200 Words a Day Challenge

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me tweet with the hashtag #200wordsaday. This comes from The Bestseller Experiment’s 200 Words a Day Challenge.

The basic premise is this: the best way to learn to write is to write consistently. Consistency builds habits, making what can feel like a chore—such as forcing yourself to sit in front of a screen and poke at a keyboard on a nice day—more like an everyday routine. So, if you’re struggling to build a writing habit, set a smaller writing goal that takes less time to complete, such as 200 words a day—which typically takes around 10–20 minutes, give or take, depending on your draft.

What a lot of people see from setting this goal is that they often surpass it; they unexpectedly end up sinking their teeth deeper into what they’re writing, and they become oblivious to opening their jaws and letting go. And on days when they do the bare minimum 200 words, they still feel good, because the challenge helped them with one of the most important parts of writing. It got them closer to finishing.

Back to the hashtag. Part of the 200 Words a Day Challenge is using the official website to document how much you write each day. This helps you stay accountable. Once you add your word count—I set a daily reminder—the Challenge recommends you tweet how much you wrote. This celebrates the work you did, encourages others to do the same, and it promotes the challenge to other writers—a hat-trick of benefits.

You can learn more on their site, or by listening to the Bestseller Experiment’s podcast, where they regularly mention the wins writers had from the challenge.

Happy writing.

Writer's of the Future Honorable Mention

A short one today to share that my short story, “Directions to Paradise,” was awarded an honorable mention in the Writer’s of the Future Contest. I received the certificate in the mail this month, and I opened it this week—yes, if you notice the date on the photo, I’m a little behind on mail.

I was going to file this away without mentioning it, but I’m also someone who encourages others to share their accomplishments, big or small. So I’m taking my own advice, hopefully inspiring others and maybe even teaching some of you about a contest you can enter.

Fingers crossed I can get this short story published. It’s one of my favorites.

How I Designed My Website to Stop Designing My Website

I created several iterations of this website—some might say too many. I designed more than a handful in Figma, and I coded about a handful of those. I enjoy designing and coding, and owning a personal website allows me to do both. Problem is, I would rather write stories and make content that more people find useful than an About Me section.

So, I wanted to stop myself from the repeated updates. Here’s how I did that.

The Idea

The main goal of this website is to share my work and let people know how to connect with me. A myriad of solutions can achieve that, but I used my secondary objective—wanting to prevent myself from messing around with the site’s design—to guide the final look and experience.

Welcome to Microsoft Word & Standard Novel Manuscript Format meets mattathanasiou.com.

Nearly every element on this site uses a variation of styles from the novel manuscripts I write in Word. I chose this direction to remind myself that I would rather be creating new stories and designs than working on my website, whenever I look at it. It’s working, too. The layout and styles make me think of my current projects, when I visit to start fiddling with elements again.

Here’s a closer look at some of the specific design decisions.

The Layout

The bulk of the site sits on a single page, like a novel manuscript existing in a single document. This layout makes it important to create sections with easily recognizable beginnings and endings, preventing similarly looking content from running together and confusing readers. A novel manuscript solves this with the order and spacing of information—and, in the case of the format I prefer, with a few different font sizes. More on the latter later.

The order and spacing of information in basic manuscripts—even without changing font sizes—creates a recognizable system that signals to readers what type of content they’re seeing. Text centered in the middle of the first page of a document? That’s your Title. Text centered in the middle of the page on a subsequent page? That’s the start of a new Part. Text centered toward the top of the page with left aligned text close beneath it? You’re looking at a new Chapter. And that’s how I laid out the site.

Title of Manuscript = Title of Site—you can see the screenshots above.

Title of New Manuscript Part = New Site Section.

Title of Chapter and Associated Prose = New Content Within a Site Section.

Adopting the manuscript layout for the site creates a natural hierarchy of information and progression, dividing content into easily digestible parts.

On subsequent pages of the site, the styles from “Title of Chapter and Associated Prose = New Content Within a Site Section” are used; they’re treated as additional “Chapters” within a “Part.”

Having a lot of content on a single page can create friction, however. Readers might have to extensively scroll to find the information they want, especially on mobile devices. Most writing programs have solved for this issue, and I recreated a version of that solution: a table of contents (TOC) with anchor links that let people jump from section to section.

The TOC I made sticks to the top of the main page when you scroll. This position allows for the rest of the page content to remain centered and focused. In the Publications section, the longest section on the page with plans to only get longer, I created a second TOC for the same purpose; it attaches to the bottom of the main TOC and slides away when you leave that section.

