada, finishing up some other projects, dealing with a legal headache, and a whole bunch of other things. Most of that has cleared, and now my writing brain is ready to go. But it wants to write all the novels and all the short stories…and I know me. I will focus on the novels and forget the short stories unless I have a deadline.
So, writers! I’m going to use you as my assistants in setting a deadline. Not for three short stories each month, but for one. Yep, just one.
Here’s the rules as Dean wrote them written on the Teachable website:
Kris is planning on writing one story a month. So she thought she would open it up as a way to keep herself focused and also to help others focus. So one story per month to write along with Kris.
If Kris writes one story per month and you write at least one or more stories per month, you double your $50 fee in credit on Teachable.
This Write Along goes for three months, then starts over if you want to keep going.
If Kris does not write one story per month for those three months, then no matter how many stories you write, you double your $50 fee in credit on Teachable.
Short story must be over 3,000 words. No upper limit.
No genre limitations.
Kris will report to all of you regularly through each month as she writes or finishes a story.
The cost is $50. This Write Along will repeat every three months. Kris hopes to write 12 stories in a year at least, but she wants to do one per month no matter what else she is writing.
(No credit from anything, I am afraid. Can’t buy in with credit to get more credit.)
So in essence, you are buying at least $50 credit and getting the chance to give yourself a focus to write one short story per month and hear from Kris along the way about her writing.
Kris is excited to do this. She really wants to get 12 stories done this year and feels this will keep her focused on it.
This is a win/win/win write along. Jump in, should be fun and get your writing fired up for the new year!
Lifetime Everything Subscribers, if you want to jump in, write me and I will send you the code and you can do it for fun.
Questions, write to Dean. The email address is on Teachable.
And, speaking of Teachable, because of the weirdness of having four holidays midweek, we decided to extend the 12 Days of Workshops sale. If you really want challenges, then you can get all of our challenges are half off right now, and there are some great ones. There are a lot of other great workshops and deals in the 12 Days, so take a look. It’ll end later this week.