In Today’s Journal
* A New Short Story
* Pausing Your Morning Serial
* A Few Blasts from the Past
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
A New Short Story
“Ink” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
If you enjoy the story, please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else. Gracias.
Pausing Your Morning Serial
As I reported I might do earlier, I’ve decided to pause publication of Your Morning Serial, at least for now.
The final installment of the current novel, The Rise of a Warrior, will go live tomorrow. However, I’ve decided to put the second book in the saga on sale for 50% off.
If you’ve been enjoying The Rise of a Warrior and you’d like to continue the story, please click Comanche Fire and then click Buy Now.
During checkout, use coupon code USSU4QEJ7B to get 50% off the discount cover price. You’ll get the book for only $2.
Happy reading!
A Few Blasts from the Past
Recently I’ve been looking over my long-ago posts in TNDJ in search of material for a book of my own quotations. In that endeavor, I stumbled across these two gems:
The first is from early November 2014 as I was nearing the end of my first novel:
I had laid out a loose, overall outline, frankly to serve as a mental safety net. Yesterday and earlier this morning I was trying to follow that outline. My critical mind was masquerading as my creative mind, and yes, I was stuck.
This morning I leaned back in my writing chair, interlaced my fingers behind my head, and said aloud, “Where you goin’, Wes?” And I swear, just like that, he looked down at me from the back of his horse and said, “Mexico.”
Per the outline, I had wanted Wes to go to Santa Fe. I wanted him to decide he was through with law enforcement, then get pulled back in, look for Mac over the years while doing other tasks in law enforcement, blah blah blah. Frankly, that sounds to me like a first-time novelist trying to hedge his bets and make sure the length is there.
Then I remembered it isn’t about what “I” (conscious critical mind, ego) want. It’s all about the characters and what THEY want. Okay, so Bam! Just like that I’m off and writing again!
Anyway, just in case the conscious, critical mind sneaks up on you too, remember, writing off into the dark is fun specifically because it isn’t about you, the writer. It isn’t about forcing anything into a mold. It’s all about the characters and what THEY want.
Years later I would say, “It’s about the characters and the story that they, not you, are living.”
And from later in November 2014:
When anyone says Heinlein’s Rules and WITD is all BS, that you must rewrite and polish and that fast writing produces crap (etc. etc. etc.), I’d like to smile and nod and say something like this:
“Hey, I’m SO glad you saw through all that stuff, really and truly I am. Wanna read my new novel? Man, it was like giving birth to an eighty pound child. God how I labored over this thing! Took me six years to write it. I was trying to keep count of my words per hour, but I finally realized that was impossible since it takes me a good eight hours to get a clean, polished 500 word segment, and sometimes I don’t get that.
“But my writing is just SO earth-shakingly important that it simply MUST take several hours to get it just right, you know. And rewrites? Did you mention rewrites? OHMYGOD I did eighteen rewrites! I’m SO glad it’s over! What a terrible travail it was! Oh, I wish there were some way to release myself from this terrible burden of having to write! (But um, er, I’m compelled, you know. It’s something I simply must do. Heinlein himself said so.) But boy, all the terrible hard work was simply worth every second. My novel’s polished like you wouldn’t believe! So, y’wanna buy it or what?”
(Ridiculous, isn’t it?) Of course, the truth is it took about 40 hours to write my first novel, and that 40 hours was spread over 15 days. That’s less than 3 hours per day. Terrible drudgery.
Finally, back then I offered a
Tip of the Day: Want to involve the reader more in your scenes? Try adding the five senses to every scene. Remember to Focus Down when describing what the POV character sees, hears, tastes, smells and feels. But remember, it’s what the POV character, not You, notices.
Great fun reading back over those old posts, but I need to set that aside and get back to writing fiction. Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Mobs
Existentialism, Hitchcock, and Hockey Romance
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 820
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 820
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for January………………………… XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for January.…………………… 3120
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 3120
2026 consumable words………………… 3120
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29