Professional Writer Series

The Journal: Why I Don’t Talk Much About CoVID-19

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Yesterday * Topic: Why I Don’t Talk Much About CoVID-19 * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “If it’s not on the page, your reader doesn’t know it.” Nathan Bransford Yesterday, I got sidetracked for awhile by a new (to me) source for royalty free photos. See Visual Hunt at https://visualhunt.com/ (via Jane Friedman). The daily word count continues to decrease (see Day 4, sigh). I’ll have to see whether I can do something about that. (grin) It has nothing to do with the novel. The … Read more

The Journal: Think

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Yesterday * Topic: Think * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.” John Cleese (from KillZone blog a day or two ago) Yesterday, I got up early to give myself more time on the novel, but that didn’t really work out. I was tired much of the day, and I wasn’t thinking quite right. Lesson learned. Maybe. I got just over 3600 words (see Day 3). At the end of the … Read more

The Journal: Short Post Today

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Authors Give Back Sale * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” Albert Einstein (via The Passive Voice) For anyone who’s interested, I’ve just enrolled all my books at Smashwords in the Authors Give Back Sale. All my books are marked at 60% off through May 31. That means, again, that many of my short stories there are free. But all of my books there are at least 60% off. Great time to jump into a series or sample some … Read more

The Journal: On Goals

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: On Goals * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any.” Orson Scott Card Topic: On Goals Yesterday after I posted the Journal, I hazarded a look at my short story goal spreadsheet. Since I started on January 1, I’ve written 12 short stories. Great fun. Then I missed. So I was thinking I was probably behind by … Read more

The Journal: A Little More on Shared Worlds

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” Louis L’Amour “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” Stephen King Wow. Yesterday I did no writing to speak of, but I did develop a cover for the novel, which is now titled For the Good of the Galaxy | The First Nine Days. I also put … Read more

The Journal: Writing in a Shared World

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Topic: Writing in a Shared World * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “No, it’s not a very good story – its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.” Stephen King Topic: Writing in a Shared World One writer asked about the limitations of writing in a shared world. Specifically, the writer wondered how a proponent of writing into the dark could write in a shared world. So I … Read more

The Journal: Today I’ll Finish

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “People on the outside think there’s something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story. But it isn’t like that. You work, and that’s all there is to it.” Harlan Ellison “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented from the successful is a lot of hard work.” Steven King Yesterday, I rolled out around 2, and by 10 … Read more

The Journal: Coherence

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Writers’ Conferences * Discoverability, how it happens * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered anyway.” Stephen King “When an author discovers coherence for the first time, … Read more

The Journal: A Short, Early Post

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Dean Wesley Smith * Yesterday * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.” William Faulkner So yesterday, in addition to writing and posting the Journal, I dropped a note to my friend Dean Wesley Smith. It isn’t like he and I hang out. I consider him a friend because without all I’ve learned from him, I wouldn’t be even a shadow of what I am today as … Read more

The Journal: The Reverse Outline (RO) Revisited and Shared Worlds

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * From James Scott Bell * Yesterday * Topic: The Reverse Outline (RO) Revisited * Today * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” E. L. Doctorow From James Scott Bell’s newsletter, ” how about some old-school pulp fiction… free! My favorite genre is crime/detective fiction from the golden era, 1920-1950. Here’s a treasure trove, including issues of the most famous pulp … Read more