In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* Extra Words Matter
* The Bradbury Challenge Report
* A New Short Story
* An Annoyance from a Lazy Dumba—uh, Person
* How Find Me Lost Me
* Next Up
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
My Quote of the Day
“Treading water in pursuit of perfection is always a regrettable waste of time and the best possible way to ensure literary death by drowning.” Harvey
Extra Words Matter
(or Humorous and Wrong-Headed Quote of the Day)
“Should men EVER be allowed in women’s locker rooms with other girls?” taken from an official political poll issued by a US Senate candidate
Note: My issue is with the inclusion in the question of the word ‘other.’
The Bradbury Challenge Report
Participating in any challenge is a great way to have fun and grow as a writer.
The requirement is to write at least one short story per week, then let me know the title, word count, and genre per the format below. During the past week, the following writers wrote these new stories:
- Erin Donoho “How Do You Know When You Love Someone?” 1800 contemporary
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Farming on Mars” 3013 Syfy
- KC Riggs “You Can’t Have My Voice” 488 An Artist’s Declaration
- Dave Taylor (No report this week)
Congratulations to all of these writers.
A New Short Story
“Ila and the Piñon Tree” went live on Saturday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
This is a magic-realism short story set in Mexico. If you enjoy “Ila and the Piñon Tree,” please click Like. Comments are welcome too. Both help with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else. Gracias.
An Annoyance from a Lazy Dumba—uh, Person
Just wanted to share this bit of fun. I’ve gotten a lot of these emails over the years—and the frequency increased with the advent of AI—but I’ve never received one that more plainly illuminates the sheer laziness of the dumba$$ who wrote it.
This drone, Nuane (or Nurane, per his or her email address) sent the following to my personal email address, so s/he has my name right there at hand.
Yet evidently s/he didn’t even bother keying (or just copy/pasting for that matter) the name into a search engine to see whether his or her email would sound this completely uninformed (grin):
Hi, there
It’s refreshing to see writers who put their ideas out there consistently. Most don’t realize that their work often already contains the foundation for a book.
I sometimes help writers turn their existing articles and essays into structured projects that reach a wider audience.
Just curious, is publishing a book something you’ve ever considered?
Best,
Nuane
Heh. Nope, I’ve never considered publishing a book. I’ve written them and I’ve published them, but I’ve never wasted a moment of time considering whether I should write or publish them.
How Find Me Lost Me
Dan Baldwin’s serializing his Do As I Say Not As I Did book one or two chapters at a time.
Next Up
Soon I’ll publish in TNDJ a guest post concerning the writing of Historical Fiction and then my response to that.
I’ll offer this not because Historical Fiction is everyone’s cuppa, but because what’s good for one genre is often good for another. You might glean something useful from those posts no matter what genre(s) you write.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Causes—Good and Bad
Confessions from My Writing Hiatus (and tips for revitalizing your writing routine after taking a break) It’s funny. Nowhere in her tips for starting writing again did the author mention “Sit down and write.”
In Search of Banksy Just for fun, an interesting article about the elusive British street artist.