In Today’s Journal
* Note on Contest Entries
* The Bradbury Challenge
* What Is a Pantser?
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Note on Contest Entries
Folks, if you enter any contest I sponsor including the current Echoes of Chandler Contest, PLEASE follow the manuscript format.
As a bare minimum, please put your (real) name and email address in the upper left corner of the first page of your manuscript. Always make it easy for the editor to contact you.
The Bradbury Challenge
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. Feel free to jump in at any time.
During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:
- Erin Donoho “The Girl in the White Dress” 1700 historical fiction
- Loyd Jenkins “The Call of the Dead” 2780 Horror
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Ningishzida” 2998
- Dave Taylor “The Island Game” 4,950 Thriller
Congratulations to these writers.
What Is a Pantser?
And why am I so strongly offended by the term?
Having drawn breath for over seven decades, I’m not one who gets “offended” easily, and since I’m not a sociology major in college somewhere, when I am offended nobody cares. Which is fine.
But in a comment on yesterday’s post, a friend asked “What is a pantser?”
As I told him, in the fiction-writing world, a “pantser” is what plotters call people who “write by the seat of their pants.” It’s a take-off (forgive the pun) on the aviation theme of flying without instruments, hence flying by the seat of your pants.
Since there’s a misconception that “pantsers” write “fast,” I suppose that would make those who are mired in the myths “plodders.”
To be fair, most mired-in-the-myths types who call people like me “pantsers” do so innocently, merely parroting those who use the term derogatorily. Whatever.
They’re simply and mindlessly going along with the mob, prejudging the work of those who write into the dark without having bothered to learn anything about the non-process or those who practice it.
I don’t mind those folks so much. They’re simply weak willed. They go along to get along.
The ones who bother me are those who use the term intentionally and derogatorily.
I suppose it makes them feel better about themselves. I’m certain it makes them feel superior. When the braying jackass brays at the stallion, he feels superior too.
So why does the term bother me? Because in my personal experience, a “pantser” was a bully on the playground who took great pleasure in tugging down the pants of other children (usually boys) to induce embarrassment.
It was never done to me personally, but I despise bullies. I took great pleasure in teaching them lessons in humility on behalf of a few more timid souls.
I don’t like people who demean others just because they can. Like Captain Call in Lonesome Dove, I won’t abide rude behavior.
Rude people who demean others generally present themselves as pretentious, arrogant, and haughty, but without a valid reason. Demeaning others just to feel better about yourself is nothing to be proud of. Even when they do so only through implication.
One novelist I know once wrote in an email to me, “I could write like you do, but I prefer to write quality stories.”
Right. I get the inference. In private conversations I’m a blunt kind of guy, so I won’t convey here in public what I would have said to that novelist in private, but it’s only three words. It begins with “Go,” ends with “yourself,” and would be accompanied by a go-ahead-and-jump smile.
The truth is, that constructionist couldn’t write like I do. If he or she knew the freedom of writing into the dark, he would write into the dark. But sadly, he’s too frightened to even try, despite the fact that he could always return to the safety nets provided by the myths.
He doesn’t believe in himself enough to write into the dark, and he doesn’t trust his characters at all. To writers like that, characters are only slaves who are required to do their bidding.
Frankly, I’m glad that novelist is too fearful to try writing into the dark. The typical 2 novels per year he turns out aren’t much competition for my 12 or 13 or more novels per year. While he’s practicing with 120,000 words per year I’m putting upward of 700,000 words on the page.
But I feel bad for that novelist’s characters.
The stories he writes are his stories, not the characters’ stories. Fear dictates that he controls every aspect. He outlines, revises, seeks critical input, then rewrites ad nauseam to please the various members of a critique group and however many “beta readers” he has.
Think about that: I guess the thousands of opinions of his eventual paying readers don’t carry that much weight. If they did, he’d be rewriting constantly. Yet a “beta reader’s” opinion is no more important than any other reader’s opinion.
For the record, I’ve read a few of that novelist’s books. In each case, I knew what was coming at every turn of the story. If the writer can ‘figure it out’ through outlining, the reader can figure it out too. If the writer knows at every turn what will happen, so will the reader. And he’ll be bored stiff.
On the flip side, that novelist has never read even one of my novels. Instead, he simply prejudges them, assuming they won’t be entertaining because I didn’t succumb to fear and obey the myths and take six months or longer to write each one. Shrug. Not my problem.
For the record, I’ve never said and never will say that writing into the dark is the “only” way to write.
I do advocate that it’s the most fun, most freeing way to write, and I’ll continue to do so.
I’m not sure why that bugs those who are mired in the myths to the point that they want to demean those of us who WITD. Just the way they are, I guess.
More’s the pity.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
(Repeat) How I Write Clean One-Draft Fiction
Writing IN the Storm Part 2 No idea where “Part 1” is, but this might speak to some of you.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1060
Writing of Blackwell Ops 47: Sam Granger | Special Duty
Day 1…… 3250 words. To date…… 3250
Fiction for July..………………………. 5840
Fiction for 2025………………………. 526647
Nonfiction for July…………………….. 15710
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 167340
2025 consumable words…………….. 686373
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 13
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 117
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 301
Short story collections……………………. 29