A New YouTube Channel

by

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* Dean’s Offer
* A New YouTube Channel
* Some History
* Reading Order
* Paperback Book Sale
* Thoughts on “Time to Give Back” and Censorship
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

“I’m not essential to the process or to the story structure, characters, etc. of my characters’ stories and novels. I’m only a life-support system for my fingertips, the use of which my characters have leased from me by agreement that I get to read their stories first. My job is only to observe and report my characters’ story as it happens, not to make stuff up on their behalf.” Harvey Stanbrough

“I am only my characters’ stenographer.” (paraphrased) Stephen King

“I’m not engaging in self-censorship to appease people that will never be appeased anyway.” Dawn Turner

Dean’s Offer

A reminder, don’t forget that Dean Wesley Smith is currently offering a Quick Solutions Series workshop, valued at $150, as part of a story bundle. If you haven’t yet, I strongly recommend you take advantage of his offer.

To read more about it or to jump in, see “Write Stuff Story Bundle” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/write-stuff-story-bundle-2/.

As I mentioned before, I do not vouch for everything in the bundle. But I do vouch for Dean’s workshops. I’ve taken dozens of them. Without even realizing it, Dean typically shares valuable information that goes beyond the scope of the workshop itself.

While I’m on the topic, the most valuable “course” I took from him was the little $75 lecture (number 1) on Heinlein’s Rules. It covered the rules, but it also included a great deal more. I also recommend it, especially if you’ve not yet been able to pull the trigger yet on trusting yourself and writing into the dark.

A New YouTube Channel

Speaking of pulling the trigger, I have established a new YouTube channel. There’s nothing there yet, but I plan to live-stream once or twice a week, possibly as early as Monday(6/19) or Wednesday (6/21).

If you’d like to drop by and take a look, or for your future reference, you may access it at either https://www.youtube[dot]com/c/HarveyStanbrough or https://www.youtube[dot]com/@HarveyStanbrough.

I still have much to figure out, like what specific time I’d like to livestream. Or maybe I’ll use my substack to let potential visitors know what time the livestream will be on each day that I do it.

Yup, that makes sense. So if you’re interested in getting news about when the YouTube channel is live, please subscribe to the StanbroughWrites substack over at https://stanbroughwrites.substack[dot]com/.

If you can’t find a subscription button otherwise, click the title of the current story, then scroll to the bottom and click Subscribe.

And just so you know, I do suspect some aspects of the writing will come out too. I’m not sure I could separate the stories, settings and characters from the writing even if I wanted to. (grin) I hope you’ll join me there.

Some History

Actually, I found I had intially set up the YouTube channel way back in December 2011, so almost twelve years ago. Then apparently I got sidetracked and never did anything with it. Which is fine.

Back then I’d written several hundred or a thousand poems, dozens of articles, and maybe a short story or three, but I wasn’t really a fiction writer, much less an avid or successful one. I was still firmly in the writers’ myths camp, completely ruled (and frankly, immobilized) by fear.

I would go to writers’ conferences as an invited speaker on poetry and the language, and I would tell others there that I had a novel in me, that I was outlining it, that I would write it when the time was right. To this day I’ve never written that novel, but I did outline it for three-plus years.

About the only thing I said back then that makes any sense to me now is that I was “waiting to write a novel until I could find a cast of characters I wanted to live with for that long.” Hyuck, hyuck, isn’t that funny?

Like most people, I assumed it took months or even years to write a novel, and the longer it took, the better the novel would be. And of course, any alternative opinion was laughable.

What a load of horse-shtuff.

Ironically enough, once I learned to trust myself and my creative subconscious, I didn’t have to live with any cast of characters for longer than a month. (Well, technically it did take me 32 writing days to write one novel, but none of the others took even a full month.)

And of course, I intentionally chose to live with many of my characters for months or years because I simply enjoy their company.

But spending time with the characters was not forced on me by my own insecurity as a writer. I chose to go back to those characters time after time, to explore their worlds more deeply as they shared more of their experience and stories with me. Which is to say I was blessed.

Reading Order

I just finished setting up the reading order for my various novels and series. It’s kind’a cool seeing them all in one place like that: https://harveystanbroughwrites.com/reading-order-for-novels/.

I’m not sure what will happen with my Stanbrough Writes website. I’m currently posting the free short story of the week both on the website and on the Substack. I don’t like that. I’ve never been one to enjoy touching work twice.

Currently stories are posted in both places for every Friday from yesterday (“Five Tight Indians”) through September 1. After that date, I probably will only post them at the Stanbrough Writes substack.

And I no longer need the website to post articles for readers and interested writers about the storylines, characters, and settings of my stories and novels. The YouTube channel will take care of all that. So again, at the moment I’m not sure what will become of my Stanbrough Writes website.

I think it might become the cog that points to all the more-specific sites. It probably will also serve as the central point for donations for those who enjoy my various substacks. We’ll see.

Paperback Book Sale

This is a repeat from yesterday because it’s chance to get some important resources at their lowest price.

Relax. These are not my books. (grin) These are the books of Bayard and Holmes.

Because I’ve found these folks’ nonfiction books priceless for researching certain things, I thought I’d tell you about this sale. It ends on June 19, so be sure to take a look if you’re at all interested in learning about spycraft from people who have lived it.

Please visit https://bayardandholmes.com/sale/.

Thoughts on “Time to Give Back’ and Censorship

Professional fiction writer and friend Dawn Turner offered a comment on my post “Time to Give Back.” You can read it at https://harveystanbrough.substack[dot]com/p/time-to-give-back/comment/17394514. You might find it helpful. Dawn is one of the three or four I really expected to comment.

Dawn also left a guest-post length comment on “A Special Offer re Marketing, and Censorship,” including the third Quote of the Day above. I strongly urge you to read it at https://harveystanbrough.substack[dot]com/p/a-special-offer-re-marketing-and/comment/17393871.

Talk with you again later.

Of Interest

See “Comments and Questions Here” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/comments-and-questions-here/. A very generous offer.

See “Ten things I learned about writing from Stephen King” at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/30/ten-things-i-learned-about-writing-from-stephen-king.

See “Writing Mindsets” at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/06/writing-mindsets.html. Mine was the first comment. Go figure.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 1310

Writing of Rose Padilla (WCG10SF5)

Day 1…… 4283 words. Total words to date…… 4283
Day 2…… 3963 words. Total words to date…… 8246
Day 3…… 1463 words. Total words to date…… 9709
Day 4…… 2445 words. Total words to date……12154

Total fiction words for June……… 12154
Total fiction words for 2023………… 110022
Total nonfiction words for June… 11980
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 121400
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 231422

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 73
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………… 221
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

I.M. An angel, my angel, left this earth on April 11, 2023 just before 10 a.m. My life and my world will never be the same.

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark, adherence to Heinlein’s Rules, and that following the myths of fiction writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.