In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* A New Short Story
* Bradbury Reminder
* The Character’s Will
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“I thought that you ought to add Corrin Tellado to the pulp writers. She started a bit later, in the 1940’s, but she’s the empress of speed.
“Tellado is sometimes called the most important Spanish writer after Cervantes, and no one outside the Spanish-speaking world has heard of her.
“During her 60 odd year career, she published 4182 original novels, with 400 million copies in print, writing an average of just shy of two full-length (around 50k) novels per week, every week. That’s almost five million words a year for sixty years.” Filip Wiltgren in a comment on DWS’ pulp speed post
And I think I’m prolific at a 40,000 word novel every two weeks?
A New Short Story
“Penthouse Bound” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. Go check it out. It’s free.
I’m annoyed at the typo and misspellings. Ignore them if you can. Guess I forgot to spell check that one.
Anyway, if you enjoy the story, please click Like. That helps with my Substack algorithms. Then tell Everyone else.
Bradbury Reminder
Today is Saturday. Just a reminder to get your Bradbury Challenge story info in to me before the Journal goes live on Monday.
The Character’s Will (or The Characters Will)
I have nothing for today, but wanted to pass along the quote above and the stuff in Of Interest, so I looked back over some files on my desktop.
The following is something I wrote while I was writing my previous novel, BO-37, but never posted before now.
If you write into the dark, your characters occasionally do or say the unexpected. And that’s fine. That’s part of the fun and excitement of ‘discovery’ writing.
But sometimes, they will also do things you flat-out don’t like.
I don’t mean little things like deciding to wear a black suit with brown shoes or going to Sonic or some other fast-food place instead of a French restaurant for supper.
I mean big stuff, like contracting a disease and dying. Or doing something stupid/heroic like stepping in the way of a bullet and being killed. Or they make what is to you a disappointing life choice, like divorcing the person you thought was the love of their life.
Mine do. They surprise me constantly, but they don’t often disappoint me, at least not in really big ways.
Still, if you’re conveying the characters’ authentic story, you have to roll with the punches and write the story as it actually unfolded while you were running through it with the character.
As Lee Child and his New York editor enjoyed lunch one day, the editor pointed out that a particular scene in Child’s latest book would work better if he moved it to a different place in the novel.
Child grinned. “Oh yes, I agree. But that isn’t the way it happened.”
I’m of the same mind.
So even when my characters do disappoint me or do something of which I disapprove, I remind myself that other readers will love whatever happened. That’s reader taste. Every reader brings his or her own baggage (history) and personality to anything s/he reads.
Camille Cignón, my strongest female lead since Soleada Garcia, disturbed and disappointed me twice:
Once the disappointment was the result of something that happened to her as a result of something she did, and once (during the ‘alternate history’ BO-37) it was something she did.
So after BO-37 wrapped, I’m through with Jack Temple as a POV character, at least for awhile. He was the primary reason Camille disappointed me.
On the other hand, that strong female lead is still around, so there’s at least a chance we’ll see her again in the future. I actively hope so.
The Writing
Oof! Five days in a row without writing a word of fiction.
Then on the 19th, I wrote a great short story. Then on the 20th, another day “off.”
That five-plus days was kind of a minor life roll, but it’s behind me now and the words are flowing again as of yesterday.
Yesterday I wrote a guest post for a friend’s publication, then started writing Blackwell Ops 38: Paul Stone. Thank goodness.
It bugs me that I lost almost a week of writing to that silliness, but onward and upward.
Of Interest
Call for Submissions (Short Fiction) Please submit short fiction to these folks.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 750
Writing of “Guest Post for a Friend” (nonfiction)
Day 1…… 913 words. To date…… 913 done
Writing of Blackwell Ops 38: Paul Stone
Day 1…… 4071 words. To date…… 4071
Fiction for February………………….. 45893
Fiction for 2025………………………. 167248
Nonfiction for February………………. 17810
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 49790
2025 consumable words…………….. 230528
Average Fiction WPD (February)…….. 2185
Average Fiction WPD (Annual)……..… 3216
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 4
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 8
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 108
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 278
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.