In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Last Day of the Month
* For Erin D (and Whomever Else)
* Forums and Boards and Opinions, Oh My
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge, but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of political surveillance. Now…cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.” Ben Elton
Mr. Elton makes some interesting points
Last Day of the Month
Yay. Beginning tomorrow, the year-to-date numbers will stop mimicking the month-to-date numbers. As a writer, I think February 1 is my favorite day of the year.
For Erin D (and Whomever Else)
This morning I received an email from Erin D, a young writer who is frustrated and confused by all the noise on forums etc. Yet even after all that, she chose to ask my opinion on publishing. She wondered whether she should take on the tasks of self-publishing (covers, sales copy, etc.). I was honored, and I did my best to help.
Naturally, I gave her my usual no-BS response. In fact, I responded twice, the second time with a few things I’d forgotten to clarify for her. (Primarily that fantasy, mystery, romance and action-adventure/thriller do well in tradpub as well as in indie, and that SF and westerns are about the worst-selling genres ever in both traditional and indie. Well, SF sells well in Hollywood, but not so much in books. And of course westerns don’t sell well anywhere except to hard core readers of westerns. (Go figure. My two “big” genres are western and SF.)
But I still missed one thing. She said she has an MFA and has “published a few short stories in journals and … written 15 novels.” She also said she has “queried one [novel] for over a year.”
If that means she has written 15 novels and not published any of them, I hope she’s reading this.
Erin D, please follow Heinlein’s Rule 4, updated for today’s world.
Those 15 unpublished novels (if they are currently unpublished) will give you more than ample practice at designing attractive covers, writing effective sales copy, and publishing. As for the various niches you mentioned, when you upload to Draft2Digital (to go wide) and/or Amazon, you will be afforded the opportunity to categorize each novel.
Don’t Be Afraid. Don’t rewrite or revise them, either again or at all. Let them stand as they are. Publish them and let your readers decide what they like or don’t like.
There’s nothing to fear. If you fail, you will fail to success. But chances are, if you go with indie publishing and do the work of collecting email addys, etc. you will not fail
Forums and Boards and Opinions, Oh My
It never ceases to amaze me, all the noise would-be and beginning writers make. With all the blathering they serve only to further cloud already muddied waters.
There are folks out there who don’t write fiction or haven’t written fiction “yet but I’m gonna” or have only started writing fiction (fewer than, say, 100 short stories or 10 novels) yet feel qualified to hold forth about writing on the forums and boards and wherever else. I wish they would one day realize how ridiculous they are.
Of course, that will never happen, so I wish at least that other beginning writers, those looking for advice, would come to understand how ridiculous it is to take advice from, um, other beginning writers. Duh.
I think ours is the only field of endeavor in which beginners and even people who’ve never gone beyond talking and reading and thinking about writing feel completely qualified to tell others how to write. Incredible.
I’d like to smile and gather all of them into a big circle. “A’ight, now, ever’body hold hands. That’s right. Okay, ready? Now then, all’a ya’ll shut the hell up.”
But then, that’s probably just me.
Of Interest
See “Business Musings: Year in Review 2022: The Final Post (A Process Blog)” at https://kriswrites.com/2023/01/25/business-musings-year-in-review-2022-the-final-post-a-process-blog/. If you can put up with her political “insights,” I suggest you click back and read the whole Year in Review series, then subscribe. It’s free.
See “Fun Offer” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/fun-offer/.
See “Barnes & Noble Makes a Comeback” at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/01/barnes-noble-makes-a-comeback.html. Yeah, probably not.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 750 words
Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal 2 (WCG9SF4)
Day 1…… 3231 words. Total words to date…… 3231
Day 2…… 2990 words. Total words to date…… 6221
Day 3…… 1805 words. Total words to date…… 8026
Day 4…… 2025 words. Total words to date…… 10051
Total fiction words for January……… 46873
Total fiction words for 2023………… 46873
Total nonfiction words for January… 20350
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 20350
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 67223
Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 72
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer because of my zen-like non-process. If you want to learn it too, either hang around or download my Journal Archives at https://hestanbrough.com/the-daily-journal-archives/, read them, and try WITD for yourself.