Hey friends,
Happy new year! Today’s letter is a special podcast edition to celebrate my first story publication! I recently began submitting flash fiction stories to journals and publications. I was sure I’d need to wait until 2022 for my first acceptance, and was thrilled when a 50-word story of mine was published on Fifty Word Stories just a few days ago. The good news continued this afternoon when, as I was writing this newsletter, I saw that it was also selected as Story of the Week! What a wonderful, unexpected holiday surprise!
Point Price is a tale about creativity and inspiration in just fifty words. This style of story is referred to as ‘freight train’ sentence. I’m having fun with the constraints of flash fiction, and have many more in the works that I hope to share soon. You can read the story by tapping on the button below (and/or listen to me read it live in the attached podcast above). Enjoy!
Celebrate the Small Wins
I wanted to celebrate my story’s publication, but my inner critic kept telling me not to. “It’s just fifty words,” it would say. “You want to send a whole newsletter just for a sentence?!”
I almost listened to it. I was really tempted to move on and just mention the story as a side-note in my next letter. But I was reminded of my own words from an essay on overcoming negativity:
“Negative thoughts have significantly more power, weight, and longevity compared to positive thoughts.”
I have to put in extra effort to counter the compounding effect of negativity. So, here I am, writing this letter to you, partly to share this story I’m proud of, partly to prove to myself that I can celebrate even my small wins.
Our inner critic can convince us that any milestone—big or small—isn’t worth celebrating. It’s important to overcome this tendency to reduce ourselves. We need to fuel ourselves with confidence in order to face the obstacles that lie ahead of us.
Life is hard enough without the added burden of self-sabotage. Let us become our own helping hand.
Playing with Podcasts
As you’ve probably noticed, I included a podcast with this newsletter. This is the first Quick Brown Fox “podcast newsletter,” and apparently it now has its own feed, just like a regular podcast. Neat!
I’m curious whether the audio format is something I should explore more. I’m inspired by my friend Nate Kadlac’s newsletter, Plan Your Next—he’s been including an audio reading with his letters for a while, and it’s been working well for him. I don’t plan to do audio readings of every letter, but I think it could be a great way to mix things up every so often.
Flexibility of format is one of my favorite things about my newsletter as a creative platform. I get to swim across different lanes, expressing in different formats—writing directly in the newsletter, linking to essays on my blog, notes in my digital garden, sharing comics and animations, YouTube videos, and now, short audio podcasts.
Playing with different mediums keeps my creative process fresh. The more fun I have with my creativity, the more fun it’ll be for those who engage with it.
Here’s to more playful experiments in 2022!
