In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Finished the Novel
* “It,” and Toward Clarity
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“[Traditional publishing] will stab you in the back the first chance they get.” Vin Zandri (see Of Interest)
Finished the Novel
Welp, Blackwell Ops 14: Charlie Task, subtitled A Time-Travel Thriller, is in the can.
It wrapped yesterday with a little over 2100 words. I ran a spell check, saved it as a PDF file, and sent it off to my first reader. It’s off my desk, so it’s all good. (grin)
Despite four days when I fell short of my daily goal, my average daily count on this one was a hair under 3,026 words per day. I’ll take it.
I advise other writers to keep track of their daily progress. It’s just one more byproduct that keeps me coming back to the keyboard and tapping into the lives of characters.
It’s also why I keep saying average matters.
This novel feels a little special to me in retrospect. When I updated the Numbers below, I realized this was my 80th novel since I started back in late October of 2019.
For some reason, that feels like a benchmark. With a little luck, the next benchmark will be my 100th. (grin)
“It,” and Toward Clarity
Writing and publishing fiction is all about conveying the story your characters are living to interested readers. In that endeavor, clarity matters.
I’ve talked before about taking your time as your characters’ Recorder or Stenographer (as Stephen King refers to himsel). Be sure to include anything that passes through your mind as you’re writing. Anything the characters allow you to see, hear, touch, taste or smell (or feel emotionally) as you’re typing.
The word “it” is one I often use to refer back to a sometimes vague antecedent. It’s a flaw I have.
My characters usually catch “it” during my cycling sessions. I usually characterize cycling as the characters stopping and waiting, often impatiently, as their much older Recorder catches up.
The stories often unfold far more quickly than I can manage to race through them. Though fortunately, the characters never seem to have that problem.
As I said, the characters most often replace instances of “it” that are too vaguely connected to their antecedent and replace them for me. In fact, I think I’ve never heard from any of my first readers any confusion caused by that little word.
But if you’re one who still “looks for” errors, typos, wrong words and other flaws consciously during one or more editing passes, I suggest you make “it” the subject of at least one pass with the Find feature.
Then, each time the feature finds “it,” read over the sentence or passage to see whether what you want to convey would be clearer if you replaced “it” with (usually two) other words.
Remember, as long as the story is coming through the POV character, you can’t be too specific.
Excesses or deficiencies in description can only occur when you bow to the critical mind and add-to (or subtract-from) what your characters and your creative subconscious have given you.
You will never make a story “better” by doing that. You’ll only make it different, and usually worse. Of course, whether to do that is strictly up to you. But the only legitimate value judgement is up to the reader.
Reminder
Participants in the Bradbury Challenge, get your Challenge info in before the Journal goes live tomorrow (Monday).
Waiting for some of you who dropped out of the Challenge (or from reporting your progress) to jump back in
I’m pulling for you.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Episode No. 855: The Big FU (Thanks Elon) If you’re still tied to the “dream” of traditional publishing, do yourself a favor and watch this.
For nearly 2,000 memorable opening lines from every genre of world literature
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 650
Writing of Blackwell Ops 14: Charlie Task
Day 1…… 1359 words. To date…… 1359
Day 2…… 3002 words. To date…… 4361
Day 3…… 3349 words. To date…… 7710
Day 4…… 1687 words. To date…… 9397
Day 5…… 2271 words. To date…… 11668
Day 6…… 3095 words. To date…… 14763
Day 7…… 3924 words. To date…… 18687
Day 8…… 3278 words. To date…… 21965
Day 9…… 4093 words. To date…… 26058
Day 10…. 3764 words. To date…… 29822
Day 11…. 4362 words. To date…… 34184
Day 12…. 2127 words. To date…… 36311 (done)
Fiction for December…………………… 6489
Fiction for 2023…………………………. 407323
Fiction since August 1………………… 292778
Nonfiction for December……………… 24200
Nonfiction for the year……………… 258000
Annual consumable words………… 661816
2023 Novels to Date……………………… 9
2023 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2023 Short Stories to Date……………… 7
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 80
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.