In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Everyone Falls
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.” Ray Bradbury (Thanks to Emilia for reminding me of this quote.)
Everyone Falls
Once upon a time I had a great streak going. I’m not talking about my 72-week short story writing streak. I’m talking about novels.
The streak began with the release of a Stern Talbot, PI novel (The Case of the Wayward Accountant) on 19 October 2024 and ended, stupidly, with the release of BO-46 (Sam Granger | Hell Comes Home) on 19 July 2025.
So I wrote and published 21 novels in 42 weeks. Quite a streak, right? I thought so, and apparently some other folks thought so.
But how did I do that?
Other than setting up a text document with “release dates” listed down the left side of it in two-week increments, I simply didn’t think about it. And I definitely didn’t “worry” about it or fret over it.
Instead, I just showed up every day, checked in on my characters and their current story, put my fingers on the keyboard and wrote what happened in the story and the characters’ reactions to what happened.
You know, like I outlined yesterday in “WITD and Heinlein’s Rules Reminder.” As I also said in that post, it was easy-peasy.
Why was it easy?
Because it wasn’t that big a deal. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t even all that great an accomplishment. After all, It was only a series of stories. I mean seriously,
- it isn’t like I eradicated cancer.
- I didn’t come up with a brilliant plan to end war for all time.
- I didn’t solve the (silly) problem of how to safely colonize Mars with human beings.
- I didn’t even develop a magnetic drive for space ships, even though I’m certain a magnetic drive will work and someday someone will develop it.
I did nothing more important than tell stories and put them out there as an enjoyable escape for readers.
And that—the underlying knowledge that WHAT I write doesn’t have any earth-shaking importance and only THAT I write matters (and even that only matters because I’m a fiction writer)—is what enabled me to run as far as I did with that streak.
Still, 21 novels in 42 weeks was a personal accomplishment for me as a writer.
And when I finally suctioned my head out of my butt and finished (and released) Blackwell Ops 47 on 11 October 2025, I was back and running on a NEW every-two-weeks-release streak.
With the release of BO-51 (slated for 6 December 2025) that streak currently stands at 5 novels in 10 weeks. And I have zero doubt it’ll keep going.
Why? Again, because I’m just telling stories, not changing the stupid world. Now THAT would be an important challenge, but I gave up on changing the world years ago.
Dean Wesley Smith, my primary mentor back in the day, knows we’re only telling stories, not changing the world. Hell, he’s the guy who TAUGHT me that.
So when my first streak was going strong, I emailed him to tell him about it. Yes, and to thank him for the bajillionth time, because if he hadn’t taught me about Heinlein’s Rules and WITD back in 2014, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.
He was thrilled for me, and he even picked up on that every-two-week streak idea. He took it as a personal challenge and decided he was going to try to beat my streak. He would begin on his 75th birthday, 10 November 2025.
Of course, the very idea of my own mentor chasing my silly streak….. Well, I was thrilled, and I was pulling for him—enthusiastically—and I told him so both privately and publicly in comments I left on his website.
Then, as he reported in “Changing My Challenge!” on November 17 (see Of Interest) he decided to drop his attempt to write and release a novel every two weeks.
And he did that only one week into the challenge. At the time, he was writing another novel in his Thunder Mountain series.
To say I was disappointed to hear that he’d dropped his challenge is a massive understatement.
So what happened?
Of course, there’s no way to know for sure. But strictly for instructional purposes, I’m going to opine.
I mean, Dean has even written a 60,000 word novel in 10 days AND detailed the process in a series of posts over that 10 days. Later he turned those posts into the nonfiction book, How to Write a Novel in Ten Days.
Yes, I strongly recommend it. It was a tour-de-force regarding writing into the dark. And he’s also written a slew of other nonfiction books, including some other “process” books similar to that one.
But I suspect he felt overwhelmed. Remember the old saw about how to eat an elephant? You can’t eat an elephant, but you can eat one bite at a time.
As Dean also initially taught me, deeming any individual work, much less a series of them, “important” is the surest, quickest way to ice yourself as a writer.
I believe that’s probably what happened.
I believe in reaching for that streak, that sense of being overwhelmed made finishing that Thunder Mountain novel “important” and stopped him cold. And to catch the streak, then he’d still have to write another novel and another and another etc.
Don’t let that happen to you.
Don’t set out to write a “novel” (elephant) or a series of novels (elephant) so you can catch a streak (elephant). If you have the chutzpah to start a personal challenge, just keep going. As I wrote yesterday, lather, rinse, repeat.
Just write.
Write one word at a time—one sentence, one paragraph, one scene at a time—until the characters lead you through to the end.
Push down that critical voice when it pops up—and it WILL pop up—and realize that WHAT you write (the individual story) doesn’t matter, and that it’s only important THAT you write (because, um, you’re a writer).
Then lay your ears back and just have fun. Because that’s really all there is to it. This thing we do will never be important. It’s all just a bit of fun.
Any questions, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Fans: The Good, The Bad & 6 Tips for Preventing “The Ugly”
Big Free Summit Thingy on Thursday and Friday
Everything You Want to know about Microsoft, Pollinators, and Mars
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 1120
Mentorship Words…………….. 100
Total Nonfiction…………………. 1220
Writing of Blackwell Ops 52: Sam Granger | (To Be Determined)
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for November……………………… 52310
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 714351
Nonfiction for November.………………… 16360
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 255830
2025 consumable words………………… 9662612
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 17
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 121
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29