In Today’s Journal
* Challenge Reminder
* 2025 TNDJ Archives?
* My Schedule
* The Writing
* A Few Notes on Grounding the Reader in the Opening
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Challenge Reminder
Today is Friday. If you’re in or beginning the Bradbury Challenge this week, your story info is due via email to me by Sunday midnight Arizona time (so 2 a.m. Eastern?).
Here’s the format:
- Author Name “Story Title” 1234 Genre
The 1234 is the word count. (grin)
Might be a good idea to get it in sooner if you’re in the path of the heavy winter storms.
To enter the Run with Harvey Challenge
this month (write 2025 wpd on average through the month), be sure to email me so I’ll put you on the list. For the prizes see this post).
2025 TNDJ Archives?
There will be archives for 2025, but I’ve decided I’m not going to compile them into a single document this year. Compiling them costs me too much time and effort.
However, you can always find the month-by-month archives going back to June 2017 in the sidebar on the Journal website.
(I understand you can also read the archives on the TNDJ Substack, but I’ve never explored that option.)
January 2025 is already at the top of the archives list on the Journal website. Also, the entire site is searchable. Just key any word or term into the Search box in the sidebar, then read what pops up. I recommend putting quotation marks around your search term.
Of course, everything on the site is ©2017—2025 Harvey Stanbrough, but I don’t mind if you copy/paste from the site as long as it’s for your personal, non-commercial use.
I know at least one subscriber who regularly copies and pastes Journal articles he finds of interest. I think he keeps them in a binder as a ready reference. That’s perfectly fine.
My Schedule
This pertains to my availability, given my personal writing goals.
Whatever time I get up in the morning (usually between 1 and 3) I come to the Hovel, check for items for the Of Interest segment, then write or finish writing the day’s issue of TNDJ.
I copy/paste that to Word to spell check it, then post it to the blog and to the Substack. So that’s the first few hours of the day. During that time until 4 to 6 a.m., I leave the sound on so I can hear a notification when I receive any emails. When that happens, I answer, usually immediately.
After I take a short break up at the house (usually around 6 or 6:30) I return to the Hovel and check for emails again and respond if necessary.
But then I turn off the sound so any incoming emails won’t interrupt me. That’s when I start my first writing session of the day.
I do check email intermittently through the day. So anything you need, email me and I’ll get back to you as soon as I see your email. I’m usually available until around 4 p.m. (All times are Arizona time.)
The Writing
Despite a bit of a slow start (normal for me), the novel’s progressing nicely. My intention always is to get ahead (and stay ahead) of my writing goals so I can maintain that every-two-week publishing schedule.
Update: I did not get ahead yesterday. (grin) I’m still getting to know Mr. Payne, and thorougly enjoying watching his personality emerge.
A Few Notes on Grounding the Reader in the Opening
I absolutely love writing openings. A good opening invites the writer (and the reader) into the story. Like meeting a new friend, it’s an exciting time of discovery.
- A good opening is where the writer (and the reader) usually first meet the (usually POV) character and where the writer (and the reader) first begin to explore the story world.
- A good opening fills the WITD writer and the reader with a sense of wonder, like a two year old, having noticed a fallen leaf for the first time, pointing and gasping.
- Cycling is essential to a good opening. You can’t ground the reader in the opening too deeply or too solidly. You can only ground him enough or not at all.
I won’t say you should ‘err on the side of excess’. That would cause you to think about (conscious mind) what might or might not be excessive and bring the critical mind into play.
But in describing the setting and characters and grounding the reader in the opening, what you might think of as excess isn’t.
The reader will skip over anything he considers excess. But what one reader will skip or skim over, another will eat like pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, then loosen his belt and yearn for more.
So the best rule of thumb I can give you for grounding the reader is this:
If your POV character sees, hears, smells, tastes or feels (physically or emotionally) anything about the setting or another character, Write It.
But caution: It is never the writer’s job (or right) under any circumstances to intrude on the story.
If you, the writer, ‘think’ you need to add description to a scene and it’s something the POV character DIDN’T notice, don’t add it.
In other words, don’t second-guess your characters in either direction, plus or minus. They, not you, are actually inside the story and living it. You’re only an unbiased observer, reporting the story to the best of your ability.
Same thing goes later when you’re cycling (or editing, if you’re bent that way): Don’t second guess your characters.
What you omit during a cycling session might have been important to something later in the story, something you haven’t foreseen.
Or it might be important to the as-yet-unwritten sequel to the current story. You just never know.
Trust the characters to live their lives without your able guidance, just as they trust you to live yours without their guidance.
Talk with you again later.
Of Interest
Goals for the New Year: Ideas and Advice from 52 Authors I have not read this.
Entering the Public Domain in 2025
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1000
Writing of Blackwell Ops 34: Soloman Payne
Day 1…… 2005 words. To date…… 2005
Day 2…… 2992 words. To date…… 4997
Fiction for January…………………… 4997
Fiction for 2025………………………. 4997
Nonfiction for January……………….. 3170
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 3170
2025 consumable words…………….. 8167
Average Fiction WPD (January)…. 2499
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 0
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………. 104
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 270
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.