Bradbury, and What’s Keeping You…? Part 1

In Today’s Journal

* Ludicrous Quote of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* Blackwell Ops 34: Solomon Payne
* What’s Keeping You…? Part 1
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Ludicrous Quote of the Day

in which an unintentional fear-peddler asks seemingly innocently,

“What’s keeping you from finishing—or starting—your story?” Opening sentence of a Writer’s Digest newsletter article titled “Five Steps to an Airtight Plot” (Tiffany Yates Martin, Feb 13, 2024)

What’s Keeping Me

I could pretty much chew wheels and spit nails. I didn’t get to start a new novel yesterday (not that important) because a small group of Neanderthalian troglodytes spent most of the day shashing away at a small copse of mesquites on a slight rise that for decades has served as a safe place for quail, rabbits, roadrunners, and javelinas.

Of course, in typical slash-and-gash human fashion, they did all of that with chainsaws and a front-end loader. Right outside the window of the Hovel.

It made me want to call my buddy TJ Blackwell and have him send a guy down. Seriously. But I checked. Incredibly, the law says you’re not allowed to shoot people like that. Go figure. Anyway, that’s what’s keeping 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:

  • Balázs Jámbor “Signs of the times” 1700 urban fantasy
  • Vanessa V. Kilmer “Quinn’s Wish” 1579 Romance
  • Harvey Stanbrough “A Sure Thing” 4771 Exotic Fantasy
  • Harvey Stanbrough “A Sure Thing 2” 5140 Exotic Fantasy
  • Dave Taylor “A Little Bit to Think About!” 2,397 paranormal

Bradbury on Steroids

This one requires you to write at least two short stories per week.

  • Christopher Ridge “Slice Slice Kitchen Bites” 2083 horror
  • Christopher Ridge “Cancel” 1383 horror

Congratulations to all of these writers!

(Personal to KH, PD et al. You can join in the Challenge any time. Maybe today’s issue of TNDJ will help. See “What’s Keeping You” below.)

Blackwell Ops 34: Solomon Payne

My latest novel, which I finished only the day before yesterday, is published and available for download at Blackwell Ops 34: Solomon Payne.

If you prefer to buy from the rich guys at Amazon, Apple, Kobo, B&N, and other vendors, it is also available as a preorder everywhere ebooks are sold. BO-34 will go live at those sites for 99¢ more on February 1.

What’s Keeping You…? Part 1

Yeah, this is about the Quote of the Day. That opening sentence was also the subject line of the email that arrived in my inbox yesterday from Writer’s Digest newsletter.

When I read that subject line, my first thought was “Hold my beer and watch this.” (grin) That’s when I thought I’d offer it up to you today as the Ludicrous Quote of the Day.

I call it ludicrous because writing is nothing more than a physical act.

No, don’t say “but.” Writing, including writing fiction, is only the physical act of putting words on the page. It’s nothing any more important than that. As DWS says, writing fiction should be no more difficult than responding to an email.

If you just write the story and choose NOT to engage in doing all the crap the writing ‘gurus’ want you to do, NOTHING’S keeping you from writing and finishing. You just write.

In fact, if you DO buy the gurus’ silly myth-ridden books, they will actively teach you how to do everything BUT write. Did you get that? They’ll teach you everything BUT how to actually put new words on the page:

  • They’ll teach you how to outline or mind-map or plot.
  • They’ll teach you how to revise and how to rewrite and how to find a critique group.
  • They’ll teach you how to seek and find an agent, and an editor (or god-forbid a “developmental” editor).
  • And they’ll teach you how to invoke your conscious, critical mind and second-guess your creative subconscious.

Why? Because the longer they can keep you at Stage One or Two as a writer, the more books and courses and workshops they can sell you and the more they can teach you about how NOT to actually write fiction. And the longer they can keep you at Stage One or Two as a writer, and the ugly cycle continues.

So when they ask “What’s keeping you from writing or finishing your fiction?” the truly legitimate answer is, “Um, all this other crap you keep trying to foist on me. I don’t WANT to be an outliner and a plodder and a reviser and a rewriter. I want to write. Go away, and take all that useless, time-wasting crap you’re peddling with you!”

Okay, that was fun for me. But the truth is, those folks are peddling safety nets, and in doing that they’re peddling fear.

There’s nothing to fear in writing fiction.

Writing short stories and novellas and novels is just a way to entertain yourself and eventually your reader. It just a little fun. Nothing more serious than that. And it’s certainly nothing to fear.

So again, nothing’s actually keeping you from writing or finishing except the fear you invite on yourself. If you want to write fiction, sit down and write fiction. Believe in yourself. It really is that easy.

By the way, even only the first paragraph of that WD newsletter (and Ms. Martin’s February 2024 article) was literally riddled with the myths and fears that are part of the ongoing negative reinforcement American society hands out as writing advice to would-be fiction writers.

Here’s the whole paragraph:

“What’s keeping you from finishing—or starting—your story? Maybe all your great ideas get muddled as you’re drafting and you can’t figure out what’s intrinsic to the story or what should happen when. Maybe your outline that seemed so perfectly planned out simply isn’t coming together on the page. Maybe you just lose steam and are thinking of abandoning the story altogether.”

“What’s keeping you from finishing or even starting your story” is all the garbage they’re trying to feed you in the last three sentences of that paragraph.

Again, they’re peddling fear. In an offhand way, they’re encouraging you write, but cautiously, fearfully, lest something bad should happen to you. Don’t buy it. Or now that you have bought it, shake it off and get back to telling stories.

And don’t feel alone. All of us have succumbed to the myths at one time or another. The myths are just that pervasive.

Those myths and fears are why I, having written my first short story at age 5 or 6, didn’t start writing fiction in earnest until I was 62 years old.

Please don’t let them do that to you.

I’ll be back tomorrow to break down the last three sentences of that bullying paragraph and reveal the myths hidden barely beneath the veneer of the “help” they’re trying to give you.

Talk with you again then.

Of Interest

Karen Woodward I happened across this site yesterday. You might want to check it out. Take any writing advice with a grain of salt. She’s written only three books, and none of them are novels.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 1200

Writing of Blackwell Ops 35:

Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXXX

Fiction for January…………………… 48891
Fiction for 2025………………………. 48891
Nonfiction for January……………….. 13360
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 13360
2025 consumable words…………….. 62251

Average Fiction WPD (January)……. 4074

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 1
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 105
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 274
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.

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