In Today’s Journal
* The Bradbury Challenge Report
* Free College Courses in Your Interests
* I Don’t Recommend Searching for Writing Courses
* The Numbers
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 “The Meaning of Home” 2400 Contemporary
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Apollo-gize” 3033 Alternative
- Christopher Ridge “Bathtub Piranhas” 3952 horror
- KC Riggs “Pioneer Mars” 1348 Satire
- Dave Taylor “The Secret“ 2606 General Fiction
Congratulations to all of these writers.
Free College Courses in Your Interests
One thing most humans share in common is a hunger for knowledge across an array of interests.
Did you know there are free courses from K–12 up through college on almost every topic under the sun?
I could list several specific links here, but those would lean toward my own interests or biases. So instead, I’ll just say this:
If you key into your search engine “free courses in” (or “free college courses in” or “free advanced courses in”) and the name of your desired field of study, chances are good you’ll find an array of courses.
Of course, most such offerings won’t result in earning a certificate or diploma (some do).
But at the very least taking a free online course can help you determine your level of true interest before you choose to invest megabucks in a degree and change careers.
Or maybe you don’t even want to change careers or, for that matter, get a degree. Maybe you only want to expand your knowledge base. Or maybe you’re just curious.
Maybe you’ve always been peripherally interested in Botany or Chemistry, Advanced Mathematics or Meteorology, or Philosophy or Psychology or Politics or Religion or Physics or Astronomy or Space Exploration or one of the “four to six” major branches of Engineering or whatever else.
But time, money, or the practicality of needing to earn a living got in the way of attending school.
Given that free courses in your field of interest are available, I encourage you to go for it.
So what does this have to do with writing fiction?
As I occasionally try to remind you, Everything You Learn with your conscious, critical mind also informs your characters and your creative subconscious. And for a fiction writer, that might be the best reason of all to expand your horizons.
I Don’t Recommend Searching for Writing Courses
because most of them are not free and most of them are centered around the myths. Most of them will also actually do more harm than good to your fiction writing career.
For fiction writing itself, I believe you can learn everything you need to know from TNDJ and from my nonfiction books on various aspects of writing.
For example, if you need a refresher in punctuation and grammar, you can get that from various TNDJ posts and from Punctuation for Writers.
That little book isn’t exhaustive—it doesn’t teach everything—but it teaches enough that you can pass any test on grammar and punctuation with an A in any classroom.
Plus it teaches why punctuation works the way it does—why it affects readers the way it affects them—and that’s something no high school or college English instructor teaches.
You can also learn about the specific aspects of fiction—hooks, openings, cliffhangers, setting, scenes, characters, dialogue, descriptive narrative and a great deal more—through various TNDJ posts and through Writing Better Fiction.
You can find all of my nonfiction books on writing at my online discount store.
Just sayin’.
If you DO choose to seek out online lectures and courses on fiction writing, I strongly recommend either Dean Wesley Smith’s “classic” online workshops (half-price) or his lectures: especially his very first lecture, Heinlein’s Rules, which is only $75 and contains a LOT more than just a discussion of Heinlein’s Rules.
You can find all of those through the WMG Publishing Teachable store.
Finally, you can also check out my own Audio Courses on the Journal website. I recently went through and drastically lowered the prices on all of them.
But even at the risk of cutting my own throat, I still think you’re better off culling the TNDJ archives (free) for specific topics that interest you.
The free 2021–2024 archives are available from me in fully searchable PDF format. To get them, email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
Okay, that’s it for today. Happy learning!
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 760
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 760
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for February………………………. XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for February.…………………. 14550
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 34140
2026 consumable words………………… 34140
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29