Marketing, and If You’re a Writer, Write

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* About BookBub
* Free Email Marketing Service
* What Sort of Writer Are You?*
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

“[I]t is … important for me to write in tranquility, trying to write as well as I can, with no eye on any market, nor any thought of what the stuff will bring, or even if it can be published….” Ernest Hemingway

“The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me. The feeling I have every day is very much the same as it was when I was 12.” Ray Bradbury

About BookBub

See “Reach More Readers. Sell More Books” at https://www.bookbub.com/partners. Also, here are the links for the Getting Started with BookBub webinar recording and the slides for that webinar.

See the Webinar Recording at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucFV1PeDB-w.

To download the Webinar Slides (PDF), click GettingStartedWithBookBubAds_WebinarSlides.pdf.

Free Email Marketing Service

If you’re looking for an email marketing service (like MailChimp, but better) I just discovered Brevo. They offer up to 300 emails per day and unlimited contacts at no charge.

If they’d been offering this when I left MailChimp, I probably would have gone with Brevo.

Check it out at https://www.brevo.com/features/email-marketing/. (I’ll be staying with Substack.)

What Sort of Writer Are You?

Dale Ivan Smith asked this and some other questions on the Kill Zone blog at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/06/what-sort-of-writer-are-you.html.

After reading Kathryn Lilley’s list of writer types (excerpted in Smith’s post), I couldn’t resist leaving a comment:

“I don’t fit any of the categories in K. Lilley’s list. I certainly don’t outline, but then it isn’t my story. My characters, not I, are living it. In my own story, I’m sitting at my laptop with my fingers on the keyboard. But I do have fun running through the stories with my characters as their stories unfold around us.

“I’m not a revisionist. I simply record what happens in the story, and I would no more change any of the story events or my characters’ reactions or dialogue than I would change my neighbors’ account of their trip to Barbados or wherever. Not my place. Finally, if writing fiction wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t do it. When my characters tire of sharing their stories with me, there’s always fishing.

“I call myself a writer (lower-case, no ‘calling,’ no angelic choir) because that’s what I do. I write, every day. People marvel at my production, but I spend only about three hours per day doing my job, and I write only about 1000 words per hour (a blazing slow 17 words per minute).

“I write one fiction project at a time, though I have stopped writing one novel to write another, more insistent one, then returned to finish the first I also spend about an hour per day to write my instructive (and free) daily Journal to share my journey and what I’ve learned with other writers.”

Note: Recently, of course, I haven’t been writing fiction every day. That will resume soon, fingers crossed. But even in the midst of an emotional life roll, I’m still writing the Journal every day, or practically every day.

I wish the same for you. That if you call yourself a writer, you actually, you know, write.

There’s certainly no shame in not being a writer. If writing isn’t in you or if it isn’t fun for you, I suggest finding something fun to do. Because life really is too short to waste any of it posturing or doing something you don’t enjoy doing.

By the way, that three hours per day I mentioned—

If you spend only three hours per day not just in the chair but actually writing, that’s 21,000 words per week; 90,000 words per 30-day month; and 1,095,000 words per 365-day year.

If you do the same thing but take weekends off, that’s still 15,000 words per week; about 66,000 words per 22-weekday month; and 780,000 words per 260-weekday year.

The point is, there will be a lot of times when you are prevented from writing by circumstances beyond your control. So don’t take it for granted. If you’re a writer, write something every chance you get. Just sayin’.

And try new things. Join in the Bradbury Challenge of writing at least one new short story per week. You may report your story title, word count and genre to me if you want, and I’ll share your achievement with all the Journal subscribers and readers.

Or fashion an intensive for yourself: Write a new short story every day for two weeks or a month. Or write 3000 words of publishable fiction every day for two weeks or a month, regardless of whether it goes into short stories, a novel or whatever. Write.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Pen Names” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/pen-names/.

See “AI-driven US military drone ‘kills’ its human operator to finish mission” at https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/ai-drone-turns-on-operator.

See “BookBub for Authors: Tips From a Veteran Writer” at https://www.amarketingexpert.com/2023/04/25/bookbub-for-authors-tips-from-a-veteran-writer/.

See “…train collision in India” at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65793257. Somehow this tragedy spawned several story ideas.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 840

Total fiction words for June……… XXXX
Total fiction words for 2023………… 97868
Total nonfiction words for May… 1460
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 110880
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 208748

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 73
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.