In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Audio Lectures Giveaway Extended
* No Mentorships for Now
* The Writing
* Updates
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.” Robin Sharma
Audio Lectures Giveaway Extended
For two weeks, I’ve been giving away any or all of my audio lectures to any subscriber or reader of the Journal who emails me to ask for them. There’s a reason for that. Some of them are going away.
I’m extending the offer for today only. I will honor any requests I receive before the Journal goes live tomorrow morning.
Then it’s gone.
I’m a very fortunate guy, so I’m trying to pay forward what I’ve learned over the years. Not so long ago, I would have leapt at such an offer from a more experienced fictionist or poet. If Stephen King made a similar offer today, I would still leap at it. The guy forces effects on me with his writing that I still am not able to mimic.
Don’t let false pride get in your way. If that’s why you haven’t asked, look at this offer as if you’ve just won $330 in the lottery. (Yeah, I was charging only $5 each for 66 audio sessions.)
If it helps, you can click the donation link near the end of this post and donate what you would have paid for the lottery ticket.
Or if you want to pay for something, go buy Writing the Character-Driven Story. I think it’s nine or ten bucks. Then your pride will be intact plus you’ll have another valuable resource. (grin)
No Mentorships for Now
I’ve decided against offering the mentorships on Writing Dialogue & Pacing and Grounding the Reader.
As I’ve told a few interested parties over the past few days,
Dialogue and Pacing — If you’re interested in the Dialogue and Pacing mentorship, purchase Writing Realistic Dialogue & Flash Fiction. At Amazon, it’s available for $12.99 for the ebook and $14.99 for the paperback. I also recommend downloading the Free Archives, then searching them for “pacing.”
That will go a long way toward helping you with dialogue and pacing. After you’ve read the book and completed your search, feel free to email me with any questions. Reading any of my own recent novels will also help with dialogue and pacing. Just sayin’. I write across several genres.
Grounding the Reader — If you are interested in the Grounding the Reader mentorship, I recommend you purchase Writing the Character-Driven Story. You can read the description at the link. The book is widely available. At Amazon, it’s available as an ebook for $9.99.
I also recommend downloading the free Journal archives and searching them for “Grounding” “Setting” and “Scene.” Again, feel free to ask any questions via email. Reading any of my own recent novels will also help with openings, hooks and cliffhangers, and grounding the reader. Again, I write across several genres.
Doing either or both of these will save you a lot of money over the cost of a mentorship. And it will save me repeating what I wrote in those books and in that archive.
The Writing
In the interest of saving space, I did not include a Writing segment in the blog yesterday.
On December 31 (writing Day 3) I missed my daily goal by around 650 words. I managed to jinx myself. I had planned to have a big day just in case I didn’t get a lot done on January 1 (since I watched bowl games during much of yesterday).
But that was after I cut the first 500 words (the entire opening) and deleted those words from my Numbers below.
The scene was interesting from a sensory standpoint, but it was wrong for the opening of the novel.
I usually delete what I cut, but I kept that scene in a separate Notepad document. If I include it elsewhere later, I’ll add those words back into the Numbers then. Otherwise they simply don’t matter (or count).
Yesterday also, the title character of the novel kept nagging at me that she is not Caucasian. She is a proud Mexican woman. And her last name is not Stern. It is Saenz. It was a tiny but constant little voice in the back of my mind even as I was writing. And it was positive, not negative.
So I finally changed all instances of Stern to Saenz, then started cycling through from the beginning to allow her authentic voice to come through.
The changes were subtle — most often, differences in diealect are indicated by which words are used, not by phonetic or other spelling — so I had to read every word. But if I hadn’t made those changes the novel might not have proceeded as easily as it should.
I don’t remember that ever happening before, but every novel writes differently. And the characters certainly know better than I who they are.
During the cycling, which took the hours I normally write, I added around 1600 words to the novel. And that was all the new fiction writing I got done. But tomorrow is a new day.
I’ll talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 860
Writing of Blackwell Ops 17: Julia Saenz
Day 1…… 4204 words. To date…… 4204
Day 2…… 4284 words. To date…… 8488
Day 3…… 3355 words. To date…… 11843
Day 4…… 1623 words. To date…… 13466
Fiction for January…………………….… 1623
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 1623
Fiction since October 1………………… 304680
Nonfiction for January……………… 2210
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 2210
2024 consumable words…………… 3833
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 82
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)…… 238
Short story collections…………………… 31
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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 will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.