In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* A New Year, a New Way Forward
* Ideas
* Football
* Of Interest
Quotes of the Day
“I’m interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.” Ray Bradbury
“Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.” Ray Bradbury
“I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads ‘Don’t think!’ You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.” Ray Bradbury
“Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it.” Ray Bradbury
A New Year, a New Way Forward
It’s a little strange, waiting to post the Journal until later in the day. But this is one of the larger changes I’m making.
Probably I’ll still write the Journal early in the day on days when I have something to say, but posting it later will enable me to report real-time numbers for both my fiction and nonfiction.
Seems maybe my characters like this better too. I was finished writing by 11:30 a.m. today and I wrote well over 4000 words.
Ideas
Stephen King is widely known for taking ideas from other entertainment sources and writing novels from those ideas. For just one example, he took the idea for The Dome from The Simpson’s Movie, in which Springfield was completely covered with a clear dome. Nothing wrong with that. (You can’t copyright an idea.)
I offer the first item (well, the only item) in “Of Interest” as a possible stimulus for ideas, or possily as a stimulus to a way to get ideas.
Football
If you’re a football fan, you’re probably in heaven right now. If you aren’t, at least something good is keeping the football fan in your life busy so you can do other things. Like write. (grin)
I was pleased to close out 2022 with 2209 words of fiction on December 31 and to open 2023 with 4214 words on January 1.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “10 Novels Based on Folk Horror” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/10-novels-based-on-folk-horror/.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 330 words
Writing of Santa Fe: A New Office (novel, WCG8, Santa Fe 3)
Day 1…… 2815 words. Total words to date…… 2815
Day 2…… 2034 words. Total words to date…… 4849
Day 3…… 2650 words. Total words to date…… 7499
Day 4…… 2209 words. Total words to date…… 9708
Day 5…… 4214 words. Total words to date…… 13922
Total fiction words for December……… 69687
Total fiction words for 2022………… 284661
Total words for 2022 (fiction and this blog)…… 507591
Total fiction words for January……… 4214
Total fiction words for 2023………… 4214
Total nonfiction words for January… 330
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 330
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 4544
Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 71
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. I convey the stories of my characters. Because It Makes Sense, I trust them to tell the story that they, not I, are living. This greatly increases my productivity and provides the fastest possible ascension along the learning curve of Craft because I get a great deal more practice at actually writing. It will do the same for you if only you trust it.
Hi, Harvey,
The quotes from Ray Bradbury are true for him, but certainly not true across the board for everyone. My creativity manifests itself in thinking and playing around in my head about what I’m going to before I write the scene. If I try to sit down and write from the blank page, I stall about every 200 words because I suddenly have to get up and do something mindless–a backdoor attempt to get the thinking part done. I can’t get to the joy of writing without doing the thinking part of the process.
Hi Linda.
One, you don’t know the quotes are true for him. Maybe he was lying. He was a fiction writer, and a very good one.
Two, nobody said they’re true for everyone else or even anyone else. Obviously, if I didn’t like them and agree with them, I wouldn’t have posted them, but it’s my website so that’s permissible.
The folks who are mired in the myths are the ones who try to tell all other writers what they “have” to do.
We who preach the freedom of WITD don’t tell anyone they have to do anything. Quite the opposite. We free them from having to do things.
I don’t understand why that grates on some people so bad. Anyway, you should feel perfectly fine. You’re in the vast lily-white majority of annointed Writers, but I’ll certainly never join you there. I’m having too much fun.