June 2025 The FINAL Great Substack Prompt Celebration
Your Inspiration Invitation
Welcome back to The Great Substack Prompt Celebration!
Let’s begin by explaining what this is and why we think you should join us.
What is The Great Substack Prompt Celebration?
Fictionistas was created to support you in the fiction you are already writing and sharing on Substack, but as we grew, we took the opportunity to encourage you to embrace this growing writing community, stretch your writing muscles, and stop writing alone. Each month, Nicole Rivera of the Stop Writing Alone substack community and Jackie Dana, writer of Unseen St. Louis (nonfiction/local history) and Story Cauldron (fiction), will host a month-long Writing Prompt Celebration.
Our monthly writing prompt celebration begins with a live writing prompt party where we share a writing prompt, set a timer and write, and finally read aloud a first draft of a short fiction piece with fellow Fictionistas members. (This post includes this month’s invitation and link to that writing prompt party.) To continue the celebration – and to ensure no one misses out on what Nicole playfully calls “writing fitness with friends” – the prompt is then shared here on Fictionistas, along with an invite to share your polished fiction based on the prompt on the Fictionistas Substack page. In between we like to engage the community in conversations about their writing and writing process, within our posts so we can continue to learn about each other and share tips, tricks, experiences and lessons learned.
In the end we hope that our ever-growing community will get a chance to find your Substack page, read your fiction, and share it with their own followers in their social media spaces. Active participants will get a chance to write in and outside their comfort zones, meet fellow fiction writers in the trenches with them and, perhaps best of all, read lots of new-to-them writers.
Let’s begin for our chat topic of the week:
Let’s Talk Why This Is The Final Prompt Celebration & How We Feel About It
For over two years we’ve been having fiction fun with our friends here in Fictionistas — starting with
and sprinkling inspiration in your inboxes, then asking to spill some brews from her story cauldron — the number one goal of all our parties was to ask the fiction writers on Substack to stop writing alone. As we came closer to our 2025 summer break we did some back-end “real talk” about the juggle required to make the whole thing come together each month and whether or not it was sustainable in addition to our other Substacks, new jobs and family/home commitments. Looking squarely in the face of reality, the truth willed out: the Fictionistas “ball” was always the first I (Nicole) kept dropping. (Case in point… how late is this post?!)So this year’s Fictionistas summer break, is less like the school year end where you told all your friends, “See you next year!” and more like the one where you wore a cap gown, diploma in hand and, with anxious hopes, said “Keep in touch!”
This month’s Writing Prompt Party, Prompt Share, and Thread post will be the last ones we’ll be sharing on Fictionistas. This month’s live Zoom Writing Prompt Party we’ll be meeting in true going-away party style: on a Friday night (the rest of the month’s schedule will stick to Thursdays)!
The question of the month is simple:
How do you feel about this news?
I’ll tell you the feeling is bittersweet on this end. Proud of all we’ve done to inspire and connect with writers, but clear that to continue to do our best work in all arenas, we must be honest with ourselves concerning how far we each can continue to stretch. Let us know how you feel.
Remember, Graduations Often Mark New Beginnings
New jobs and new home life commitments have a lot to do with this shift in our ability to maintain the party here in Fictionistas, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to connect in other spaces if you still want to party! Writing Prompt Parties are held monthly in Stop Writing Alone and, as I take the Fictionistas Prompt Celebration off my monthly to-do list, I will be taking the Stop Writing Alone Writing Prompt Parties out from behind my paywall. So, just like on graduation day, I will ask those of you who have become accustmed to not writing alone anymore, or perhaps want to give it a try, keep in touch.
In the meantime…
Mark Your Calendar & Grab Your Link
You officially have DAYS to warm up before this month’s fun begins. Remember, Fictionistas who join the Writing Prompt Party will be the first to get this month’s prompt and the first to get some real-time reactions to their first drafts!
Your Official Invitation to Party
The February Writing Prompt Party will be on FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025 at 8PM Eastern. We would love to see you there (but keep in mind, if you can’t make it, we will be posting the prompt to Fictionistas after the meeting)!
Nicole Rivera is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: FICTIONISTAS Writing Prompt Party JUNE 2025
Time: Jun 13, 2025 08:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89636663598?pwd=Iw4Oh8zmcbRJYfrb0hSYXfZarGQ1eH.1
Meeting ID: 896 3666 3598
Passcode: JunFICTION
I’m Jackie, a fiction author, freelance writer, and historian, I enjoy rooting for the underdog and stirring up trouble. Unsurprisingly, my alignment is Chaotic Good. My Substacks are Unseen St. Louis and Story Cauldron,
I’m Nicole creator of all things Stop Writing Alone including a podcast, a YouTube channel, and a Substack community hosting multiple monthly Live Zoom Events for writers seeking community. If you are ready to truly stop writing alone, join here.
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Oh man... This was something I truly cherished and looked forward to. This news saddens me, although I empathise. I need a day to let this soak in.