In Today’s Journal
* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* Gift Subscriptions to Writem
* 1,000,000 Words in the Bag?
* Re “Adventures”
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
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 “Criss Cross” 4009 Mystery
- Adam Kozak “The Brothers Norris” 6632 Detective Fiction
- Harvey Stanbrough “The Journey of Jackson Trimble to Fifth and Main” 2927 SF
- Dave Taylor “The Pyramid’s Revelation” 5,250 Sci-Fi/Time Travel
- Dave Taylor “The San Francisco Revelations” 2615 Sci-Fi/Time Travel
Gift Subscriptions to Writem
I still have a couple of gift subscriptions left for the Writem Substack. If you want one, let me know via email at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
In the alternative or if you email me too late, you might swing by Writem and see whether you can subscribe free for a time.
If not, with what I suspect is coming up soon at Writem, you might want to subscribe for a month. You’ll get a ton of value for your $5.
1,000,000 Words in the Bag?
With a good month of November now gone, early yesterday morning, mostly for kicks, I did the math for the rest of the year.
I need to write only 72,079 words of published fiction between now and December 31 (inclusive) to hit my annual goal of 1,000,000 words of publishable fiction for the very first time.
For me, that should be fairly easy. I’ve surpassed that number in one month several times before. It’s ‘only’ 2325 words per day. But that doesn’t mean it’s in the bag, and I’m not taking it for granted.
I’ll continue with my longstanding daily word-count goal of 3000 wpd, knowing if I fall short on some days, I can still pull it out.
That’s the joyful secret of setting a daily goal that’s slightly higher than what you need: On days when you exceed the goal, it adds words to the bank.
I know from harsh experience that the best way to get into trouble with your weekly or longer-term goals is to not set a daily goal at all or to slack off from it because you feel like it’s a done deal.
I recommend you never take this wonderfully exhilarating adventure for granted.
Also, especially for those of you who had a good writing month of November, be on your guard against the critical voice. It’s most likely to rear its ugly mug just after you’ve met or exceeded a lofty goal.
As a last-second thought, a personal challenge
If any of you would like to take on a new challenge of writing 2325 words per day for the remainder of December (starting tomorrow, December 3), jump on it.
I recommend setting yourself a daily goal of 2500 words per day.
If you do this, your monthly goal is to reach or exceed 67,425 words for the month. Crazy, I know. (grin)
There are only two steps if you want to play:
- Email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com to let me know you’re jumping into this challenge, and
- Email me again on January 1st with your total word count for the month.
I’ll make it well worth your while with your choice of major prize offerings.
Re “Adventures”
As I read through Dr. Mardy Grothe’s Quotes of the Week: “Adventure”, almost every quote caused me to think of all those writers who can’t quite bring themselves to risk the adventure of writing into the dark.
I think trying to help other writers feel self-confident is the most difficult task I’ve ever set for myself. With posts like “Adventure,” I believe Dr. Mardy helps a lot in that endeavor.
After all, questioning whether one should charge into a thunderstorm with a steel sword raised is one thing.
But questioning whether to embark on being confident in oneself and one’s creative subconscious and trusting the characters to tell the story that they, not the writer, are living is quite another.
Especially for would-be writers who have been successful at other endeavors: for example,
- building a business from the ground up, or
- attaining advanced degrees and professorships from universities, or
- becoming a master of your trade as a mechanic or plumber or carpenter or farmer.
Any of those achievements requires a certain amount of self-confidence.
Yet despite having achieved so much during their life, some of those confident individuals, when faced with a blank sheet of paper, are frozen solid by the myths.
Look back on all you’ve accomplished, and the next time you’re faced with a blank page, suck up the fear and just tell a story. You’ll be glad you did, because the only real consequence is a sense of achievement.
Back tomorrow with results of the November Stephen King Challenge and an announcement.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
5 Ways Authors Can Disrupt Their Marketing (in a Good Way) So glad I opened this one. I listed it because the article was written by Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 850
Writing of Blackwell Ops 32: Jack Twist
Day 1…… 3528 words. To date…… 3528
Day 2…… 3136 words. To date…… 6664
Fiction for December………………… 3136
Fiction for 2024………………………. 931057
Nonfiction for December…………….. 2110
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 364680
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,119,776
Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 3136
2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 17
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 101
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 268
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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