My 2025 Challenge

And Back to the Format of this Blog…

This blog on most nights will be in three parts for all of 2025.

Part 1… PUBLISHING…

First part I will talk about something in publishing or writing. More than likely finish the series on trademarks and so on. That will start tomorrow.

Part 2… LEARNING…

This will be all sorts of things about books or learning or workshops… For example, the 12 Holiday Days of Workshop Sales is still going. See yesterday’s blog. Great bargains to help you learn and get into the new year.

Part 3… MY WRITING…

Every night I will write about my writing that day, about the story, and the ups and downs and so on. I did this for a month or so a few years back in a challenge that produced a book called STORIES FROM JULY. I wrote 31 stories, put them all in the book along with the blogs about writing them and the covers.

So here is what I am going to challenge myself to do in 2025…

I am going to try, once again, to write one short story per day for 365 days. 

These will all be full-sized stories, no flash fiction at all. Most of my stories run from 3,000 to 7,000 words, so that is what I will be doing.

Last time I tried this challenge three years ago, I ended up around 140 stories and stopped because, at that point, I could not figure out what I was going to do with all those stories.

So this time, for months leading up to this point, I have spent a vast amount of time working on the publishing side of this challenge, to give myself a real shot at making the challenge. The factors were that I had to do most of the work and what work I had to have help on could not cost much.

That took a lot of figuring, conversations with Kris, and with Steph. Thanks, Kris, for once again putting up with me doing all this ahead-of-time work. I know it was a pain. (grin)

Here is what I will be doing with the stories this time around…

— I will have my own Shopify store. Starting on the 15th or so of January, each story starting with the first story will be available to read FOR FREE for one day on my store. (It will also be for sale for $1.99.) That way anyone following this challenge and the blogs about the writing of the stories can see exactly what I am writing.

All stories every month will be for sale on my own store. (So I am doing that with the stories each month.)

I will also be doing a cover for every story and, of course, will post some here.

— Every two weeks I will put the stories in a 10-story collection. The collection will be given to backers on my Patreon page at certain levels. So there will be two collections per month. I will do the covers for the collections as well. The collections will be available for sale on my store.

So that is a second thing I am doing with the stories.

— Smith’s Monthly Magazine will start back up, more than likely with the February issue.  The first 67 issues will be available on my store and issues 61-67 will be added to my Patreon page to get it caught up for those still there. Patreon supporters at certain levels will get Smith’s Monthly or you can get it from my store or subscribe.

I will also do a signed edition of Smith’s Monthly for those at a certain level on Patreon support.

So that is a third thing I will be doing with a few of the stories each month. (About five original every month in Smith’s.)

— Stories From… Collections… Every month I will take each story, the covers for each story, and the nightly blogs about writing the stories and put them in a book titled “Stories from (the month).” These should be interesting reading for readers and writers alike, a real look inside the process of writing short fiction. Big books!!

So that is a fourth thing I will be doing with these daily stories.

And that solves the problem I had last time I tried this challenge.

One short story a day for 365 days harkens back a little bit to the legend of O’Henry. He never wrote a story a day, mostly managing a story per week, but newspapers of the time featured the “O’Henry Story of the Day.” That gave him the reputation of being more prolific than he actually was. He ended with about 600 short stories in his lifetime. I have now, ahead of this challenge, written more than that, not counting novels or other books.

Of course, this challenge got me 140 daily stories in a row a few years back, and that is my record so far.

It’s a real challenge. Going to be a fun 2025.

First blog about the writing and problems of the day will be here on January 1st 2025. Stay tuned.