In Today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* Failing to Success
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“Give us 12 weeks and you’ll have a rough draft.” Subject line of an email from Writer’s Digest newsletter
My first thought was, “Hey, give ME 12 weeks and you’ll have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 sparkling clean new novels. Published.”
“What if you combined challenges? Like say you did a writing challenge combined with a publishing challenge. As an example: Set a goal for a certain number of new novels. then put the new novel together with a backlist novel like an old school Ace Double. Maybe there’s a theme that connects the two even thought they aren’t in the same series or they contrast each other.” Steve Lewis, in a comment on Dean’s post about challenges
I mention this because it might appeal to some of you. It kind of appeals to me.
The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
The whole point of the Challenge is to have fun and grow as a writer.
There is no cost. The only requirement is to write at least one short story per week.
During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Candie’s Canes” 6651 Fantasy
- Adam Kozak “Hunting on Alhena 4” 5120 Science Fantasy
- Harvey Stanbrough “Before I Forget” 1551 Suspense
- Dave Taylor “The Mountain Retreat” 6,697 Thriller/Conspiracy
Failing to Success
Yesterday, Dean Wesley Smith wrote one of his better posts recently. In it, he talks at some length about ‘failing to success.’
I do not mean for this post to compete with his, but rather to piggyback on it.
I’ve linked to his post in Of Interest, but if you’d like to read it before you read this one, you can read it here.
I actually talked a little about this recently when I discovered an anomaly in my Annual Production spreadsheet and realized I would not make 1,000,000 words of published fiction this year. In other words I will fail to reach that goal.
On the other hand, if I hadn’t set that goal in the first place, I probably wouldn’t have written (so far) almost 805,000 words of published fiction this year.
Plus this has been my best year ever for fiction writing. So that’s a total win. I failed, but I failed to success.
In Dean’s post, he mentions that he sets “goals that are product-finished driven. [A certain] number of stories, number of novels, books published, and so on.”
That’s important. That’s what I do also for my monthly and annual goals.
For 2024 my goal was to write 1,000,000 words of fiction, but also at least 20 novels on the year. I’ll probably fall short of that by one novel with only 19.
So I probably won’t reach my goal, but barring any major catastrophes, I still will have written 19 novels on the year. For me, that was no small feat. So I failed to success.
But I also set a daily word-count goal for 2025 of 3100 words of publishable fiction per day (on average). And I never get stuck on that particular number. I never feel that I’ve “failed” and get depressed if I miss it.
On days when I fall short of my goal, I do fail, in a way, but I fail to success. As Dean says, it’s all a matter of attitude.
After all, how many words would I have written if I didn’t have that daily goal? I can’t know that, but probably a lot fewer than I would have written while striving to meet the goal.
Ideally, goals should cause you to stretch a little beyond your comfort zone. Your goal should be something you know you can reach, but only if you expend a little more effort.
That’s how you increase your writing “speed”—not by writing faster, but by spending more time in the chair.
So whatever goals you set,
- if you never fail, the goal is probably too low;
- if you never quite reach your goal, the goal is probably too high; and
- if you reach or surpass your goal often but fall short now and then, it’s probably right where it should be.
And all of that’s fine. Goals are meant to be adjusted.
But you don’t have to increase or decrease your goal by large increments.
For 2025, I initially increased my daily word-count goal by only 100 words, from 3000 wpd to 3100 wpd.
But at an average rate of 1000 words per hour (that’s only 17 words per minute), that’s an increase of only about 6 minutes in the chair.
So I’ve already adjusted that goal from 3100 to 3250 words per day. That will keep me in the chair an extra 15 minutes per day.
And if I can maintain that 3250 wpd average over the whole year, my total at the end of 2025 will be 1,186,250 words. That’s a regular novel or two short novels over my annual goal of 1,100,000 words.
Best of all, when you set a daily word-count goal, whether you meet, exceed, or miss the goal, it resets to zero every morning. That keeps you focused on moving forward instead of looking back.
So in that way too, when you fail to reach your goal, you will fail to success.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Fail to Success A must-read. One of the better posts Dean’s written in awhile.
Compassion v Truth This goes to who your characters are or might be, and includes an important message as well. When you encounter “Upgrade to Paid” in Marilyn’s post scroll down and keep reading. The whole post is there and, IMHO, it’s both wonderful and wonderfully written.
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: “Receiving by Giving”
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 940
Writing of The Waller Files (a Stern Talbot PI mystery)
Day 1…… 2094 words. To date…… 2094
Day 2…… 4654 words. To date…… 6748
Day 3…… 3594 words. To date…… 10342
Day 4…… 3087 words. To date…… 13429
Day 5…… 3163 words. To date…… 16592
Day 6…… 3910 words. To date…… 20502
Fiction for December………………… 58835
Fiction for 2024………………………. 804935
Nonfiction for December…………….. 17220
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 379790
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,184,725
Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 3922
2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 18
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 102
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.