October 2024 The Great Substack Prompt Celebration

Your Inspiration Invitation

Welcome back to another month of 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 About Our Substack Beginnings

Did you notice the writers who launched their Substack fiction writing presence with last month’s prompt (go read and support their stuff here!)? We are honored that this project has inspired so many of you to add fiction to your Substack pages, and it got us wondering about everyone’s step into Substack as a writer, so this week’s question is

How did you start writing on Substack?

Are you one of our debut Fictionistas, or have you been here on Substack long before we stumbled into your inbox? Did you approach your Substack presence with a plan, or did you decide to throw fiction-shaped spaghetti at this digital wall in a experimental expression of creativity waiting to see what would stick?

Finally, if you have any tips or words of encouragement for our debut Substackers, please share them as well in the comments!

Mark Your Calendar & Grab Your Link

You officially have about one week 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 October Writing Prompt Party will be on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 6PM 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)!

Topic: FICTIONISTAS Writing Prompt Party OCTOBER 2024

Time: Oct 10, 2024 06:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89636663598?pwd=yrmWQq0iPI2GPekJKukkfa367Sl0Go.1

Meeting ID: 896 3666 3598

Passcode: OctFICTION

Let’s write together this month, Fictionistas!

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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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