I Devote Entirely Too Much Time…

by

In Today’s Journal

* My Quote of the Day
* I Devote Entirely Too Much Time…
* On Writing Fiction
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

My Quote of the Day

“If you want to grow new plants you have to plant new seeds.” Harvey

I Devote Entirely Too Much Time to Writing Fiction

Yesterday the title for this segment crossed my mind. And it’s probably true. I’m a very organized guy, but I’m also single-minded when it comes to writing fiction.

I live to experience my characters’ lives. Especially when the story’s unfolding easily and the words are flowing, I don’t want to stop to do anything else.

Like setting up a new Substack to serialize my fiction. Or exploring Ream or other platforms. Doing anything other than writing fiction is annoying. Frankly, it borders on agony.

But I have to make time for those other things or just forget about them. And as someone who isn’t famous at all once said, “If you want to grow new plants you have to plant new seeds.” And you have to dare to plant the seeds in the first place.

So during a break yesterday, I took a deep breath and set up a new Substack for my serialized fiction. I’ve always wanted to serialize some fiction, so I’m doing it.

For the time being, it’s free.

A little later, I uploaded Chapters 1 through 18 (in groups of three).

So beginning tomorrow, Thursday, April 10, you can read the novel I’m working on right now at Your Morning Serial. Catchy name, eh? Maybe. We’ll see.

If you’re already interested in my fiction (or curious), you can also subscribe there. Did I mention it’s free?

Note: I’m not adding subscribers myself, so if you ‘liked’ my posts about serializing or emailed me or otherwise signed up as being interested, please click the link above and subscribe.

Because I write so “fast,” I’m experimenting with how to post there.

For this novel, you’ll see three chapters at a time (only around 4500 words total) every other day until you have the whole novel. So posting every other day, that should take 16 to 18 or 20 calendar days.

You’ll be reading the written, cycled, and spell-checked chapters. But they won’t have been proofed by my first reader, so you might still catch a few glitches here and there. (I’m infamous for dropping “ed” off the end of past-tense verbs.)

For example, yesterday too I wrote Chapters 19 through part of 21. This morning I’ll cycle through those, and I’ll post them today or tomorrow. (They’ll go out on the 22nd, if I remember right.)

With another (future) novel, I might switch to posting every day “live,” but maybe not. I’ve mentioned in another post that I tend to cycle on the fly. I don’t want to post anything I haven’t cycled over even if the readers would ‘understand.’

The reader’s job isn’t to understand the weird, nutcase quirks of the writer. The reader’s job is to be entertained. Period.

Anyway, if you subscribe, thanks for coming along on the ride. It should be a boatload of fun.

Any questions, feel free to ask.

Ream?

Yes, I’m still also investigating Ream. If I decide to post there too, I’ll start with the next novel or the one after that.

If you’re thinking about serializing your work, you can start checking out Ream at Getting Started on Ream in 5 Steps.

The only problem Vin had with Ream (that he told me about) was that it might take awhile to build a following there. But in my case (and maybe yours) that isn’t a problem, because I don’t already have the billions of adoring fans he has (grin), so….

I also have special instructions for how to start a new, separate Substack if you already have a Substack without signing up for a whole new account. So if you’re interested in that, let me know at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. The instructions are really easy.

On Writing Fiction

Some authors hold that in order to be ‘confident enough’ to write into the dark, you have to have already written a lot of fiction.

For some writers that might be the case. A lack of confidence is a lack of confidence no matter who you are or what you do for a living.

But even if you’re a beginning writer, you can draw confidence from your past achievements in other fields of endeavor.

Say (for example) you’ve started and run your own business. The self-confidence you gain from that isn’t limited only to starting and running another new business.

If you’ve successfully completed a career or a “stint” in the military or if you succeeded as a high school or college softball or basketball or football player, that also gave you a sense of self-confidence.

And again, that confidence isn’t only for sports.

If you’re confident enough to [fill in the blank] and if you’re aware of how to form words from the letters of the alphabet, you certainly have the ability to do something as unimportant as writing a story or novel.

Forget all the high-minded crap you’ve heard all your life about how hard it is to write fiction and all the stuff a fiction writer ‘has’ to do and just write.

Tell a story on paper with the same abandon with which you told your friend or spouse that started with “You won’t believe this!” It’s exactly the same thing.

Once you have achieved anything great in any endeavor—i.e., once you believe in yourself—that confidence can apply to any aspect of your life. It’s like “I know I can achieve other things, so I know I can tell good stories if I only believe in myself, sit down, and Do It.

Give yourself credit. Believe in yourself. That (and maybe time-available if you still have a day job) is the ONLY difference between you and the prolific fiction writer.

Don’t sell yourself short.

Everything you read on the Stanbrough Writes or Your Morning Serial substacks was written into the dark. Everything I’ve written since early 2014, I wrote into the dark.

Of Interest

Easter Sale

Do you Plot it or Wing it Darkly? Another viewpoint on the topic.

[WMG Teachable] FLASH SALE EXTENDED ONLY ONE DAY

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 1020

Writing of Blackwell Ops 41: León Garras

Day 1…… 1847 words. To date…… 1847
Day 2…… 3410 words. To date…… 5257
Day 3…… 3452 words. To date…… 8709
Day 4…… 2915 words. To date…… 11624
Day 5…… 2311 words. To date…… 13935
Day 6…… 1610 words. To date…… 15545
Day 7…… 4129 words. To date…… 19674
Day 8…… 3889 words. To date…… 23563
Day 9…… 3313 words. To date…… 26876
Day 10…. 3373 words. To date…… 30249

Fiction for April……………………….. 28288
Fiction for 2025………………………. 295238
Nonfiction for April…………………….. 6810
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 88340
2025 consumable words…………….. 377068

Average Fiction WPD (March)……… 3536
Average Fiction WPD 2025…………… 2952 still on track

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 7
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 17
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 111
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 287
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.

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If you’re new to TNDJ, you might want to check out these links:

Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.

2 thoughts on “I Devote Entirely Too Much Time…”

  1. If I hadn’t started writing into the dark, I don’t know if I ever would have finished a single novel. I’d spent decades writing off and on, and researching storytelling techniques, trying to get ‘good enough’. I was convinced you had to plot your stories, re-write them over and over again. When I was first introduced to DWS and his writing techniques, I was very resistant, and frankly, terrified. I mean, the very idea of writing one draft clean went against everything I was taught, and everything I believed. I basically had to brute-force logic myself into trying it. I made a deal with myself that I would write one novel in one draft, beginning to end. That is to say, I more or less set out to prove to myself that DWS was wrong.

    What I discovered, instead, was that I had been a one draft writer all along. Looking back, the best stuff I’d ever put to paper was written ‘into the dark’. I would just start typing, no pressure, no preconceived notions, and then occasionally go back and tweak stuff. Cycling, basically. But then I would feel ‘guilty’ afterwards, because that wasn’t how you were ‘supposed to write’.

    So yeah. Are people better off writing ‘traditionally’ at first? I can’t speak for others, but it certainly wasn’t true for me.

    • Absolutely right, Jacob. And your experience mmimics my own. I spent three YEARS devloping an outline a few decades ago, and by then I was bored to tears with it. I finally said to hell with it. I stumbled across Dean’s site in early 2014. And like you, I basically set out to give WITD an honest try. That was the only way I would know whether it actually worked.

      Also like you, I expected to prove Dean wrong. Since then everything I’ve written has been into the dark, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m currently about to finish my 111th novel and I have over 280 short stories, all into the dark. And I had a major life roll in the middle of that time, so I wrote all of that in just over 8 years. Go figure. Good to know you’re out there, my friend.

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