One-Year ‘Oneder?’ — No way!

By Jeffrey Bishop

Today — Jan. 5 — marks the first anniversary of Scurry Tails — kinda makes us feel like rock stars!

It was a New Year’s resolution of sorts, just a year ago, to kick off the creative writing project that has become this website. Our challenge was to stand up a blog and to let it motivate us to publish the small handful of spooky stories we’d already gathered. It worked; the demands of a public forum and a steadily growing audience spurred us to regularly think up and jot down new story ideas (or to voice record the tales as we shared them with each other in a campsite tent); to do the hard work of writing them up and putting them out for the world — to read and to enjoy, we hope.

Over the past year, we’ve learned a lot about WordPress and Photoshop; we’ve also learned that — in spite of the chosen genre — we have a relatively weak stomach for gore and horror (Momma Bishop sometimes disagrees and think we perhaps go too far with some of the stories here; what do you think?). And, we’ve learned that a goal of one story per week is silly ambitious to the extreme! That said, we still managed to eke out an impressive 65 posts and 38 original stories, supported by 79 images over the year! (humblebrag)

Our top 5 challenges?

5) Managing the site with scraps of time — writing on a smart phone on a plane, posting 10 minutes before bed, editing early Saturday morning — all secrets to success.

4) The visual element: just as fun. Not as easy as you’d think. Read here for more on that.

3) Resisting the urge to check stats the way some people check stock prices.

2) Finishing some stories that were started months earlier. Covey was right: begin with the end in mind!

1) Thinking up new character names is almost as tough as thinking up a band’s name (shoulda asked for a baby name book for Christmas!)

Whether you’re just discovering us or you’ve been here for a while, we hope you like what we’re doing, and we hope you come back often. Because we’re not going anywhere in 2013 — we’ll still be here spinning spooky stories.

Because being a one-year “Oneder” would just be scary!

THE END