I Believe in You

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* Welcome
* I Believe in You
* It’s Never Too Early
* It’s Never Too Late
* When I Was a Child
* Bradbury Challenge
* The Novel Wrapped
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

“Believing in people before they have proved themselves is the key to motivating people to reach their potential.” John C. Maxwell

“In the end it is important to remember you cannot become what you need to be by remaining what you are.” Max De Pree, as reported by David Taylor, Ed.D.

Welcome

Welcome to Zacha F and any other new subscribers or readers of the Journal. I hope you will find it useful.

Get the Archives and other free downloads at the Journal website. And I don’t do the ambush thing requiring an email address. Just click the links and a PDF will download in a new page.

If you wanna see my tired old mug, here’s a video where Vin Zandri and I are chatting about writing and a bunch of other stuff.

I Believe in You

Every one of you has the potential to be a great fictionist, a great writer. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be reading this.

There was a time when William Shakespeare, Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway and [insert name of your favorite author] didn’t even know the alphabet, much less anything at all about the craft of writing.

There was a time when none of those authors had written even one line of a poem or of a story or play or novel. And look at them now.

I believe in you. I write and post this Journal not in the hope of eliciting that poetntial, but in the hope that one day you will elicit it from yourself.

It’s Never Too Early

to put off until tomorrow what you could do today. As Margaret Atwood wrote, “Potential has a shelf-life.”

What she failed to add is that Life has an expiration date. Don’t drag your feet when you could be racing forward, eagerly anticipating whatever will happen next.

It’s Never Too Late

unless you’re on your way to a funeral or a crematorium and you’re the guest of honor.

If you’re a writer, every day that you don’t write is a regret.

If you hear yourself making excuses or coming up with reasons, a regret is just around the corner.

The conscious, critical mind will encourage excuses, fill you with reasons, and downplay any regrets. But you still will not have written. You still will not have accomplished a poem, a story, a novel.

And you’re the only one who can.

When I Was a Child

I was heavily influenced by music, specifically the lyrics of songs I heard. One such song was Woody Guthrie’s “Lonesome Valley.”

Taken out of their religious context, the influental lines were

“Nobody else can walk it for you,
They can only point the way.”

When I was around 12 years old, I was also heavily influenced by a “filler” that appeared at the bottom of a column in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (newpaper): “Live your life so that when you’re alone, you’re in good company.”

Five decades later, character Wes Crowley mentioned to me in passing one day, “Upright is not a matter of degree.”

For writers, both of those sentences translate easily: “Writers write.”

I believe in you, but much more imporantly, I wish for you that you believe in yourself.

Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting

Anyone can jump in (or jump back in) and join the challenge at any time. Even if you miss a week in your personal challenge and break your streak, you can always jump back in the next week and start a new one.

This is a great way to jumpstart your writing and get more practice pushing down the critical voice.

There’s no cost.

Notice, there’s also no pressure re submitting or publishing. That’s up to you. The point of the challenge is to have fun. Learning to keep track of your writing is a bonus.

During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported their progress:

Short Fiction

• Erin Donoho “Nichole,” 2600 words, YA
• George Kordonis “Cold Weather Blues” 2678 Dark Fantasy
• Christopher Ridge “It’s Not the Body…” 1800 Horror
• K.C. Riggs “Todos los Santos” 4658 General

With the time change on Nov 5 for almost everywhere but Arizona, I think I pulled the trigger on this post a little early for Chynna Pace. If so I’ll include this week’s and next week’s story info for her in next week’s report.

Heather H, Loyd J, Bill S, Philip S, and anyone else — email me if I can help.

Longer Fiction

• Alexander Nakul *The Meerkat Watch* 5061 Urban fantasy (5061 total to date)

The Novel Wrapped

I sent the finished novel to my first reader yesterday at 1 p.m. The last three chapters went live on the Writing in Public substack yesterday afternoon at 4 p.m.

If I start a new one-off or a new novel in one of my Mystery, Western, Action-Adventure or Science Fiction series, I’ll upload each day’s work to the Writing in Public substack. If it’s another Blackwell Ops novel, I won’t

To any of you who’ve been along for the ride thus far, thanks.

My 3000+ words-per-day of writing ended yesterday at 25 straight calendar days with two novels and a short story. Today I’ll get covers and promo docs done for the two novels, add them to the StoneThread Publishing website and publish them to Amazon and Draft2Digital.

Then I’m blessed to spend the rest of the day celebrating my youngest son’s birthday with him.

From here on out, I hope to maintain that streak on writing days.

Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 940

Writing of Blackwell Ops 13: Jenna Crowley

Day 1…… 3815 words. To date…… 3815
Day 2…… 3116 words. To date…… 6931
Day 3…… 3090 words. To date…… 10021
Day 4…… 4073 words. To date…… 14094
Day 5…… 3447 words. To date…… 17541
Day 6…… 4403 words. To date…… 21944
Day 7…… 3025 words. To date…… 24969
Day 8…… 3199 words. To date…… 28168
Day 9…… 3833 words. To date…… 32001
Day 10…. 3048 words. To date…… 35049 (done)

Fiction for November…………………… 17508
Fiction for 2023………………………… 336152
Fiction since August 1………………… 221592
Nonfiction for November……………… 5640
Nonfiction for the year……………… 233530
Annual consumable words………… 566175

2023 Novels to Date……………………… 7
2023 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2023 Short Stories to Date……………… 7
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 78
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)…… 235
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.