Daily Journal

In Today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Holiday Gift Subscriptions Now Available * Ten Ways to Start 2025 with a Bang * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “It’s hard to believe since May of this year I have completed 34 short stories, a novel and two novellas. I’ll set new year’s resolution to start sharing them with the world.” Dave Taylor, in an email containing next Monday’s Bradbury Challenge input Note: For those following my numbers, I didn’t write yesterday. Caught up on my sleep a little instead. Dumped my daily average a little, … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting * Failing to Success * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “Give us 12 weeks and you’ll have a rough draft.” Subject line of an email from Writer’s Digest newsletter My first thought was, “Hey, give ME 12 weeks and you’ll have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 sparkling clean new novels. Published.” “What if you combined challenges? Like say you did a writing challenge combined with a publishing challenge. As an example: Set a goal for a certain number of new … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Writing Into the Dark (redux, redux) * On Taking Days Off to “Rest” * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “I have had a short story titled, “The day after ‘and they lived happily ever after’” noodling in my brain for a few years. Maybe today is the day I WITD with it.” Manisha, in a comment “The scale of the prize is vast: intellectual property accounts for some 90 percent of recent U.S. economic growth.” Alexander Hartley in the article linked in Of Interest Writing Into the … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * A New Short Story * Yesterday I Mentioned * Yesterday Also * I Finally Remembered * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “I gave WITD a fair try in September and wrote the most fiction words in one month that I had ever done in such a short time! So, no more proofing the dough, it will be time to start baking!” Tiffanie Gray A New Short Story “The Dawning of Dexter” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. Where … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Raw Emotion: Some Musings * Of Interest * The Numbers Raw Emotion: Some Musings A thought occurred awhile back as I talked with a friend who said the horror of one scene I’d written that evoked such fear that she had to take a day off from reading the story. I took the reader’s unease as a great compliment, albeit a left-handed one. In this case, I thought it might mean s/he didn’t want to read another book (of mine) in which similar scenes might occur. Fair enough. (Reader taste.) But it served only to encourage … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Another Spreadsheet Revelation * Results Begin to Trickle In * The Writing * The Numbers Another Spreadsheet Revelation Sigh. But that’s all right. I promised to share lows (and errors) as well as highs in the hope that both would cut the learning curve for someone, so here goes. Yesterday, I glanced back over my entire annual spreadsheet for this year. And I started thinking (with a frown), How in the world can I be so close to going over 1,000,000 words on the year when I’ve had several paltry months? I mean, in four of … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Steven Pressfield Again * Took Most of the Day Off * On Pacing and Paragraphing * Of Interest * The Numbers Steven Pressfield Again After I posted yesterday’s issue of TNDJ I revisited Steven Pressfield’s website and noticed a little note in the upper right corner that read “Continue to Website.” I clicked it. His actual website is here. I encourage you to visit. He even offers a free 5-audio-lessons course on The War of Art. It might be worth your while even if you already have the book. Took Most of the Day Off Welp, … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * The December Run with Harvey Challenge * The Novel Wrapped, But in an Ugly Way * Steven Pressfield and The War of Art * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “Truly great novels are driven by unforgettable characters.” Jake at Writem Finally, something on which I and the writer(s) at Writem can fully agree. (grin) “Staple it to the inside of your eyeballs, folks: All good fiction is character-driven.” Harvey Stanbrough, the opening sentence of Chapter 1 of Writing the Character-Driven Story, the now unpublished book largely included … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * The Writing * The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting * Writem et al (Part 2) * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “When a woman tries, she’s got it all over us guys in pretty much every way. Lucky us.” Harry Tidwell in Blackwell Ops 32: Harry Tidwell “There are lots of people teaching/talking about plotting, discovery writing, pantsing, etc…and you don’t really hear them talking about “the Other side” ie. WITD. In fact, many of them will even say that anything that isn’t ‘their’ brand of writing isn’t … Read more

In Today’s Journal * Writem et al (Part 1) * Yesterday * Of Interest * The Numbers Writem et al, Part 1 As a subscriber, I was very surprised to receive a post from Writem in my inbox touting the benefits of outlining. Which is to say touting the benefits of bowing to unreasoning fear and letting the conscious, critical mind not only to dictate your fiction, but allowing it to lead the way into your fiction. I’ll say up front, if outlining and following the other myths of writing “works for you” in some undefined way, more power to … Read more