{"id":735,"date":"2026-05-29T19:04:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T19:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/?p=735"},"modified":"2026-05-29T19:04:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T19:04:53","slug":"writing-a-story-a-week-for-a-year-what-i-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/?p=735","title":{"rendered":"Writing a Story a Week for a Year: What I Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The new blog for Western Colorado Writers Forum is up. I blog about a bunch, but this one I think is strongly out of my experience. It&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/westerncoloradowriters.org\/writing-a-story-a-week-for-52-weeks-by-james-van-pelt\/\">&#8220;Writing a Story a Week for 52 Weeks,&#8221; and what it taught me.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of the 52 stories, 50 of them have sold now (eleven years after they were finished). I started submitting them during the year I was writing, so some sold before I&#8217;d written the last one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The challenge was profound enough for me that I&#8217;ve talked about it before. Two of my Rainforest Writers Retreat talks were about it. The first was basically this post. The second involved marketing the stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like many writing thoughts for me, it all starts with Ray Bradbury. He suggested the story-a-week challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As often is the case in my experience, Uncle Ray was right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"610\" height=\"330\" src=\"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-736\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image.png 610w, https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/image-300x162.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 610px) 100vw, 610px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The new blog for Western Colorado Writers Forum is up. I blog about a bunch, but this one I think is strongly out of my experience. It&#8217;s &#8220;Writing a Story a Week for 52 Weeks,&#8221; and what it taught me. Of the 52 stories, 50 of them have sold now (eleven years after they were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,128,6,3,41],"tags":[21,12,8,9,7,10],"class_list":["post-735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft","category-publishing","category-ray-bradbury","category-short-stories","category-writing","category-writing-advice","tag-advice","tag-craft","tag-publishing","tag-short-stories","tag-writing","tag-writing-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":737,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735\/revisions\/737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesvanpelt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}