Daily Story Seeds

Scott Walker in Los Angeles, CA is creating Daily Story Seeds. He explains, "DSS is a free daily email containing a story seed: an idea for, or the beginning of, a potential story. Daily Story Seeds usually include an element of the fantastic, even though they’re often inspired by factual posts/podcasts I’ve come across."

Image by Conor Mayling

Why did you decide to do this project?

It was a gradual, and almost unintentional, decision.

I often come across articles in Feedly that spark ideas for stories. In late February, I read a post about a Buddha statue that was found to have a mummy inside it, and I thought it would be so easy to grow a story out of this little seed. So I shared the idea over Twitter:

"Today's #storyidea 'Scan Reveals This Buddha Statue Has A Mummy Inside' http://bit.ly/1EhuNgl"

By the next day, I had decided I would tweet a story idea each day, changed the hashtag to #storyseed, and posted this:

 

“Today's #storyseed: 'The Grand Godzilla Hotel.' Godzilla is the new bellboy at a distinguished hotel. http://bit.ly/1AGvtJx“

A few days later, I realized these daily tweets were getting lost in the the Twitter stream, and I was also hitting the 140-character Twitter limit. So I talked to a few folks who had responded to my daily tweets and asked them if they would sign up to receive them via email. They said yes, so I set up a Mailchimp list, worked up a serviceable logo, and officially launched Daily Story Seeds.

I would say this started as an idea I had to share publicly and formally (i.e., a Daily Story Seed) something I was already experiencing privately and informally (i.e., I would have inspirations for stories each morning while going through my RSS feed).

While it took me a week or so to figure out exactly what Daily Story Seeds should be, the decision to turn it into a 365 project happened almost instantly, and the reason was simple: I have long been searching for a 365 project that was (a) manageable, (b) fun, and (c) potentially interesting to other people. I feel like I stumbled into just that with Daily Story Seeds.

 

How has doing a yearlong/daily project affected your life? (feel free to include some specific examples of new/unusual things you've experienced)

It’s still relatively early days (the official launch was March 4th), but I love the fact that I feel obligated to stick with this project. And sticking with this project has already helped me find new confidence as a creative. And *that* has given me a ton of inspirational energy to tackle additional ideas I’ve long wanted to complete (one of them is another daily project!).

Get Scott's Daily Story Seeds in your inbox by signing up HERE!