A final note to mention about layout. A few “Chapters” (New Content Within a Site Section) on the main page link to separate pages with additional content. The News section does this for two reasons. One is to create a Featured Stories “Chapter” within it, so I can highlight a short list of specific work on the main page, but also guide people to the more work and updates on my Journal; the second is that the Journal will grow to become the longest “Chapter,” and giving it a dedicated page will prevent the main page from becoming too dense.

For the other “Parts” with “Chapters” on separate pages, the reason behind this decision is inputs—the forms you can fill out. I imagine those inputs will be used sparingly, so keeping them on the main page becomes a distraction, giving people extra actions they’ll rarely take. I would rather the main page focus on creative work that inspires myself and readers.

Font and Color Styles

The font and font sizes match what I use in Word documents, while writing at 180% screen zoom. The font is Times New Roman—what many publishers and agents request for manuscripts—and the font sizes are the following:

• Site title = 52px

• Part title = 44px

• Section (Chapter) title = 36px

• Body = 24 px

• Caption (header and footer text) = 16px

You can see the Caption font in the header and footer of every page. The gray text—and, in the header, right aligned—mirrors the smaller font that appears on my Word pages to distinguish the author, story title, and page number.

On the site, that content is replaced with links to the main page, Journal, and Sign Up page—the footer repeats those links, but with prose, because I like prose.

The TOC that begins beneath the site title also resembles a byline, so I combined styles from the manuscript byline—the black color, similar spacing—but used the less obtrusive Caption font size like the header, so the TOC doesn’t distract from the main content.

Additional Inspiration

I debated writing about why I include the information in each section, but the explanations felt self-explanatory. Tweet or message me if you think otherwise, and I’ll consider writing a separate post.

However. There is one section on the main page I want to call attention to. You can’t reach it with the sticky TOC. You have to scroll to find it.

The Blank Page section talks about my appreciation for blank pages and links to a blank page. My hope is that anyone who finds themselves scrolling to kill time might discover this “Part,” learn why I think blank pages are inspiring, and get inspired themselves.

The End

There will be updates to the site, maybe adding background images to “Part” sections or something else, but I’m in no rush. Updates would keep me from doing what I’d rather be doing. Making things that are more meaningful and sharing them with others.

The Marmagar Is Out Now

Happy New Year, all.

In wonderful news to begin January, The Cold Issue of Crow Toes Quarterly (PDF and Print) is out now and includes my children’s horror poem, The Marmagar. It’s about a monster that can live on your face.

I’ve seen a digital version of the magazine, and the art and layout are eerily beautiful. Well worth dropping a subscription on. You’ll even receive a cool Certificate of Authenticity—pictured below—when you subscribe. A thoughtful touch that shows how much the staff cares about readers.

Children's Horror Poem Acceptance

A short post, but I wanted to share that I had a children’s horror poem accepted for publication. The poem is called, “The Marmagar,” and it should appear in the January issue of Crow Toes Quarterly.

I can’t remember where the idea sprang from, just that it stuck with me and seemed like it would be fun to write. So I wrote it, and it was fun. If my subconscious drew inspiration from anywhere, it was likely Shel Silverstein’s poetry book of monsters, Don’t Bump the Glump! And Goosebumps. All of my writing probably goes back to reading Goosebumps as a kid.

I’ll post more details when I have them, and I’m looking forward to sharing a scare with ya’ll.

Learnings from the Writing App Giveaway

This post is for anyone interested in hosting a social media giveaway. Learn from the doings, and not doings, of my first attempt.

What I Did

I ran a Writing App Giveaway in June.

The prize was a one-year subscription for my favorite writing program, Ulysses. I had won the subscription when my short story, Sparks, was selected as a winner in Ulysses’s contest for Disney’s Flora & Ulysses. Since I’m already subscribed to the program, I decided to host a drawing for the subscription voucher with a few goals in mind.

The barrier to enter the drawing was easy. Follow me on Twitter and retweet the giveaway tweet.

My Goals

I wanted to

• build my social media presence.

• meet a few people whom I could have continued writing and tech conversations with.

• improve the impressions of my non-contest tweets.

• get at least one email sign up on my website.

The Outcome

I wanted to

• build my social media presence, and I gained about 30 followers, most of them entrants but not all.

• meet a few people whom I could have continued writing and tech conversations with, and I have tweeted with some of the new followers, but the conversations are sporadic.

• improve the impressions of my non-contest tweets, and impressions rose by about 50% afterward, improving from 50–100 impressions for a typical tweet to 100–200 or higher.

• get at least one email sign up on my website, but I got zilch.

It’s also good to note that a few weeks after announcing the winner, some followers dropped, but many stuck around.

What I Learned

The good.

• The giveaway was a quick way to gain nearly three dozen followers.

• The literal cost of the new, engaged followers feels low, maybe even priceless, as I continue to search for communities and find my voice on Twitter.

