In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* Live from the Hovel… Wasn’t
* Classic Country Music Radio
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“To understand a concept and to do it in real life are two different things. I knew about cycling and I knew how to do it, but this time I did it for real. Practice is really the key.” Balázs Jámbor, fiction writer
The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
Rules of the Challenge
The challenge is to write at least one short story per week (or add to your novel), then submit the story title, word count, and genre to me each week for publication in the Journal on Monday.
You can join or rejoin the challenge at any time. There’s no cost. The whole point challenge is to have fun and grow as a writer.
During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported their progress:
Short Fiction
- Balázs Jámbor “On Ghosts, Souls and Others” 10,000 Urban fantasy
- George Kordonis “Scrambled Message” 8733 Science Fiction
- Adam Kozak “The Kingsbury Club” 2098 Humor
- Christopher Ridge “Moby Dick” 3000 Horror
- K.C. Riggs “Coming to the Mountain” 3854 Fantasy
Note: Congratulations to KC. This is her 52nd story in a row without missing a week!
But these other guys have been in the challenge for quite a while too. Congratulations to them too. Keep it going!
The original challenge issued by Ray Bradury was to write at least “one short story per week for a year.”
The challenge was based on his notion that if you read poems, essays, and stories in between the stories you write, you cannot write 52 “bad” stories in a row.
Pretty sound advice. Except that no story is truly bad. If you write it and publish it, somebody somewhere will like it. Believe in yourself. That really is all it takes.
Live from the Hovel… Wasn’t
Welp, all I managed to do yesterday at 1 p.m. was provide a few friends with some mimed entertainment. No sound. And YouTube didn’t pick up my store-bought webcam. It used my computer’s on-board camera, which frankly sucks. But if you were there, you know.
About two hours later, I worked out the bugs by switching my more-better webcam over to my writing ‘puter. It worked fine there. Go figure. Video, sound, the whole nine yards.
So next Sunday, March 24, at 1 p.m. we’re gonna try it again.
For those of you who stopped by, thanks for at least trying. I hope you’ll come back next Sunday for Part 2 of the show.
I did ZERO writing yesterday except this blog, so I’ll get started on what I hope will be my next novel today.
In the meantime, I’ll chat with my buddy Vin about why he uses a go-between (he uses Restream) between him and YouTube. Maybe that’s what I’m missing.
Anway, I also came back much later and recorded the essence of what I meant to say yesterday. It’s only about ten minutes. You can check that out at Live from the Hovel. See Of Interest.
Oh, and the URL is right this time too. Duh.
Now I’m gonna start writing something tentatively called The Jimson Stage.
Classic Country Music Radio
If you enjoy older songs, check out Cave Country.
This was a local station up the road in Benson, Arizona until about a year ago. It was located in a beat-up old blue trailer house next to an ancient used book shop. The whole place was surrounded by towering salt cedars. And it was OURS.
Then a mega-corporation bought out this tiny station and, natually, destroyed it in the name of progress and the almighty dollar.
But yesterday my bride sent me a link. Apparently, the real, live, record-spinning DJ took his tapes etc. with him. And now the real Cave Country is live 24/7.
Joaquin plays everything from Hawkshaw Hawkins and Ernest Tubb and Ray Price to George Strait and other newer artists who still play real country. If you like this stuff, enjoy.
If you don’t, that’s perfectly fine. You can find your music pretty much everywhere.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Fiction Branding… Part 4 In case you missed it yesterday.
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 710
Writing of The Jimson Stage
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date…… XXXXX
Fiction for March…………………….…. 32766
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 197358
Fiction since October 1………………… 500414
Nonfiction for March…………………… 19120
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 118310
2024 consumable words……………… 315668
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 4
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 86
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)…… 239
Short story collections………………… 31
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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