In Today’s Journal
* For All Fiction Writers
* A New Short Story
* Reminder
* Anyone Ever Hear of Bookstagram?
* A Story About a Story
* A Meme for You
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
For All Fiction Writers
If you haven’t visited the Journal website recently, there are now seven articles under the On Writing Fiction menu tab.
Especially if you’re new to TNDJ, I suggest you check them out.
All of them are derived from earlier posts, so the page is kind of a mini-archive.
You can find the full archives and other gifts here.
Finally, you can find all of my how-to books on writing fiction here. When you get to the page, scroll down. Many of my how-to books are free.
A New Short Story
“Dr. Zimmer in the Amazon” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out.
As always, if you enjoy this weird story, please tell Everyone. If you don’t, shh! (grin)
Reminder
Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your Bradbury Challenge story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.
Remember, if you finish a story earlier in the week, you can send the info to me early too. It never hurts to avoid pushing the deadline.
Anyone Ever Hear of Bookstagram?
According to the web, Bookstagram is “not a separate app, but instead, it’s an Instagram account that specifically features visually-aesthetic photos relating to books.”
Might be worth looking into, especially if you have an Instagram account.
Here’s a guide you might want to check out.
A Story About a Story
Yesterday I finished a short story for this week’s Bradbury Challenge. It’s a really cool story if you like westerns and you don’t mind reading about a little treachery that you can’t see coming. I know I didn’t see it coming. It blew me away.
Anyway, I also posted the story to my Stanbrough Writes substack, so you’l see it on May 16th if you want to.
A few years ago I wrote an opening for a story called “The Jimson Stage.”
When I came across that opening a couple of days ago, I read it. Ugh. Didn’t care for it. But I really liked the basic story idea. When something grabs me that hard, I like to see where it goes.
So I wrote a new opening two days ago, and the story took off.
That title never ‘felt’ right to me, but I left it alone for the time being and did what I always do: I let the story take me away as I ran through it with the characters.
When I was about halfway through the story, one of the characters asserted its actual title, but I didn’t pick up on it.
Then yesterday, in the very last line of the story, another character repeated the same title and it hit me. That’s when the story became “No Call for Clocks.”
I love it when the characters do that.
A Meme for You
So the story turned out well, but I didn’t start my next novel yesterday like I had hoped to. And when I’m not writing I get grouchy.
So yesterday I was wasting a little time on Facebook and I decided to post the following meme (©2024 Harvey Stanbrough) under this caption:
“When I’m not in the middle of writing a novel….”
Of Interest
Cover Me: a critical look at book covers Much about branding elements.
Top 10 Book Marketing Articles from BookBub in 2024 I recommend you bookmark these. And use them. (This is a repeat listing. It’s that important.)
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1410
Writing of “No Call for Clocks”
Day 1…… 3014 words. To date…… 3014
Day 2…… 2502 words. To date…… 5516 done
Fiction for December………………… 72097
Fiction for 2024………………………. 818197
Nonfiction for December…………….. 22120
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 384690
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,199,785
Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 3605
2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 19
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 103
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 269
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.