Fiction Doesn’t Matter, and the Fun-to-Work Ratio

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* Another Sort-of Challenge
* The Uses of Challenges
* Fiction Doesn’t Matter
* The Fun-to-Work Ratio
* Of Interest

Quotes of the Day

“The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was 12.” Ray Bradbury

“When an idea hits me, I do it, doesn’t matter what field it’s in [whether science fiction, fantasy, murder mystery, play, poem]. Instantly, I just go do it.” Ray Bradbury

“Drag it out in the open, kicking and screaming. You can’t think it out because thinking gets in the way of the process. Intellectualizing is dangerous to the process.” Ray Bradbury

Another Sort-of Challenge

In his post today, Dean mentioned he plans to try to finish his current novel “in the next week.”

I’m using that as a catalyst to move ahead on my own current novel. I’m setting April 15 as the target date to finish. Most of my Crowley novels come in at around 40,000 to 50,000 words so it won’t be any kind of real crunch. Just something to move me steadily forward.

The Uses of Challenges

I only mentioned the stuff above because, if your writing is dragging for any reason, sometimes setting a challenge is a good way to get things going again.

• If you’re Thinking, a challenge is a good way to set aside the conscious, critical mind and Just Write.
• If a scene or chapter is holding up your progress somehow, a challenge can be the right catalyst to set aside or even delete the problem area and move ahead.
• If you know you experience unreasoning fear, writing for no other reason than to meet a challenge can free you from those chains. (This is one major reason for the current Bradbury Challenge I’m facilitating. And sure, you can still jump in.)

For that last one, just understand that the story doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s only a bit of fun, like building a sandcastle on the beach even though you know the next high tide will erase it. Just have fun. Just go play and have fun.

Fiction Doesn’t Matter…

My own critical mind crept in again a day or two ago. The thought was sneaky: “Why am I bothering with this stupid story-a-week challenge? I don’t care either way about writing a short story every week. I don’t even care whether I publish them.”

The thing is, all of that is true. I don’t care about the stories I’m writing. And I don’t care whether I publish them. Ever.

In fact, I’m all but certain I won’t publish them, at least individually. Well, other than maybe on my Stanbrough Writes Substack, or maybe in a separate Bradbury Challenge category over on my Stanbrough Writes website. (Hmm. There’s an idea.)

The Fun-to-Work Ratio

What all of that really means is that I’m all but certain I won’t search for cover art, create a cover, write sales copy, and go through the process of uploading each individual short story to D2D and Amazon. Why? Because doing all that for a short story seems self-defeating to me in terms of time management. (You may feel differently, and that’s perfectly fine.)

It takes me say 4 hours to write a short story. It takes another hour (minimum) to find cover art, create a cover, write sales copy, and upload the whole thing to D2D and Amazon. So a full 1/5th of my time is spent doing the business stuff.

For me, that is not a good fun-to-work ratio. Four hours of unbridled fun followed by an hour of forced labor? Um, no thanks.

Honestly, I don’t even like doing all that business stuff for my novels, but at least the fun-to-work ratio is better. It’s also better for short story collections. Writing a novel takes around 50 hours. Writing the stories for a 10-story collection (at 4 hours each) and compiling them takes around 40 hours.

Yet it still takes only around an hour to find cover art, create a cover, write sales copy, and upload to D2D and Amazon. Meaning I spend only 1/50th of the time doing business stuff for a novel and 1/40th of the time doing business stuff for a short story collection. Still not ideal, but a lot better than 1/5th.

So my critical mind was correct. To me, my individual short stories aren’t worth the time and effort it takes to do all that’s required to formally publish them, meaning publishing them to anywhere other than my own platforms.

But that’s perfect, and it’s exactly what I preach here at the Journal: WHAT I write (the story) is definitely not important. It doesn’t matter. What does matter to me as a writer is that THAT I write, that I put new words on the page, and the challenge is enabling that at the moment.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Business Musings: AI, Copyright, And Writers” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/business-musings-ai-copyright-and-writers/. The excerpt also contains links to two other Business Musings articles.

See “4 Pillars of Book Marketing, or How to Sell More Books in Less Time” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/4-pillars-of-book-marketing-or-how-to-sell-more-books-in-less-time/.

See “Motivation” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/motivation/.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 880

Writing of “Someone You Will Never Have to Be” (short story)

Day 1…… 2186 words. Total words to date…… 2186 (Done)

Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal 2 (WCG9SF4)

Day 1…… 3231 words. Total words to date…… 3231
Day 2…… 2990 words. Total words to date…… 6221
Day 3…… 1805 words. Total words to date…… 8026
Day 4…… 2025 words. Total words to date…… 10051
Day 5…… 1451 words. Total words to date…… 11502
Day 6…… 1886 words. Total words to date…… 13388
Day 7…… 2002 words. Total words to date…… 15390
Day 8…… 1060 words. Total words to date…… 16450
Day 9…… 1903 words. Total words to date…… 18353

Total fiction words for April……… 5546
Total fiction words for 2023………… 71734
Total nonfiction words for April… 4340
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 66600
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 138334

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 72
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 221
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: I don’t care how you write, only that you do. However, I am a prolific professional writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark, adherence to Heinlein’s Rules, and that following the myths of fiction writing will slow your progresss as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.