In today’s Journal
* Carving Out Time for Writing
* Yesterday
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Carving Out Time for Writing
Sometimes, some folks who are fiction writers or who aspire to be fiction writers complain that they just can’t find the time. I understand.
Once upon a time, that was even a problem for me. Sort of. In my case, I learned to prioritize. You have seen the results.
Years ago, somewhere in his blog, Dean Wesley Smith mentioned a great way for you to see where your time goes each day. Sometime in the past 9 or 10 years I blogged about it too.
I looked for both and found neither, so I was going to write a whole long thing here about it.
Then I stumbled upon a post Dean wrote titled “Time Management and Free Lecture”. The offer is still good, and I see no need to reinvent the wheel.
To see Dean’s free lecture titled “Carving Out Time to Write” —
1. If you already have a Teachable account, click here. The whole lecture is only 8 videos, each around 10 minutes long.
2 If you don’t have a Teachable account yet (it’s free) visit Teachable.com and sign up. Or click here to go straight to Dean’s offerings, or click the link above to go to that particular free lecture.
Once you get your time under control, you’ll only have to decide what takes priority in your life.
Yesterday
First I finished refreshing the last of the eleven magic realism short stories. I also got them posted and scheduled on the Writing in Public website. You can read the first installment here.
The first six stories comprise the Saga of Maldito. They also comprise a short novel of a little over 34000 words. Although each story stands alone, the whole story is better if read in sequence.
The next two or three stories in the series are tenuously related to characters in the saga in one way or another, and the others are just really good magic realism stories.
One note: If you believe from previous experience you don’t “like” magic realism. I urge you to give these a try.
Magic realism often gets a bad rep as “literary” fiction, complete with massively long (and difficult to read) paragraphs. Writers of literary fiction use longer paragraphs to force the reader to slow down and read the individual words.
I don’t have that problem. I want you to read the Story.
From a genre standpoint, my magic-realism stories are more closely related to commercial fantasy than to the “literary” genre. But if you enjoy reading “literary” fiction, you’re in for a treat too.
Second, toward the end of my day, I wrote the opening for a new Blackwell Ops novel, but one with a difference. The POV character is hinting this one will be part crime thriller, part action-adventure, and part time-travel SF. Might even be a little magic realism scattered in. Should be a ball to write. (grin)
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Nada.
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 500
Writing of Blackwell Ops 14: Charlie Task
Day 1…… 1359 words. To date…… 1359
Fiction for November…………………… 53727
Fiction for 2023…………………………. 372371
Fiction since August 1………………… 40069
Nonfiction for November……………… 20250
Nonfiction for the year……………… 248140
Annual consumable words………… 617004
2023 Novels to Date……………………… 8
2023 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2023 Short Stories to Date……………… 7
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 79
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)…… 235
Short story collections…………………… 31
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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.