In Today’s Journal
* A New Short Story
* Reminder
* About Novel Collaborations
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
A New Short Story
“Coffee? Perhaps Tea?” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out.
As always, if you enjoy this strange story, please tell Everyone. If you don’t, shh! (grin)
Reminder
Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.
Remember, if you finish a story earlier in the week, you can send the info to me early too. It never hurts to avoid pushing the deadline.
About Novel Collaborations
I had kind of high hopes for this experiment, but thus far it hasn’t worked out.
Then again (if I may use a baseball analogy), when you swing at as many pitches as I swing at, every now and then you’re gonna strike out.
Halfway through November, I’ve had only one actual attempt at a collaboration. It was a good attempt and an enticing storyline, but the characters didn’t really invite me into the novel.
I also received a few story ideas and emailed the writers to let them know I liked the ideas, but I’ve had no response in the form of novel starts on those yet.
I also received four short stories from three different writers, but I haven’t read them yet. It’s difficult to motivate myself to read a short story by someone else with an eye toward turning it into a novel.
What if I think a short story would make a great novel, but the author decides s/he doesn’t want to write it?
To those folks, I hasten to add if YOU believe your short story can continue and be a good novel, you should write it with or without my input.
It’s vitally important that you believe in your own work.
Also I know some folks were actively planning to jump into this collaboration thing with a proposal in December or later. That’s fine.
Here’s the bottom line to everyone:
- If you are familiar with my fiction, and
- if you have the opening chapter or chapters for a novel, and
- if you believe our writing styles might be a good match,
you can still email me, send me the opening chapter or chapters, and propose a collaboration.
Believe in your work. I still think a collaboration would be great fun.
If you meet the criteria above, I strongly suggest you write the opening chapter or chapters and send it to me as an attachment. If the story invites me in, I can start writing my part(s).
You have nothing to lose and a novel to gain.
The worst I can do is say no, and there’s no foregone reason I’ll reject your invitation. Actually, the more you believe in yourself and your abilities, the better your chances that the characters and storyline will invite me in to play.
Just as a reminder, I’d like an “in collaboration with” credit on the cover, but any advances (if you go that way), royalties, etc. are all yours. No split.
The Writing
One other professional writer and I have agreed we might work on a novel together. It would include his well-established main character—the rough and rugged, hands-on owner of a private investigations firm—and one or more of my main characters from the Blackwell Ops world.
All kinds of room there for conflict, and also all kinds of room for cooperation. We’ll have to see what happens.
Of course, everything will depend on whether the characters, both very disciplined men, actually get along on a personal level, and we won’t know that until they meet. If there’s mutual respect for the other character, even minus a mutual respect for the different professions, it might work out great.
After my brief ‘vacation,’ during which my average words per day for November plummeted all the way down to 2523, I had a fairly good day of writing today, raising my average to 2689.
As I’ve said before, it’s much easier to maintain your average wpd than to build it back up once it’s dropped off into the deep end. (grin)
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Max Brand: 30 Million Words of Fiction – Part I
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 720
Writing of Blackwell Ops 31: Jack Temple
Day 1…… 1620 words. To date……. 1620
Day 2…… 5016 words. To date……. 6636
Fiction for November…………………. 40334
Fiction for 2024……………………….. 877466
Nonfiction for November…………….. 14460
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 348880
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,050,385
Average Fiction WPD (November)…… 2689
2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 16
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 18
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 98
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 255
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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