  • If you’re curious about actual numbers, an annual Ulysses subscription is $50—with 30 new followers, that means each one cost around $1.33.

  • Also, since I had a free voucher for a subscription, this really only cost me time.

• I was able to give someone a wonderful writing program subscription.

• Because the giveaway promoted Ulysses’s contest and app, the company engaged with some of my tweets, and they were easy to work with when the winner ran into a snag redeeming the voucher.

Where there’s room for improvement.

• A handful of entrants seemed to be bots. When I looked at their timelines, I saw that all of them had pinned a tweet resembling an authentic, personal post. The rest of their posts, however, were retweets of giveaways that they were entering. Hundreds of retweets. Oddly, inspecting their profiles further revealed that a number of them listed Michigan as their location—what’s going on in the Wolverine state? I doubt these followers will be engaging with me and supporting much of my work.

  • One way to avoid most bots would be to make entry harder. Consider running a caption contest or having people write a story in a tweet, and then choose your favorite. You might get fewer entrants, but the quality of engagement and followers will likely be better.

• The winner experienced an issue with the voucher. The redemption failed. I was confident my Ulysses contact would get me a working code, but they were out of office, so it took about two weeks to get the issue resolved. Additionally, I made this problem more difficult for myself by telling the winner that I would wait until they had the prize, before I announced them. This not only required me to stay in regular contact with the winner—whom I, a stranger to them, understandably had to reassure would receive their prize—but also with followers to update when I would announce the winner.

  • Tell the winner that you will announce them, as soon as they acknowledge being the winner. Then you will only have to give them regular updates, rather than all of your followers too.

• If you want email sign ups, make that the entry requirement.

Would I Host Another Giveaway?

I think so, but I’d probably experiment with another format. I like the idea of making entry a creative writing prompt. I imagine more people would interact with each other, and we might build more meaningful connections. Plus, trying something different just sounds fun.

Short Story Win and Writing App Giveaway

You can now read my children’s superhero short story, Sparks, and some kind words written about it. The story was chosen as one of the winners in Ulysses’s writing contest celebrating Disney's Flora & Ulysses.

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Continuing the celebration, I’m giving one Twitter follower a voucher for a one-year subscription to Ulysses, my favorite Mac and iOS writing software. To enter the drawing, all you have to do is

1. follow me on Twitter, and

2. retweet this tweet

by the end of Thursday, July 1. The winner will be randomly chosen and announced afterward.

Ulysses writing app shown across iPhone, iPad, and Mac screens.

Thoughtful Feedback is a Gift

No matter what you’re making, when others help you improve your work, they deserve acknowledgement. And that’s what this post aims to do.

Below are fellow authors who took time away from their writing to review this site. Some of their feedback has been implemented, some of it will find its way into future iterations, and all of it is much appreciated. As a small thanks, I’d love to point you toward them and their work, so you can check out what these kind and generous writers are up to.

Adam Jarvis

Website, Twitter

Robyn Sarty

Website, Facebook, and Instagram

Sadye Paez

Twitter

W.J. Kite

Website, Instagram

A Smidge of Writing Advice

“Write what grabs your heart. Write what you care about.”

That’s it. That’s the advice. If you want to stop reading there, know that’s one of the best pieces I have, and the following is general thoughts on writing advice.

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There is a bottomless well of writing advice out there. A lot of it good, but a lot of it contradictory. Here’s why.

What works for one person may not work for the next. Tell one writer to write every day, and they will form a habit. Give another writer the same guidance, and watch them freeze up from stress. Tell a third to write in bursts with extended periods of non-writing between, and they will give you a novel in weeks. Give a fourth that same guidance, and watch them lose interest to a world of distractions.

No single piece of advice exists to improve everyone’s writing. Your best bet is to consider most that comes your way, try it for yourself, and figure out what makes you more productive and, hopefully, what makes you enjoy the work even more.

Regarding “Write what grabs your heart. Write what you care about,” this works for me, because no matter what happens with the writing—whether it’s published, sits in a forgotten file, inspires more ideas or none—I never feel like I wasted a word. And more often than not, that can be enough.

A Small Story to Start

And Wolf said to Bird, “Sit in my mouth.” And Bird said to Wolf, “Sit beneath my branch.”

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Figured the most appropriate way to start a writing journal was with a story. This one is a favorite, inspired by years and continents of fables and fairy tales. I’m sure those storytellers would be proud.

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What else can you expect from this journal? More stories, some my own, some shared secondhand. Lessons from the numerous writing courses I’ve taken. Process explorations. Design in publishing, and design in general. Publishing and contest news. A doodle or two. Notes about islands of giving and other noteworthy ideas. And more stories, always more stories.

Looking forward to sharing words with you.