For Christmas, my daughter Kathleen bought me a subscription to Storyworth – which is a site that prompts you each week with a question, has you write up a short answer, and at the end of the year publishes a physical book with all those answers printed. I appreciated the thought behind the gift – but at first, I didn’t see the value. I already write fairly regularly, so Storyworth at first seemed like a burden – something that I would need to do that would actually steal time from other creative activities.
I started getting writing prompts from Storyworth shortly after Christmas, but it took me about a month (plus some prompting from my wife) to invest time in it. After writing up one or two answers to the questions, I actually started seeing the value:
- It forced me to reflect on my life – A lot of the prompts were questions about my childhood. This forced me to stop and think about my childhood, organize/summarize my descriptive information, and form it into something readable.
- I’m sharing with my family – Storyworth allows me to share what I submit with others, so I’ve added my wife and children – who get pinged when I post something. I’m not sure what they think of it – but, long term, there is value in them better knowing/understanding me.
- It made me write – I’ve been investing a lot of time converting my writings from high school and college into digitized form – and posting them on my writing website. Even though I thought that I was writing new stuff, I really wasn’t as much as I should. Essentially, Storyworth did, in fact, force me to write. (I’ve duplicated my Storyworth posts onto this site under the category ‘Reflections’.) This is a kind of ‘kick in the pants’ that I needed to get me regularly writing new stuff again – and not just posting weird stuff that I wrote decades ago.
Since I started a month late, I found myself having to double the pace – answering two prompts a week instead of one, just to keep up. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s funny and interesting how much it is pulling me into actually flexing my creative writing muscle.
As I mentioned above, I initially thought Storyworth was a bad/redundant thing – but I’ve come to appreciate it, and I’m happy that I’m doing it.
Thanks, Kathleen.