In Today’s Journal
* Discover and Reveal Your Innermost Demons
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Discover and Reveal Your Innermost Demons
Hey, I’ve got another challenge for you. This isn’t something you will report to me. I don’t want to know.
This is intimate, just for you, and strictly between you and yourself. And as always, it’s something you should do only if you want to pick it up.
Various masters have advised over the years to write what frightens you (at least S. King and Bradbury).
One famous writer (I forget who, but maybe also Bradbury) advocated making lists of Things You Love and Things You Hate and Things That Annoy You or Haunt You, etc. and then writing about them.
The idea is to make lists of those things, and then write stories that evoke that emotion within you and, hopefully, within the reader.
But all of that requires you to mostly look outward. What’s your bogeyman, etc.?
I want to push that a step farther. I suggest you look inward.
What is your worst or strongest private, personal, secret flaw? (For obvious reasons, don’t answer that in either a comment or an email. It’s strictly a rhetorical question, posed only to provoke your own thoughts.)
What about yourself is locked away in the absolute deepest level of your vault that you would change with a snap of your fingers if you could?
It might not even come to mind easily. You might have to dig deep. But when you find that deepest, darkest Thing,
Step 1: Bequeath it to a character.
Step 2: Write the story that comes to you.
I’m talking about a Thing that nobody else knows about you. A Thing you’ve locked away in your innermost recesses because you don’t want to even risk thinking about it.
It can be something you’ve done or something you believe you caused to happen.
Or it can be something you’ve wondered about doing when you’ve been unable to shut off your mind in time to avoid thinking about it.
It’s probably posed as a question:
- What would it be like to…? or
- What if I…?
- What would that experience be?
- What are the possible benefits and repercussions?
- What are the possible punishments (self-applied or applied by the state or, if you wish, the authorities)?
Got the idea?
Good. Now, if you’re still reading this, extrapolate from those questions a little:
- Same questions but somebody’s kicked the big plug out of the wall and there’s no electricity and therefore no internet, lights, etc. In other words, the rules have changed worldwide.
- Same questions but set a hundred or two hundred or five hundred or whatever years in the past.
- Same questions but set in a foreign country you’ve never visited before. Or maybe even in an area/culture in this country you’ve never visited before.
- Same questions but set in a confined environment that’s alien to you, say a generation ship traveling through space.
- Et cetera….
Remember, the setting isn’t the core of the story. It’s only the window dressing that pulls the reader in and keeps him in the scene and interested.
The core of the story is that Thing you’ve decided to write about.
A Few Tips
- First, if you try this challenge, I strongly recommend you write in she/he third person. It’s always easier to write highly emotional stuff when you step out of the frame of the story and watch someone else act on whatever Thing you’ve chosen.
- Once you begin, be true to it and let the story go wherever it wants. Whatever happens, happens. You’re only the observer and the recorder.
- If you do this right, you will reveal nothing about yourself (the writer, the human being) in the story, but chances are you will cause the reader to wonder how much of you is in the story. Finally,
- Don’t hurt yourself. This is only a bit of entertainment (if it ever sees the light of day, which I hope it will). You deserve to have readers so engrossed in your story that they wonder how much of it is autobiographical.
If you’re wondering, yes, this same challenge was offered to me a long while back. And yes, I’ve written several novels and/or stories that (maybe) revealed aspects of my own personality (possibly) that I would never reveal personally to anyone.
It’s more than likely a frightening, exhilarating, tremble-invoking experience.
But then, how would I know?
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
The Indie Advantage (Web version) I don’t know whether you’ll be able to see this. Even if you can, I strongly recommend you set up a D2D account so you can receive this free weekly newsletter in your inbox. I’ve found it invaluable.
D2D Answers: Getting Your Books into Libraries While Enrolled In Kindle Unlimited (Short video)
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 810
Writing of “Ten Cents on a Dollar”
Day 1…… 1965 words. To date…… 1965
Day 2…… 1441 words. To date…… 3406 (done)
Writing of Blackwell Ops 47: Sam Granger | Special Duty
Day 1…… 3250 words. To date…… 3250
Day 2…… 1110 words. To date…… 4360
Day 3…… 3323 words. To date…… 7683
Day 4…… 1656 words. To date…… 9339
Day 5…… 1413 words. To date…… 10752
Day 6…… 3135 words. To date…… 13887
Day 7…… 3338 words. To date…… 17225
Day 8…… 1228 words. To date…… 18453
Day 9…… 1985 words. To date…… 20438
Day 10….. 1312 words. To date…… 21750
Day 11….. 2559 words. To date…… 24309
Day 12….. 1345 words. To date…… 25654
Day 13….. 2800 words. To date…… 28454
Fiction for September……………… 21108
Fiction for 2025…………………….. 555257
Nonfiction for September.………… 160650
Nonfiction for 2025………………… 202310
2025 consumable words………….. 749953
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 13
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 117
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 301
Short story collections……………………. 29