Of all the virtual writing community events, Storystorm perhaps requires the smallest time commitment (and no financial commitment). Participants write down one potential picture book idea each day in the month of January. There’s no expectation that these ideas be developed so many of my entries are limited to a few words or a subject tag and no expectation that they be shared. Like everything else though, you get out of it what you put into it. I found my ideas came in spurts. There were a few ideas that I had thought up before and then merely jotted them down and filled up the better part of the first week. Allowing myself to get ahead on the days that I had time helped. Truthfully, anyone who is managing to create anything during this pandemic while managing to care for others is a winner.
This challenge turned out to be fun for the entire family. My 2nd grader shouted out ideas daily and I wrote (pretended to write) all of those down even when the details took 30-45 minutes to flesh out and by the no longer had any connection to the original idea proposed. I had to say ‘cool’ and ‘amazing’ every two minutes. My 9th grader and I though had a few brainstorming sessions which generated some tremendously silly ideas that need to never even be written down (he agrees), but also some solid starting points.
And by January 31, it was official. I was a winner. 31 ideas in 31 days. I’m hoping this is just the start to my 2021 success.