In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Looking Into ALLI
* Of Interest
Quotes of the Day
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.” Mark Twain
“The avant-garde group … revelled in constraint. In 1947 Raymond Queneau, the collective’s co-founder, had imagined a single short story in 99 different ways in his ‘Exercises in Style’. In 1969 Georges Perec wrote a novel that omitted the letter ‘e’. Three years later he produced a novella in which ‘e’ was the only vowel used.” Book reviewer for The Economist
Just think of all the excellent games you could play with your fiction, all the great innovations, all fun and all because of fiction and because you are a writer.
Looking Into ALLI
I might not have posted anything today, but The Passive Guy mentioned ALLI—the Alliance of Independent Authors—near the end of one of his posts, so I wandered over to take a look. I’d heard of ALLI before but hadn’t slowed down enough to check them out before now.
Their list of author member benefits is amazing. As is their overall organization. They’re no ragtag outfit. If you’ve published anything or are about to, full membership is only $119 per year.
If I were younger or in better health I would definitely join, if for no other reason than the member benefits. I might join anyway.
But no matter what I decide, I strongly suggest you stop by and check out their member benefits at https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/member-benefits/.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Paying attention to numbers can open up meaning in books” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/paying-attention-to-numbers-can-open-up-meaning-in-books/. Extremely interesting play on writing fiction.
See “Writers Often See The Dark Side” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/writers-often-see-the-dark-side/.
See “You Have a New Memory” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/you-have-a-new-memory/. Eerie. And sad.
See “Self-published authors earn more than traditionally published counterparts, according to ALLi report” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/self-published-authors-earn-more-than-traditionally-published-counterparts-according-to-alli-report/. See PG’s take, and (if you want to view the legal opinion and order when Apple et al lost their case,
See “US v. Apple Inc. …” at https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3005749933787253302.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 350
Writing of “The Gate” (short story)
Day 1…… 2074 words. Total words to date…… 2074
Day 2…… 0374 words. Total words to date…… 2448
Writing of Wes Crowley: Deputy US Marshal 2 (WCG9SF4)
Day 11… 0323 words. Total words to date…… 19819
Day 12… 2445 words. Total words to date…… 22264
Day 13… 3184 words. Total words to date…… 25448
Total fiction words for April……… 15089
Total fiction words for 2023………… 81277
Total nonfiction words for April… 13690
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 75950
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 157227
Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 1
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 72
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 221
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark, adherence to Heinlein’s Rules, and that following the myths of fiction writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.