The Daily Journal, Friday, June 28

In today’s Journal

* Thanks
* Recap
* Daily diary
* Of Interest
* The numbers

Thanks to Diane Darcy and Phillip McCollum. Both for their comments on yesterday’s post and for spreading the word about the book. Phillip actually plugged it on his blog. (grin)

If any of you bought the Amazon version of Quiet the Critical Voice (and Write Fiction) and found it doesn’t have a table of contents, I’m not sure why they did that. If you email me, I’ll send you a Kindle version that DOES have a TOC. A table of contents is valuable in any nonfiction book.

Also, just so you know, you may feel free to copy anything I put on my blog posts for your own personal use. Obviously it’s all copyrighted material so you shouldn’t disseminate it (especially for money), but I’m putting it out there publicly, so feel free.

As I told Diane, that’s one reason I put a tab on the website pointing to the Critical Voice posts, so you could find them more easily.

I think you’ll get more out of the information if you buy and read the book after having read the initial posts, but that’s all up to you. The posts are my way of giving back a little.
***

Yesterday I worked on putting together the first issue of Stanbrough Monthly Reader. (That’s what I’ve decided to call it.) To the left is a mock-up cover of approximately how the first issue will look.

Mostly that was a trial run. Interesting process. I’ll detail out some of that below for anyone who might be interested in doing something similar.

As it stands, I’m thinking each issue will contain a full novel, four or five short stories, a long poem (or a few shorter ones) and an article or two. I’m starting with my stand-alone (not in series) novels.

Stanbrough Monthly Reader won’t really be a “magazine” (requires an ISSN) so much as a monthly series of boxed sets, albeit of different kinds of writing.

The articles I include probably will be humorous personal essays I wrote back in the day. I might also include a section for writers. I haven’t decided yet. If I do include a section for writers, that will contain posts that have appeared in this blog at one time or another.

By comparison… when DWS started Smith’s Monthly, it was a personal challenge he set for himself. Because he’s so prolific, he wanted to fill his own magazine each month with new, original work. Smith’s Monthly was (is) filled with a new novel and new short stories each month, as well as all or part of a nonfiction book, usually serialized.

I thought about doing that — after all, writing a novel each month is not difficult for me — but the pressure of trying to fill a magazine every month was immediate and all but overwhelming. Doing so would suck all the fun out of the writing process, so I won’t follow his model.

Stanbrough Monthly Reader will be more of a sampler. It will be filled with previously published work, but will offer readers a broad sample of my work each month.

And I can guarantee every issue will contain something that nobody’s ever seen before. So that’s what will make it unique and (I hope) worth the subscription price to purchase.

All of that being said, and having built most of the first issue yesterday, I’m going to take my time putting it together.

In addition to manually creating the actual books, I want to set up a separate website just for the magazine. Then I’ll also do some little things, like linking from this site and HarveyStanbrough.com to the new website and so on.

When I DO launch, I’ll have the first several issues ready to go.

My goal date for the first issue is January 1, 2020, but knowing me it will probably launch sooner than that. And I don’t doubt for a second that some of the above will change in the interim. Just the way my mind works. (grin)

Any questions on all this silliness, just email me. You know the address.
***

Rolled out at 3, wrote much of the stuff above, took a couple of breaks. I hope to work a little more on the first issue of Stanbrough Monthly Reader today. The first issue, once it’s finalized, will also become a template for future issues.

In the meantime, though, I’m going to “attend” one of the online workshops I received from supporting the Diving Universe Kickstarter campaign. I’m getting behind on my learning a bit. (grin)

My goal is to start a new novel on July 1. No idea what it will be or in what world I’ll write it, but I need to get back to writing fiction.

Between now and then, I’ll attend other lectures, workshops or the learn-along, fine-tune the template for future issues of Stanbrough Monthly Reader, set up the website, and begin learning the new cover-design program I bought (Affinity Publisherhttps://affinity.serif.com/en-us/publisher/). Most of their products are intuitive, so it shouldn’t be too difficult.

So I’ll be having a lot of fun for the next few days. Of course, I’ll tell you about some of it here in the Journal.

Talk with you again tomorrow.

Of Interest

See “Still In A Bundle Going Now!” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/still-in-a-bundle-going-now/. I recommend scrolling down to “Licensing Learn Along” and read what he wrote there.

See “New Punctuation?” at https://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2019/06/new-punctuation.html. (Ignore his comment on “run-on sentences.” He’s thinking, erronously, a run-on sentence is simply one with a lot of words. It is not. Interesting take on the “diple” though.)

See “Introducing ‘Author Website in a Box’ (beta)” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/introducing-author-website-in-a-box-beta/.

See “FAQs: Music to Write By” at http://prowriterswriting.com/faqs-music-to-write-by/.

Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 940 (Journal)
Total words for the day: 940

Writing of ()

Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX

Total fiction words for the month……… 45233
Total fiction words for the year………… 351338
Total nonfiction words for the month… 26360
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 181920
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 533258

Calendar Year 2019 Novels to Date…………………… 7
Calendar Year 2019 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2019 Short Stories to Date… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 44
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 194
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31