In today’s Journal * Happy Independence Day * Squash Blossom * Of Interest * The Numbers Happy Independence Day Here in the ‘States we celebrate our independence from England. It’s quite a kerfluffle over here, though I fear most of our citizens and permanent visitors have given up on the true meaning and gravitated more toward July 4 as a chance to blow stuff up and gorge on hotdogs and hamburgers. As I wrote a few days ago, here’s wishing all of you a safe, enjoyable Independence Day. Enjoy the brats and burgers and ‘dogs and sodas and suds, but … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * The Power of Word Count Goals (and Tracking Them) * Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That’s heaven. That’s gold and anything else is just a waste of time.” Cormac McCarthy The Power of Word Count Goals (and Tracking Them) K.C. Riggs The following is a guest post by K.C. Riggs, who is easily among my favorite writers. I highly recommend her novels, The Widow’s Circle and Number 5 in the … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * What Hell Looks Like * Restarting My Restart * My New Webcam * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “I never read reviews. My job is to write the stories. It’s none of my business what the reader thinks of them, and every reader will have a different opinion. (Same reason I don’t seek or accept critiques of my writing.) ” Me, yesterday, on a post in TKZ “Jay Lake, who sadly passed away in 2014, used to say ‘stories belong to the reader,’ meaning that readers own … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * A New Story * Another New Story * My New Webcam * Revising My Schedule and Routine * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “I did some financial planning, and it looks like I can retire at 85 and live comfortably for 11 minutes.” Anonymous (Thanks to Sam Turner for the Quote of the Day) A New Story “Spider” posted yesterday (Friday). You can read it over at https://stanbroughwrites.substack[dot]com/. You can subscribe there too, to get a new short story every week. It’s free. Another New Story I … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Trusting Yourself as a Writer * Video Stuff * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “There’s some sort of circle involving self-trust where the more you trust your ability to create, the easier it becomes.” Garry Rodgers, unknowingly helping me write this blog post Trusting Yourself as a Writer On Garry Rodgers’ Kill Zone blog post yesterday, I left this comment: “The lack of courage is the huge one. And to make it worse, the fear that immobilizes or radically slows so many has either no consequences or … Read more

In today’s Journal * Advice on Self-Publishing * Of Interest * The Numbers Advice on Self-Publishing First, please also see my Quick Guide to Self-Publishing & FAQs, Toward Efficiency in Epublishing, and The Essentials of Digital Publishing. You can download each of them, free, by visiting https://hestanbrough.com/the-daily-journal-archives-gifts-dvds/ and clicking the links. Please take advantage of these gifts. What brought this topic to mind? A writer friend asked a few questions yesterday about starting out in self-publishing. I thought I’d expand here on the answer I gave him. Picking the Name of Your Publishing Company—I’ve used StoneThread Publishing, my publishing company … Read more

In today’s Journal * Reworking My Routine and Schedule * Big Brother Might Be Closer Than You Believe * Of Interest * The Numbers Reworking My Routine and Schedule I’m using the final few days of June to focus on reworking my routine and schedule. I’ve come up with a new challenge for myself: to get back to my production levels of January 1 through July 31 2021, during which time I wrote 13 novels, a novella, and two short stories, comprising 534,744 words of published fiction. Don’t let the big number deceive you. That time span is 212 days, … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Another Video, a Little More Advice * Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Surveillance techniques familiar to authoritarian dictatorships have now been repurposed to target American workers.” Wired Magazine Another Video, a Little More Advice I made a spur of the moment video yesterday from my little writing ‘puter. Oops. After the fact I found the sound was out of sync with the video. (If you restart the vid a time or two, the sound syncs.) The vid ran about 12 minutes. You … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Make Finding Your Books Easy for the Reader * About Dean Wesley Smith * Re the Livestreams * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “Writing by a deadline can be a really good thing and does wonders because you don’t have time to think. Just relax and follow your characters around and they take care of the rest.” Christopher Ridge, Horror writer “I lost some time once. It’s always in the last place you look for it.” Neil Gaiman Make Finding Your Books Easy for the Reader Yup, … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * More Notes on YouTube * Disillusionment * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t.” Jack Dempsey More Notes on YouTube I came to write this right after I closed my livestream yesterday. I think it ran for about 15 minutes, and I know I rambled a bit. Mea culpa, of course. Who else? Not a big deal. All part of the learning curve. Re the rambling, for my next livestream, I’ll probaby make a few notes so I have … Read more