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 2,200 characters or about 300-350 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.