In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* The Value of Challenges
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why. All great discoveries are made in this way.” Albert Einstein, Forbes Quotes: Thoughts on the Business of Life (Thanks to Dan Baldwin for the quote)
The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
To take part, 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.
The whole point is to have fun and grow as a writer. You can join or rejoin the challenge at any time. There’s no cost. You can even do it on your own, without reporting numbers to me or anyone else.
During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported their progress:
Short Fiction
- George Kordonis “Hailstorm” 3262 Urban Fantasy
- Adam Kozak “”Send My Regrets” 2650 Detective Fiction
- Christopher Ridge “The Parking Lot” 3000 Horror
- Dave Taylor “The Lost Patrol” 4470 Mystery –
- Dave Taylor “Just Another Day. Right” 2240 SF –
And congratulations to Dave Taylor and his first-reader bride for jumping into the challenge with both feet and two stories this week. He’s also submitting both of them for the Short Story Contest.
Dave and I have been talking for awhile. I have a feeling hiss characters are inviting him out to play more often. That’s because he’s getting into a rhythm of talking with them. When they see that kind of trust, they leap at the chance to visit their writer more often.
Characters, story ideas, etc. are a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it grows.
For details on the contest, please click here. It is ongoing through midnight, May 8. (When I offer another free contest with cash prizes, it will have a shorter fuse. [grin])
The Value of Challenges
Personal writing challenges are valuable if not essential to the serious writer.
Why? Because they drive you to the chair. Essentially, they force you to remember to go have fun with your characters for awhile.
That’s why I’m running the Bradbury Challenge above. But YOU keep it going by presenting me with your story info once a week. It’s been running for well over a year.
Thus far, aside from myself, KC Riggs is the only person I know who’s completed the “real” Bradbury challenge. Back in the day, Ray Bradbury said if you want to write fiction, set yourself a challenge to write one short story per week for a year. Some of the challenge participants above are getting close.
In between stories, you learn more techniques by reading other fiction, books on writing fiction (or the Journal [grin]), and then you write another story.
Bradbury’s original reasoning for his challenge? “You can’t write 52 bad stories in a row.”
So jump in, kids, and enjoy! And remember, you can submit any of those stories for the current, ongoing short story contest.
Of course, not everyone writes short stories.
So I also opened the challenge above up to long-form (novella and novel) writers. To jump in, simply send me an email before midnight on Sunday each week to report the title of your longer work, the number of words you wrote that week, and the genre (if you know it).
Note that you can also send your info for short stories or longer works anytime during the week. I keep them in a separate document before I post them live each Monday morning. So it’s perfectly all right to set your personal deadline for whenever you want.
Challenges also fit hand-in-glove with short and long-term goals.
I’m currently conducting two challenges in my own writing life, and they’re both working out well. But I’ll talk about that another time.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
The most common last name in every country
Workshop Sale Ends in 3 Days! (or you can just snag a copy of Writing Better Fiction)
Nobody Expects the Trollbot Inquisition!
Yes, People Still Buy Books Especially see the publishers’ remarks about books not making money.
Note that they fail to mention that when they pay a pittance of an advance, they OWN ALL RIGHTS to that book, which goes on their bottom-line spreadsheet and increases the value of their company by many millions of dollars because they own all rights. Not to mention the marked-off depreciation every year. Nice scam, traditional publishers.
The Numbers
The Journal………………………………770
Writing of Julia Stilson (tentative title)
Day 1…… 3523 words. To date…… 3523
Day 2…… 3201 words. To date…… 6724
Day 3…… 3010 words. To date…… 9736
Fiction for May…………………….….… 9734
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 313519
Fiction since October 1………………… 616577
Nonfiction for May……………………… 6070
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 160410
2024 consumable words……………… 473929
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 8
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 90
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 239
Short story collections…………………… 29
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 are lies, and they will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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