The Challenge
Join me for a monthly tiny challenge of writing a Tiny Tale inspired by an image.
Every month on the first Tuesday, I will post an image on Substack and Instagram to inspire our Tiny Tales. We have three weeks to write something tiny (under 400 words). On the fourth Tuesday of the month, I will post my Tiny Tale, and you can post yours, too!
The Backstory
Once upon a time, I had a tiny idea. I thought I could make the most of the Instagram caption character limit (2,200) and the basic photo post format by posting an image with a short, original fairy tale story inspired by that image in the caption.
I created a new account, Tales with Tish, and posted my first Tiny Tale on March 1, 2021. I used my Tiny Tales to stretch my imagination and work through my own issues. I started out posting frequently, then I got more ideas for Instagram: videos of reading fairy tales, then going live to improvise tales. Two years into creating content for the Tales with Tish account, I committed to writing my first book of fairy tale-inspired short stories. Tiny Tales became few and far between as all my creativity went into stories for my book.
Here I am, five years later. My first book is one year old. I went viral on TikTok once. I inconsistently post fairy tale content on Instagram, Substack, and YouTube. And I am struggling to write my next book. I need a little inspiration. Maybe a little permission to write just for fun, outside of the top priority projects.
And so returns the Tiny Tale. I need some tiny inspiration, some tiny accountability, some tiny community. After the fun of engaging with the community during Fairytale-a-Day in February, I was excited to return to Tiny Tales, not just on my own, but to share the project with my online community.