In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* Reminder
* I Started a New Story
* Sigh… “Diversity” and “Inclusion”
* Still Dealing with Internet Issues
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Special Note to Dave T.
Dave, I received your Bradbury input, but when I replied it went to the email addy that currently isn’t working. If you want, send me the “new” email addy in the body of another email.
A New Short Story
“Being Martha Ramis” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. I think it’s a good story. Go check it out.
If you enjoy it, tell Everyone. If you don’t, shhh! (grin)
Reminder
You Bradbury Challenge folks, get your titles, numbers and genres in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.
For those of you in the September Challenges, you’re in the home stretch! Three days left! Today, tomorrow, and Monday.
You may report your final numbers late on Monday or before the Journal goes live on Tuesday, Oct 1.
Congratulations to all of you. Regardless of whether you met your goal on any particular day or week or for the month, every single one of you wrote more than you would have had you not entered the challenge.
I hope you’ll carry that knowledge forward and start another challenge for yourself soon. You’re on your way, dudes and dudettes. All you gotta do now is keep the ball rolling. (grin)
I Started a New Story
yesterday and I’m not sure what it will be. Like the novella I just finished, it features PI Stern Talbot as the POV character.
Right now it’s listed in the Numbers section as a short story, but it might be another novella or a novel. I guess we’ll see.
Sigh… “Diversity” and “Inclusion”
Maybe it’s just me. I turned 18 while in Marine Corps boot camp. I was basically born there. For the next 21 years, I didn’t know anything about diversity or inclusion or exclusion.
Despite the color of our skin or our nationality or our first language, my fellow Marines and other armed forces members were all green. And we all bled red.
We lived in same world everyone else lives in, but we were very much aware of the actual live-or-die world. In that world, our green “skin” and our red blood were the only colors that mattered. Surface differences didn’t matter to us then, and they don’t matter to me now.
While I was writing Book 5 of the 10-volume Journey Home series, I received an email from one of my first readers who at the time was reading Book 4. He wrote to point out that I hadn’t “mentioned diversity very much on the [generation ship] the Ark.”
Well, to be bluntly honest, that’s because “diversity” is a socially acceptable virtue-signaling word that means different things to different people. Therefore, frankly, it means nothing at all of any real value.
However, in the very first book, I mentioned that almost every culture on Earth was represented on the ship, most notably in and by the lounges (frequented most often by the repopulation passengers, 200,000 people from every part of the earth and every culture on Earth).
I pointed out to that first reader that the Journey Home series would be a very long series and that many major and minor scenes would take place in those lounges, either directly or peripherally. That’s where some cultural differences would begin to appear.
Also though, every person allowed to board The Ark, crewpeople and repopulation passengers alike, underwent a rigorous psychological screening process to weed-out anyone who might cause problems based on gender or race issues, religion, national origin, or cultural or political beliefs.
So the initial idea was that everyone (all-inclusive) would have at least a good chance of just getting along—without all the surface BS that some of us intentionally create on Earth. Those who do that do it for only two reasons:
- to create talking points so they can hear the beautiful sound of their own voice, and
- so everyone will look at them (as they imagine everyone will) and see how very wonderful they are.
The unfortunate fact is, people who are actively looking for something to gripe about (there are too few Blacks, too few Caucasians, too few Whatever Else) will always be out there and they’ll always find something to complain about.
However, I don’t much care whether any of them ever pick up one of my books. They’re probably too busy to read anything anyway, other than political literature that bends to their way of thinking (or bends to the current trend of the day).
Many of them are busy dreaming up or inventing “causes” and then “protesting injustices” they’ve created with their own warped perception before they go home to their gated, locked communities and their Black, Hispanic, or Asian (just to name a few) maids at the end of the day.
PLUS if I research and write at some depth about a culture of which I am not personally a member, some (like that particular first reader) probably will applaud me for being inclusive.
Others, though—usually others who are not members of that culture—will be offended and scream that I’m “misappropriating” the cultural mores. Whatever.
To those people, I would say, “Y’know what? It’s fiction, it’s taking place on a generation ship that doesn’t exist, and everyone on board is getting along (mostly) despite the problems and problem-children they left behind on Earth. Get over it.”
Forcing particular surface designations on people is what got us into the current mess in the first place. I won’t do it.
Most of the time in my stories I identify minor characters with their names and their speech patterns. What appears in the reader’s head is the reader’s business.
When I describe major characters, I usually do so with hair color and length, eye color, body build (height, weight) and maybe some facial characteristics.
Finally, as I wrote to my first reader and as all of you know, I don’t consciously decide anything when I’m writing fiction, and being politically correct (keeping up appearances for appearance’ sake) is frankly the least of my concerns. In fact, it isn’t even on the list.
And I sure as hell won’t break out a slide rule (for those of you who even remember what a slide rule looks like) to decide the appropriate percentages of different kinds, colors, styles and whatever else of people aboard the ship.
Because that would just be no-excuse stupid.
Still Dealing with Internet Issues
Just a reminder, I have internet at the house, but not in the Hovel. Soon that will be fixed one way or the other. I suspect it will be fixed today. In the meantime, please bear with me.
At present I check email, newsletters, vids etc. in the morning when I file the current issue of TNDJ; sometimes again in the late morning (depending on how the writing’s going); and when I get off work in the late afternoon.
But by then I’m too tired to deal with much of it. However, I’ll always respond to personal emails, comments on posts, etc. as soon as I see them.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
How to Write Great Fight Scenes I’ve written on this topic before. Here’s another take.
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 1220
Writing of “The Darling Members Club”
Day 1…… 3274 words. To date…… 3274
Fiction for September…………………….. 81458
Fiction for 2024………………………….… 734792
Fiction since October 1…………………… 861996
Nonfiction for September………………… 27020
Nonfiction for 2024……………………….. 301860
2024 consumable words…………………. 864049
Average Fiction WPD (September)……… 3017
2024 Novels to Date……………………… 13
2024 Novellas to Date……………………. 1
2024 Short Stories to Date………………. 14
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 95
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)……………. 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………. 251
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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