Given the Ability to Split My Soul

In today’s Journal

* A New Short Story
* Bradbury Reminder
* Given the Ability to Split My Soul
* The Numbers

A New Short Story

“Blue Bell and the Roses”went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. It’s a great story (strictly my opinion as a reader). Go check it out.

As always, if you enjoy it, please tell Everyone. If you don’t, shhh! (grin)

Bradbury Reminder

Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your 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 it to me early too. It never hurts to avoid pushing the deadline. And everyone is free to jump in at any time. There is no down side.

Given the Ability to Split My Soul

This thought hit me recently as I listened to an enduring Joe Walsh rock tune: “Life’s Been Good.”

Given the choice or ability to split my soul/spirit into several human lives, I would have done it in less than the space of a heartbeat.

Why? So I could have explored all my different passions and affinities. Consider it kind of a pre-birth bucket list. Then (as long as I’m dreaming here) I would have arranged for all of those humans to meet and compare notes.

Your own list probably will differ. I can speak only for myself.

In strictly alphabetical order, in those different lives and guises I personally would have experienced a successful life/career as a(n)

  • archaeologist (in the field)
  • botanist
  • construction guy
  • cowboy (on a working ranch)
  • expert marksman with firearms
  • explosives technician
  • farmer
  • forest ranger
  • instructor
  • landscaper (design and installation)
  • linguist
  • Marine
  • mechanical engineer
  • meteorologist (storm chaser)
  • mob wiseguy
  • motorcyclist
  • novelist/writer
  • Oglalla Sioux warrior
  • oral storyteller
  • philosopher
  • photographer
  • physicist
  • playwright
  • police detective
  • police officer
  • sailor (US Navy)
  • sketch artist and painter (mood/style of DeGrazia)
  • songwriter/singer/on-stage entertainer
  • space explorer
  • structural engineer

Do you have a similar list in the back of (or on the edge of) your mind? Professions or activities that seem always to be there with either “It would really be great to…” or at least “What would it be like to…?” attached to them?

If we have friends who have lived or are living those experiences, we can draw on them for revelations up to a point, but there’s no substitute for experiencing those lives or professions ourselves.

That’s exactly why I give myself over to my characters when I’m writing fiction. I serve only as their fingers on the keyboard. That’s also why I get all nitpicky and draw the distinction between the story being “my story” or “the characters’ story.”

Even when I’m writing about characters who are experiencing something I’ve experienced personally, I’m not living it in the moment.

By that, I mean although I’ve experienced the reality of participating in eight of the items on my list, I’m experiencing only two of them in my present life.

Time takes no notice of silly human dreams and desires. The universe moseys past, it’s hands in its pockets. If it notices us at all, it wonders what all the fuss is about.

In my present life in the current moment I’m sitting at a keyboard offering up some insights as a fiction writing instructor.

At other times in my present life I’ll sit at the slightly more amenable keyboard of my writing ‘puter and convey what’s going on around my characters and me as we race together through their story, which is unfolding in real time just the other side of the screen.

What’s on this side of the screen is my life. What’s on the other side of the screen is the characters’ story. And the dividing layer is immeasurably thin. Think of the dividing layer betwee the leather and the shine on a pair of shoes.

So as fiction writers we get to experience snippets of our characters’ lives by a kind of osmosis—similar to the way we get to experience a good friend’s life—and we get to do so without suffering the consequences.

Of course, there’s a major tradeoff: We also experience those lives without enjoying the benefits.

I wish for all of you many lives in one.

Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 710

Writing of Blackwell Ops 29: John Quick

Day 1…… 1781 words. To date…… 1781
Day 2…… 3792 words. To date……. 5573
Day 3…… 3087 words. To date……. 8660
Day 4…… 3545 words. To date……. 12205
Day 5…… 2667 words. To date……. 14872
Day 6…… 1665 words. To date……. 16537
Day 7…… 3073 words. To date……. 19610
Day 8…… 5593 words. To date……. 25203
Day 9…… 1963 words. To date……. 27166
Day 10…. 3557 words. To date……. 30723

Fiction for October……………………. 60797
Fiction for 2024……………………….. 802305
Nonfiction for October……………….. 19700
Nonfiction for 2024……………………. 323290
2024 consumable words……………… 949634

Average Fiction WPD (October)……… 3378

2024 Novels to Date……………………….. 14
2024 Novellas to Date……………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date………………… 18
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..……. 96
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………. 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………..… 255
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.

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.

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