In Today’s Journal
* The Bradbury Challenge Report
* The Value of a Challenge
* A New Short Story
* My Own Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
The Bradbury Challenge Report
Participating in any challenge is a great way to have fun and grow as a writer.
The requirement is to write at least one short story per week, then let me know the title, word count, and genre per the format below. During the past week, the following writers wrote these new stories:
- Erin Donoho (No report this week)
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Flip Phone Fantasies” 3027 Syfy
- Christopher Ridge “Mouse Trap'” horror 1882
- KC Riggs “Under the Radar” 1090 Magic Realism
- Dave Taylor “The Pilgrimage” 2,091 Horror
Congratulations to all of these writers.
The Value of a Challenge: An Unauthorized Case Study
My friend Dave Taylor didn’t submit story info for last week’s report. Instead he emailed to say “I guess I’ve broken my streak.” (I emailed Dave this morning to suggest the miss was only a hiccup and he shouldn’t lose the momentum he’s gained from his streak.)
Later, in response to my query regarding how many weeks he’d run and how many stories he’d written, he reported, “I hit 89 weeks and 122 stories.”
Okay, first, Woohoo! That’s one hell of an accomplishment! On what Texas Rangers Captain Gus McCrae would call “the sunny slopes of long ago,” my own record was 72 consecutive weeks and around 80 stories.
But second, think for a moment what Dave’s success means for his potential discoverability: When everything is published, those 122 stories will parlay into not only
- 122 short stories (I recommend $2.99 each), but also
- 12 ten-story collections (I recommend $6.99 or $7.99 each) plus
- 1 “collected works” collection (book length, so price accordingly at say $19.99 everywhere but *Amazon. On Amazon, split the collection into Part 1 and Part 2 and price each part there at $9.99 each).
*At Amazon, the above prices will get Dave the 70% royalty.
So in total that’s 135 publications “out there” with Dave’s name on the cover. Not too shabby.
And if he “goes wide” through Amazon and Draft2Digital, his work will be in a couple of hundred stores and several hundred libraries worldwide almost instantaneously.
And that’s in addition to one novel he’s arguably finished and two others that are ongoing.
Yeah, I’m pulling for Dave and for all of you.
I’m sure our own Vanessa Kilmer is our current leader in the Challenge as she was involved even before Dave jumped in.
As I wrote above, challenges are a great way to have fun and grow your skills as a fiction writer. Participating in this particular challenge, which involves reporting your progress publicly every week, is a great way to help hold your own feet to the fire.
I hope more of you will pick up the gauntlet and jump into the challenge soon. Failing that, I hope you’ll establish your own challenge. The benefits of a challenge and the ensuing streak are incomparable.
A New Short Story
“Quite a Thing” went live on Saturday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free, but it’s also intense. Only five stories left after this one!
My Own Writing
I’ve managed to cycle through the entire first book of the Nick Spalding saga with an eye toward combining all four books into a single ongoing story.
Because it will be the result of cycling sessions, I’ve decided to call it Nick’s Cut: Nightfall, Transitions, Coincidence, and Consequences.
You know, like the “director’s cut” of a previously released film? Or the “author’s cut” of a previously released novel that was mangled by the folio-count and price-point demands of traditional publishers?
I expect the finished product to be worthy of serving as a weighty doorstop at around 130,000 to 150,000 words. That’s a complete short novel shorter than the current four-volume story of around 185,000 words).
I might also decide to take the easy way out: At any point I could leave the saga in its current 4-volume format and simply upload each new document to replace the original.
But per usual, that nose-picking, knuckle-dragging, neanderthalistic hobo from North Hollyweird, California, Weeshul C. Dõnshano, will cast the deciding vote and, also per usual, determine the actual outcome.
Back in the real world, am I learning from the cycling sessions? Oh my yes.
As I do the read-through, Nick regularly points out instances of my primary authorial pet peeve: the dreaded AI (Author Intrusion). They’re all over the place, most often appearing in the relatively benign form of unnecessary he-said she-said we-all-said tag lines.
I’ve long taught that the writer should never commit any crime on the page that draws the reader’s attention away from the story or otherwise disrupts the reading of the work. Even as unnoticeable as simple tag lines are, any unnecessary ones’ve gotta go.
So I’m both loving the process and learning from it. What could be better than that?
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Struggle
Working Over Another Writing Book
What Not Reading Does to Your Writing (Thanks to Ann S for this link.)