In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A Little Whining Is Healthy
* A Little More on KDP Notifications of Preorders
* Twitter and Facebook
* Another Comment
* For Any Quilters Out There
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“I threw my manuscript into the Cloud [self-published] in disdain and began plotting my second book, Don’t Come Looking. By the end of the year, I had completed a very rough draft.” AJ Campbell
Began plotting? Completed “a very rough draft” in a year? I would much rather roll a sheet of paper into a very tight cone, then jab it into my eye repeatedly. Even that would be more fun. Yer Uncle Harv
A Little Whining Is Healthy
Yesterday, a young writer commented to me via email that she’d recently spent a few weeks wondering whether she should even be a writer.
As I told her, that is typical.
Seriously, we all wonder at times
- whether we should continue writing,
- whether the flow of words has dried up,
- why the words won’t come,
- why a story won’t move,
- why the characters won’t share with us,
- etc. etc. ad nauseam. (grin)
Make no mistake, you’re in good company.
This happens to most, if not all, of us. It’s what Dean Wesley Smith calls “whining” when he admits in his blog that he’s been doing it.
I do it too, and as I said, I suspect every serious writer does. I suspect even Zandri does it, though he’s a tough guy so he probably won’t admit it (grin).
Then, most often, we snap out of it and have a big writing day or week or month. It’s just the way we writers are. Or as Dean would say, “nature of the beast.”
So if you occasionally slip into “whine mode,” don’t worry about it.
Recognize it for what it is and know you’ll come through it. And you’ll be right back writing again.
A Little More on KDP Notifications of Preorders
I had two of these emails in my inbox this morning.
The first was for TJ Blackwell: The Origina Story, set for release on 4/13. The other was for Stern Talbot, PI: The Omnibus Collection, set for release on 4/20.
Of course, anyone can buy either of those books direct right now from StoneThread Publishing.
But Amazon’s reminders to have the books “ready” for publication by 4/9 and 4/16 respectively are still cool. And valuable. For one thing, they remind me also that my current novel will be finished in the next few days.
Then I’ll add it to the pre-order collection, start a new novel, and the machine will continue to roll.
Isn’t that cool? As I mentioned the other day, listing books for pre-order actually helps motivate me to keep writing.
You can do the same thing even with only individual short stories.
Twitter and Facebook
After May 31, I’ll still occasionally post a Journal entry to the Journal website and to my Twitter account and my new Facebook account.
So those of you who choose not to subscribe to the Journal will still be able to see the occasional post at one of those places. I’ll post there maybe once a week or every two weeks. Something like that.
The Facebook account is brand new. They haven’t yet allowed me to create a username. When they do, it will be my name with no spaces. So the URL will eventually be the Facebook URL plus my name (no spaces). Seems they can’t make anything easy.
Of course, the easiest way
to be sure you continue receiving the Journal after May 31 is to click the Donate link at the end of this post and make a recurring donation of $3 per month. If you can afford it.
To put it into perspective—I work on the Journal about 60 hours per month. So if you make a recurring donation of $3 per month, you’re effectively paying me an houly wage of 5 cents per hour to continue providing you with the Journal. (grin) And I’m extremely grateful.
Another Comment
Gary V wrote “Just watched your prerecorded YouTube talk.
“Valuable stuff there in a short, informal presentation (without the distraction of live comments). If everyone who reads The Daily Journal takes a moment to watch it, they’ll appreciate the instruction as much as I do.”
For Any Quilters Out There
Quilters? Yeah. Not about writing at all, but about creating and creative hacks.
If any of you do quilting, here’s 9 Tips for Quilting a Huge Quilt on a Small Machine.
My wife was thrilled to find this. She said it contains hacks she never would have thought of, so we thought we’d pass it along.
I’ll talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Episode 920: $1 Buck an Hour! Factoids about Indie vs. TradPub
Writers With ADHD: Strategies for Navigating the Writing Process Or you can just, you know, WITD. Let the process focus you in the story.
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 810
Writing of Blackwell Ops 23: Buck Jackson
Day 1…… 1217 words. To date…… 1217
Day 2…… 2154 words. To date…… 3371
Day 3…… 5757 words. To date…… 9128
Day 4…… 5433 words. To date…… 14561
Day 5…… 2248 words. To date…… 16809
Day 6…… 3446 words. To date…… 20255
Day 7…… 2960 words. To date…… 23215
Fiction for April…………………….….… 23215
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 249007
Fiction since October 1………………… 552063
Nonfiction for April……………………… 75000
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 136220
2024 consumable words……………… 385227
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 6
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 88
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 239
Short story collections…………………… 29
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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I feel bad for that writer. He threw his work up with ‘disdain’ which makes me feel like he believes fully in the myth that you need to hate your own work for it to be any good, AND he spent a year writing a ‘very rough draft’/ What’s that? He’ll probably take another year to ‘polish’ it.
Meanwhile those who write into the dark can put out quality work on a monthly basis easy.
I can understand this ‘one book per year’ if you’re traditionally published, but for those of us in the Indie world, whether with Amazon or through other websites, both professionally and hobbyist, there’s no need to wait so long.
The hatred for one’s work is what saddens me most. I love my work, even if no one else ever did I would love it and take pride in it. Why even bother if you’re going to hate it all? Its weird.
“Why even bother if you’re going to hate it all?” I couldn’t agree more. I suspect it’s all part of that forearm-over-the-forehead, suffering-for-my-art martyr thing.
And traditional publishing (and even the pulp mags before that) are exactly why the old pulp writers used multiple pen names. They could write and submit dozens of stories or novels without having to slow down to wait for the publisher to catch up. Fortunately, we no longer have that problem.