Playing Catch-Up

In today’s Journal

* The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting
* Re Marketing
* The September Challenges
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Thought I’d take today to play a little catch-up with things that have been going on.

The Bradbury Challenge Writers Reporting

To take part, the only requirement is to write at least one short story per week.

Then, if you want to share your success, submit the story title, word count, and genre to me each week for publication in the Journal on Monday. (Yes, you can also write a longer story and submit your progress each week.)

The whole point is to have fun and grow as a writer. You can join or rejoin the challenge at any time.

There’s no cost. You can even do it on your own, without reporting numbers to me or anyone else.

During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:

  • Vanessa V. Kilmer “BoHo Night” 2952 Romance
  • Adam Kozak “Sonic Assault” 1543 Science Fantasy
  • Harvey Stanbrough “Regrets: A Primer” 2780
  • Dave Taylor “The River” 3259 SF/paranormal

Longer Works

  • Alexander Nakul “Look, how the roads darken” 18636 (40102 words total) Thriller, Noir

Re Marketing

I said I’d let you know what’s going on with my fledgling marketing efforts. If you have anything to share about marketing, please leave a comment or email me.

If you do, chances are good I’ll share what you share in another edition of TNDJ. Because you can help other writers. A rising tide and all that.

I continue to believe the big, huge key to marketing is writing regularly: putting out a lot of novels and stories. (That’s why my own personal challenge for September is to write 3000 wpd minimum.)

But on great advice from bestselling author Vin Zandri, I’m also taking a deep breath and setting up a BookFunnel account with a free book giveaway.

BookFunnel will collect email addresses of those who like my stories, and that will get the ball rolling. Vin says it will take a few months.

I will also begin dabbling in Amazon Ads with a modest investment. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Investing in advertising in anything is basically legalized gambling, but I’ve always been good at spending only as much as I can afford to lose. I recommend you do the same.

The September Challenges

began yesterday. If you somehow don’t know about them, or if you do and you’re finally ready to pull the trigger on either of them, read “Three Writing Challenges: Your Choice” for the rules and rewards. My challenges are free.

Everyone who entered, good on you.

To enter, you have to be a subscriber. But if you’ve been donating a long time via PayPal (from the old days), you’re already subscribed. You don’t have to subscribe again. Write me if you have any questions.

Now, during the challenge, remember, if you fall short of your goal (either 1000 wpd or 2250 wpd) it’s all right. Just get back on the hoss tomorrow. What matters is your average.

If you strive to reach your goal, many times you will go beyond it.

A few final tips

1. If the writing is going well one day, stay with it and keep writing. Don’t “save” any excess words for the next day’s word count. Remember, the average over the week and month is what matters.

For example, if you’re in the 1000 wpd challenge and the story takes off one day and you put down 2000 words, that kind of gives you a “free” day later in the week.

Don’t take a free day, though.

Keep that 1000 words in your bank because you never know what might come up tomorrow or the next day to interrupt your writing time, so count the words each day.

2. Whether you’re working on a short story or a novel, it’s always a good idea to end the writing session (or the day) on a cliffhanger or on the sentence that will follow the cliffhanger.

SF writer CJ Cherryh advised “put your character in the shower at the end of the day. Then when you come back, you’ll have to write him out of the shower, and that will get the words flowing again.” Great advice.

Give your creative subconscious something to latch onto at the beginning of the next writing session.

3. It’s always a good idea to cycle through (Not Edit!) what you wrote in the previous session. As you read, let your fingers rest on the keyboard. Let yourself (your characters) touch the story as necessary here and there. Then when you get to the white space, the words will be flowing again.

Any questions, ask.

The Writing

Because “showing off” forces me to produce even on days when I don’t feel like it (those are seldom) I decided to keep reporting each week in the Bradbury Challenge.

Since I report my short stories as well as my novels in the Numbers section of TNDJ every day, I was going to leave the Challenge.

But instead I’ll do both. It does help. Two days ago I remembered the Bradbury Challenge and my commitment to write a story each week in addition to whatever else I’m writing.

So I sat down and wrote a story (shrug). It’s just that easy when you trust your characters and yourself and write into the dark.

But I was aiming for at least 3000 words of fiction on the day, and the story “Regrets: A Primer” was only 2780 words. So I went back to my novel.

I only had to add 220 words to reach my goal for the day, but when the smoke cleared I’d written 1526 words. See how that works?

So that was 4306 words of fiction on the day (with a 3000 wpd goal). Add-in the nonfiction for the Journal, and I wrote over 5600 words total on the day. (See Numbers below.)

All because I let the words run instead of stopping them for inspection. I simply enjoyed the process. And yes, I did cycle through the story after it was finished. So one and done.

Also, for the record, I don’t believe in myself and my characters because I’ve been writing for a long time. I’ve been writing for a long time because I believe in myself and my characters. That keeps it fun.

Likewise, WITD isn’t easy for me only because I’ve been writing awhile and have written a lot of novels and stories.

In fact, I STARTED writing fiction earnestly BECAUSE of WITD, back in earlly 2014.

The point is, you can do the same. You don’t have to believe all the negative crap the myth-peddlers try to force on you. Believe in yourself and Just Write.

And just in case you’re wondering, I don’t include anything below Of Interest in my nonfiction word count because most of it is repeated.

Talk with you again then.

Of Interest

Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: “Awareness”

Sale on Advanced Classes Ends Today

The Numbers

The Journal………………………………1140

Writing of Blackwell Ops 28: Ariana Ramos

Day 1…… 2583 words. To date…… 2583
Day 2…… 1339 words. To date…… 3922
Day 3…… 1526 words. To date…… 5448
Day 4…… 3941 words. To date…… 9389

Fiction for September……………………. 3941
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 579758
Fiction since October 1………………… 787729
Nonfiction for September……………… 2490
Nonfiction for 2024……………………… 277330
2024 consumable words………………… 762002

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 12
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 5
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)……………… 94
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 242
Short story collections…………………… 29

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer, but please try this at home. You can do it.

On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

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