Today is the second day of February's FLASH WEEK.

• We start with a blank sheet of paper.
• For seven days, we pledge our 10 minutes a day to Flash Week.
• We end with a complete flash fiction story of ~900-1200 words.

This month, we are using Dan Harmon's story circles framework to shape our outlines. If you're not familiar, it's a simple eight-point structure involving a protagonist who descends into the unknown and returns, changed. You, Need, Go, Search, Find, Take, Return, Change.

This is still (always) a no-homework podcast! Every episode, we build in ten minutes of time for ourselves to do the assignment, and the assignment is always to write write write. But for this special flash fiction week, rather than using standalone exercises for our kickoff prompts, we will carry our work from Day 1 over to Day 2, etc, all the way through Day 7 and THE END.

Today is Day 2 and today we commit to a core idea and entertain possibilities. As usual your anonymish host is writing along. She does some light Googling about one of her "maybes" during her ten minutes -- gotta stay within the time!

You can write to our daily writing prompt, but you could also:

• journal
• brainstorm
• write for your work in progress

All that matters is that you do write and you don't cheat and you don't stop writing until the music comes in.

Today is the start of February's FLASH WEEK.

• We start with a blank sheet of paper.
• For seven days, we pledge our 10 minutes a day to Flash Week.
• We end with a complete flash fiction story of ~900-1200 words.

This month, we are using Dan Harmon's story circles framework to shape our outlines. If you're not familiar, it's a simplified eight-point structure involving a protagonist who descends and returns, changed.

This is still (always) a no-homework podcast! Every episode, we build in ten minutes of time for ourselves to do the assignment, and the assignment is always to write write write. But for this special flash fiction week, rather than using standalone exercises for our kickoff prompts, we will carry our work from Day 1 over to Day 2, etc, all the way through Day 7 and THE END.

Today is Day 1 and today we brainstorm story seeds. As usual your anonymish host is writing along. She's leaning toward writing a piece for one of the markets she highlights in the ep.

You can write to our daily writing prompt, but you could also:

• journal
• brainstorm
• write for your work in progress

All that matters is that you do write and you don't cheat and you don't stop writing until the music comes in.

2025 New Year's writing resolution: spend 10 minutes a day getting words on the page.

Today's 10-minute writing exercise is focused on dialogue! We're writing a conversation that's really about something else, and as usual your anonymish host is writing along. She has to admit that she got her core idea from a Reddit post.

This is a no-homework podcast! Every episode, we build in ten minutes of time for ourselves to do the assignment, and the assignment is always to write write write.

Our dialogue exercises this month, with a couple of exceptions, will focus on the mechanics of dialogue writing. The subject of the conversation is less important than the effect of specific mechanistic choices or constraints that we'll be playing with.

For today's ten-minute writing exercise:

Write a scene where a couple argues about a small issue (who left the porch light on? whose turn is it to cook dinner?). The argument they seem to be having is masking a much bigger conflict (are they going to make rent that month? is someone cheating?).

Our themes this month are:

• Love in all its forms
• Dialogue
• Comedy Writing Step by Step by Gene Perret

We will also write a complete work of flash fiction together in a week from Feb 17 - Feb 23. No pre-work needed, and as always, zero homework outside of our ten minutes a day. This month we'll use Dan Harmon's story circles method to plan out our stories

You can write to our daily writing prompt, but you could also:

• journal
• brainstorm
• write for your work in progress

All that matters is that you do write and you don't cheat and you don't stop writing until the music comes in.