In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Whew!
* The TNDJ 2025 Challenges Are Revised
* The Stephen King Challenge
* The Bradbury Challenge
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“You can’t knock a home run out of the ball park from the locker room. You have to stand up at bat and take a swing.” Actor James Woods in “The Road Back” (his newsletter), Issue 27, Feb 27, 2025
Whew!
I almost reported the Bradbury Challenge results for the past week this morning. If I hadn’t wondered why a couple of the writers in that challenge hadn’t submitted information, I would have posted the results a day early.
I blame it on February having only 28 days this year.
The TNDJ 2025 Challenges Are Revised
Please save this post to a Word document (to retain the links) for future reference.
Due to an apparent lack of interest, I’m ditching the Run With Harvey Challenge. I’ve folded some of the prizes from that into the Stephen King and Bradbury challenges. (See below.)
Also, because only one person took me up on “The Bradbury Challenge on Steroids,” I’ve folded that into the regular Bradbury Challenge.
The Stephen King Challenge
This is open to everyone, whether paid or free subscribers. Both are also eligible for the prizes (see below).
I’m sponsoring the Stephen King Challenge every month, beginning today. I’ve revised the prizes.
Imagine how competing with yourself in this challenge will help your self-confidence going forward. Not to mention how much IP you will have added to your inventory.
The Objective
The objective is to write at least 1000 words of publishable fiction per day.
It doesn’t matter whether the words go into one or more short stories or a novella or novel. What matters is that you write 1000 words of publishable fiction on the day.
To help you reach 1000 wpd, I recommend setting a daily word count goal of 1100 wpd or higher, but that’s up to you.
The Rules Are Simple
1. Email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com to register for the challenge and qualify for the prizes.
2. Email me once a week during the challenge with your word count for the week and to claim your prize.
3. Email me at the end of the month with your word count for the month and to claim your prize.
Prizes for The Stephen King Challenge
Weekly Prizes—
If you’ve written at least 7,000 words of publishable fiction in any week (even if you fell short on some of the days), you may claim
- any one fiction or nonfiction ebook free from my personal canon OR
- any one of my audio courses.
Monthly Prizes—
If you’ve written at least 30,000 words during the month (again, even if you fell short on some of the days or weeks), you get your choice of the following:
- Any Three of My Nonfiction Books on Writing (Click here for descriptions) OR
- The Nonfiction Omnibus (Click here for description.) OR
- Any Four of My Novels or Novellas (Click here, then click any genre menu item.) OR
- Any One of My Fiction Omnibus Collections (Click any link below for that book description.)
- The Journey Home (the complete 10-volume SF saga)
- Blackwell Ops: Soleada Garcia (the complete 7-novel crime-thriller subseries),
- Stern Talbot, PI Omnibus (the 7-volume Stern Talbot series)
- One-Off Mysteries Omnibus (the complete 7-volume one-off mysteries series)
- Wes Crowley: The Original 6 Volume Story
Pretty good enticements to write, yes? (grin)
The Bradbury Challenge
The challenge is to write at least one short story per week for a year (so 52 weeks). I’ve done it, at least three participants in the challenge have done it, and I’m certain you can do it.
The whole point of the Challenge is to have fun and grow as a writer. There is no cost. The only requirement is to write at least one short story per week.
Prizes
The main reward is watching your inventory grow, but—
If you make it through at least 52 weeks (and yes, this is retroactive), you can email me and claim any of the monthly prizes from the Stephen King Challenge above.
I hope this helps motivate you.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Recovery & Beyond
Challenge Update from DWS. A few gems here.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 700
Writing of Blackwell Ops 38: Paul Stone
Day 1…… 4071 words. To date…… 4071
Day 2…… 2711 words. To date…… 6782
Day 3…… 3434 words. To date…… 10216
Day 4…… 4185 words. To date…… 14401
Day 5…… 4149 words. To date…… 18550
Day 6…… 4104 words. To date…… 22654
Day 7…… 2010 words. To date…… 24664
Day 8…… 1413 words. To date…… 26077
Fiction for March…………………….. 1413
Fiction for 2025………………………. 187244
Nonfiction for March………………. 1540
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 55470
2025 consumable words…………….. 236204
Average Fiction WPD (March)…….. 1413
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 4
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 9
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 108
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 279
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.