In Today’s Journal
* Wonder of the Day
* Goals?
* The Writing
* A New Look at Critical vs. Creative Voice
* A Diary of the Day
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Wonder of the Day
A California writer (Thanks, RC) shared with me an ‘astute definition.’ This, he said, might be called ‘drawing into the dark’:
Goals?
If you like, as you form new writing or publishing goals for 2025, email to let me know what they are.
You may even use me as a ‘place to report’ if you want to, either publicly or privately. Just email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
One Canadian friend (Thanks, GK) astounded me with an email last night. He let me know he plans to write “at least one” new short story per day during 2025 and do so writing into the dark.
Frankly, I believe that’s the only way anyone could do so. I suspect his craft will grow enormously as he practices pushing aside the critical voice and forging ahead.
Either way, a story a day is a lofty goal, and I wish him all the luck with it. Of course the only real ‘luck’ involved will be in avoiding life rolls. Otherwise it will take only sheer determination. (grin)
I challenged him to also publish his stories, either daily to a Substack or three times per month ‘wide’ or once a month ‘wide’. Or all of the above. (grin)
The Writing
Fortunately, my daily average will remain above 3000 wpd for the next few days even if I write no fiction at all.
Of course, not writing at all is never my intention because I love conveying my characters’ stories. But owing to that cushion, I can be more flexible with regard to doing other things.
Yesterday I wrote a little new stuff in the story.
Bearing in mind that this novel is also an origin story for a new series, mostly I cycled back over a troublesome exchange, one that spanned several chapters but didn’t feel quite right to me as a reader.
Again, all I did was slow down and allow the characters to show me things I’d missed or nuances I’d noted that were in the wrong place in the sequence.
It was great fun. I came away calm in the knowledge that the story is unfolding as it actually happened per the characters’ perception of events.
I should be able to finish that long cycling session today and move on with the characters through more of the story. But the following segment sprang from all of that.
A New Look at Critical vs. Creative Voice
I realized that bit about “characters’ perception’ might be another way to look at the intrusion of the critical voice vs. the natural flow of the creative subconscious voice. So I came away with a brief lesson re what really matters when writing fiction.
What matters is
- what actually happens (or happened) in the story,
- the characters’ perceptions-of and reactions-to those events, and
- the characters’ perceptions-of and reactions-to the other characters’ reactions.
In other words, the author’s perception—what the author ‘thinks’ should happen or how the characters should react—matters not one whit. That’s what we all need to remember if we’re to convey the authentic story.
A Diary of the Day
First, I hope everyone had a great day yesterday, whether you were celebrating Christmas, the first day of Hanukkah, or simply the sunrise and sunset.
Yesterday I went up to the house around 6 when my wife emailed me. It was only the two of us, so by 7:30 we’d opened our gifts, laughed and watched the cats freak out.
Their mom had bought them a rechargeable, battery operated ball with a flipping tail on the end of it for Christmas. One of our girls played cautiously with it. The other was not amused in the slightest. The device, properly chastised, is now hiding behind the couch.
Then around 7:30 I help Mona prep a crock pot for the main course of our Christmas dinner (a challenging and really tasty kind of green-chili black-bean pie), and as she dived into the rest of that, I retreated to the Hovel again to jump back into the story with my characters for a couple of hours.
The rest of the day we enjoyed watching Chiefs football, eating, and watching some old episodes of The Carol Burnett Show. Great entertainment and a great day.
I hope your day was equally wonderful.
Of Interest
Disrupting Your Author Website
7 Healthy Habits for Writers to Find Success Nothing new, but good stuff if you put it into practive.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 750
Writing of The Intermittent Ghost: Jack Temple (BO-31A)
Day 1…… 4202 words. To date…… 4202
Day 2…… 3055 words. To date…… 7257
Day 3…… 3412 words. To date…… 10669
Day 4…… 3352 words. To date…… 14021
Day 1…… 1153 words. To date…… 15174
Fiction for December………………… 87271
Fiction for 2024………………………. 833371
Nonfiction for December…………….. 24930
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 387500
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,220,874
Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 3491
2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 19
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 103
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 269
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.