Same Walk, Different Shoes: Volume II Sign-up

Join this empathy-building community writing project

Back in November of last year, I had an idea, an experiment I wanted to try. I believe the act of reading and writing fiction is more than just an avenue for escape or a fancy way to be unemployed. Fiction is one of the most powerful tools we have for cultivating empathy because it changes something in our brains when we align ourselves with a character in a story, especially a character who stretches us outside our comfort zones.

All great stories come from some lived experience. This imposes a real limitation for even the most imaginative writer. It’s why writers walk through the world with a finger always hovering over the record button, trying to capture, to steal small snippets from the real lives of strangers. I wondered if there might be a way to achieve this intentionally and in the open. This was half the inspiration for SWDS.

The other half grew out of my fascination with how communities, whether accidental or intentional, are formed. It’s a theme central to my most recent novel, “Harmony House.”

A Deal is Brokered in a Sweat Lodge

When I joined Substack, I was welcomed into a global community of writers and as weeks passed with me posting my work and reading the work of others, I soon found myself a part of a group. Our friendships grew organically out of our shared love for stories and where they take us. I began to wonder what it might be like for all of us to embark together on some grand adventure. What could we learn about each other and ourselves through some type of communal writing project?

But then I thought, why should such an adventure be restricted to the small group I’d been lucky enough to be a part of? Aren’t there enough secret clubs with secret handshakes in the world? What if this project was truly open to all? This is how “Same Walk, Different Shoes” was born.

Check out the first collection to get a feel for what to expect.

Same Walk, Different Shoes: Volume I

How it Works

First off, let’s get a few things out of the way.

• This is not a competition.

• There are no judges and no prizes.

• There is no entrance fee.

• You don’t have to meet any qualifications.

• You don’t have to have any experience writing fiction.

All that is required is:

• You have an active Substack publication

• You be one of the first 100 people to sign up

• You commit to providing a prompt from your real life on the specified topic in the requested format following the prescribed guidelines

• You commit to writing a story based on the prompt you receive

• You commit to publish the story on your Substack on the date that all stories in the collection will be published

• You agree to make your story freely available (no paywall)

• You agree to include the header for SWDS which has a brief description of the project and a link to the collection

• You produce an original prompt and story without the use of generative AI

It’s really pretty simple, but before we go further I want to emphasize a few very important things.

1. You are participating in a community-building project and a community is only as good as the intentions and actions of the people in it.

2. If you sign-up and take a prompt but fail to write and publish the story for whatever reason, you are depriving someone of the experience of reading your interpretation of their story which is a big part of the magic of this project.

3. Similarly, if you completely ignore the prompt you receive and write a different story, you are breaking the contract of this community project.

The Prompt and Guidelines

Everyone who signs up to participate will contribute a prompt that will go into the pool of 100 participants. My goal is to make the prompt general enough in theme so that everyone can come up with a meaningful experience from their life but specific in the format of how it’s written so every writer has roughly the same raw material to work with.

The Prompt

In 300 words or less, describe something significant you left behind. It could be a person. It could be a job. It could be a house or treasured object. It could be something intangible, like your faith in God or an addiction to pain killers.

• Be clear about what the thing you left behind was and what it meant to you

• Add details that bring the setting and situation to life

• Describe how you’ve changed since you left the thing behind

Here’s an example:

When I went away to college in 1989, I left the Fender Strat I had spent the whole summer of my fifteenth year working at the chair factory to buy. I was good, a natural I think. I played all the time and it made me feel alive. I never had an amp. It would have been too loud. My dad was sick and confined to his room. He never saw my graduation. I became the man of the house. Mom insisted I go to college. I knew money was tight and there were my younger siblings to consider. Playing the guitar was frivolous so I left it under my bed and pursued a career in business. I often wonder how different my life might have turned out if I had taken it with me to college and continued to play.

“My Innocence” or “My favorite gold earrings” do not qualify as a good prompts and your submission will be rejected. Again, this is a communal exercise which means you get out of it what you put into it. Take the care to write a meaningful prompt that someone can turn into a meaningful story.

Sign-up and Deadline

The Google sign-up form is open starting today and will remain open until this Sunday, June 9th at 5:00 PM Eastern U.S. time OR we reach the limit of 100 participants in which case it will close early. You will provide the following information:

1. Your email address

2. Your Substack name and web address

3. The prompt you want to share in 300 words or less

No one will see your prompt but me. The prompts will not be published anywhere and you will not know who received your prompt or who owns the prompt you received. I have a script that randomly assigns the prompts and ensures no one receives the prompt they submitted.

Once you receive your prompt via email, it’s up to you to draw upon your own experience and the tools of your craft to shape it into a short story. You can write it in the past or present tense, but you must write from the first-person point-of-view. This is your story now. As the name of this collection implies, it’s your opportunity to walk in the shoes of a stranger.

After all the stories are published and you find the writer who wrote yours, you can reach out to them if you like. In the first round a number of people did this and it was the beginning of some meaningful friendships and collaborations.

You will have until Wednesday, July 3rd to complete your story and post a draft to your Substack so you can share a link with me. You should target a length between 1,500 and 2,500 words but there’s no hard requirement here. It’s your story.

It’s critical that you aim to have a link to your draft to share with me by the July 3rd deadline so I have time to include it in the Table of Contents post for the collection. It’s also critical that you include the header content I will provide to you that will link back to the collection so your audience can discover other stories from the collection.

Publishing the Collection

I will publish the Table of Contents for the collection on Catch & Release on the morning of Friday, July 5th at 8:00 AM U.S. Eastern time. All participants will schedule their stories to go live on their respective Substacks at the same time. At this point, “Same Walk, Different Shoes Volume II” will be live for the world to read, comment, and share. It will be grand!

I have zero doubt that there will be some technical challenges and questions will arise. Use the comments thread in this post to ask your questions and I will respond so everyone can benefit from the answers.