Recommendations

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* Recommendations
* Of Interest

Quotes of the Day

“The World Health Organization announced yesterday it would begin referring to the monkeypox virus as ‘mpox,’ the result of a six-month effort to find a nondiscriminatory alternative to avoid stigma. … [C]ritics argue mitigation efforts were hampered by false stereotypes associating the virus with Africa and primates.” from the news source 1440https://join1440.com/ (Sigh. You really can’t make this stuff up.)

“Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.” Winston Churchill

Recommendations

I’ve made these recommendations before, but in light of having several newer readers to the Journal, I thought I should mention them again.

Every morning I check DeanWesleySmith.com. More and more often, there’s little or nothing to see there regarding the craft of writing, so my visit is usually only for a few seconds.

If you want to learn a ton about writing in relatively short order, go back to January 2014 and start reading his posts every day. Then put what you learn into practice.

Often you will not believe that what he suggests is actually possible, or you will believe it’s only possible after you’ve gained a lot of experience. But if you test it, you will find that you were wrong, as I did. And you will be truly happy as a fiction writer for maybe the first time in your life.

Every morning I check the KillZone blog. These days, the Stage 2 and early Stage 3 authors there are so steeped in the myths I seldom read past the first paragraph, but every now and then one drops a gem. If I didn’t write the Journal, I wouldn’t visit TKZ blog at all, but some of you might find it of value.

And every morning I check The Passive Voice. There you will find a potpourri of posts on writing, publishing and marketing that are of interest to fiction writers.

Be on your guard. TPV is well worth visiting, but it is a minefield in which valuable, informative posts are mixed with posts that propagate the myths. But if you didn’t know the difference you probably wouldn’t be reading this.

Crime writer Sue Colletta offers a blog that is particularly useful for writers of crime, mystery, and other genres. You can subscribe to her infrequent posts. Visit https://www.suecoletta.com/murder-blog/.

And Garry Rodgers, a true-crime and fiction writer as well as a retired Mountie and coroner, offers the Dying Words blog at http://dyingwords.net/.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention (again) the archives for this Journal. They’re free, and I can only wish I’d had such a resource when I was first starting out. Clicking https://hestanbrough.com/the-daily-journal-archives/ will lead you to a page with 7 links on it. (In early January 2023, there will be 8 links after I post the archives for 2022.)

Clicking any of those links will automatically download a PDF document to your computer. The arcive is completely searchable and is probably the most valuable resource on this page.

Finally, I strongly recommend you browse my writer website and check the Downloads for Writers and Resources for Writers tab. You might want to visit the bathroom first and have your favorite beverage on hand. This will take awhile.

Most of the links you click on the Resources for Writers tab will lead you to other pages filled with even more links. You could easily spend 8 hours per day for a week and not see everything.

If the Journal doesn’t appear for the next day or two, it’s all right. I’m testing a new schedule.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Converting Direct Speech into Reported Speech” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/converting-direct-speech-into-reported-speech/.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 620 words

Writing of Santa Fe (novel, tentative title)

Day 1…… 3877 words. Total words to date…… 3877
Day 2…… 3460 words. Total words to date…… 7337
Day 3…… 2011 words. Total words to date…… 9348
Day 4…… 1050 words. Total words to date…… 10398
Day 5…… 3673 words. Total words to date…… 14071

Total fiction words for November……… 50948
Total fiction words for the year………… 212473
Total nonfiction words for November… 22450
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 198080
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 410553

Calendar Year 2022 Novels to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2022 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2022 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 68
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

Disclaimer: In this blog I have shared my experiences, good and bad, as a prolific professional fiction writer. Because It Makes Sense, I trust my characters to tell the story that they, not I, are living. This greatly increases my productivity and provides the fastest possible ascension along the learning curve of Craft because I get a great deal more practice at actually writing.