The Daily Journal, Saturday, July 20

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* Topic: My Typical Early Morning
* Daily diary
* Of Interest (a lot today)
* The numbers

Quotes of the Day

“The subjective opinions of a certain group of people at a certain moment in time say nothing about the value of your work.” JA Konrath

“My advice to authors is to do a POD print book directly with Amazon for Amazon and directly with Ingram Spark for bookstores.” Lee Foster (This agrees with advice from Reedsy in yesterday’s “Of Interest.”

“Caroline [Todd] practically leapt out of her chair and slapped her hand on the table with great force, near-shouting: ‘You stop thinking about writing a novel. You stop telling people you’re writing a novel. You stop dreaming of writing a novel. And you write!’

“My hair was blown back. Seriously. I went home from that conference and didn’t write my next review. I didn’t read my next book. I sat down and wrote my first novel. In a week. Seven days. 75,000 words. Twenty years of failure gone, poof, just like that. Because I stopped not just thinking that I couldn’t do it… I stopped thinking about it at all. I concentrated on doing it.” Hugh Howey (See more in “Of Interest.”)

Topic: My Typical Early Morning

In case you ever wonder, which I doubt, I thought I’d share my typical early morning. This is pretty much every morning.

First of all, my typical day is about as long as anyone else’s, though I begin and end it earlier than most people do. I usually rise between 2 and 4 a.m. (usually around 3) and go to bed around 7 or 8 p.m.

Four to six hours of sleep work well for me. Seven hours is better. If I sleep eight hours or longer, I feel as if I’ve lost part of my life that I’ll never get back. (Grin, but seriously, life is short enough. I hate that I have to sleep at all.)

After I get up, get coffee, and move to the Hovel, I open the boilerplate for the Daily Journal, a Notepad (.txt) doc with all the details cut out. Then I start making my rounds.

Every morning, I check

* DeanWesleySmith.com
* killzoneblog.com
* jakonrath.blogspot.com
* http://journal.neilgaiman.com/
* blog.reedsy.com
* thebookdesigner.com

If there’s a new post and if the title interests me, I read (or begin to read) each of those each morning. If I don’t stop reading, I usually add a link to the post to “Of Interest” so you can see it too if you want to.

I’m also subscribed to receive blog posts by email from Kris Rusch (both KrisWrites.com and Patreon), Jane Friedman, Anne R. Allen, The Passive Voice, CrimeReads and a few others.

Actually, my writing this topic turned out to be potentially beneficial to you. It caused me to find a few new resources to check each morning or to subscribe to. You’ll see some of those in “Of Interest” today.

For example, The Book Designer (Joel Friedlander), Victoria Strauss, and David Gaughran (all of whom I “discovered” or rediscovered in a guest post on Anne R. Allen’s blog).

When I receive those and read something juicy, it goes in the current or the next day’s “Of Interest” section, depending on when I receive it.

Following (or sometimes during) that I write the Update and/or Topic, Quote of the Day etc. Everything but the Diary. I usually save the Diary entry for just before I post the Journal.

That generally takes up the first few hours of the morning and delivers me to a major break at around 6 or 7.

Then the full day begins at around 8:30. As you already know, that’s when I begin writing fiction and/or do necessary things around Stanbrough West. (grin).

How about you? Most of us settle into a routine. What’s yours?
***

Rolled out at 2:30 this morning, mostly uncertain what the day will hold beyond this Journal entry. There will be visiting, and maybe a trip to an orchard to pick peaches. Maybe (probably) some fiction writing, maybe not.

Because of the uncertainty of how the day will unfold, I’ll post this early. If I write fiction today, I’ll report those numbers tomorrow.

Talk with you again then. Have a great weekend, and happy 50th to the Apollo space program.

Of Interest

See “In Defense of the Passive Voice” at http://prowriterswriting.com/in-defense-of-the-passive-voice/.

See “Six Things Writers Need To Stop Worrying About” at https://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2019/07/five-things-writers-need-to-stop.html.

See “Every Writer’s Dream” at https://killzoneblog.com/2019/07/every-writers-dream.html.

See “Amazon Ranking and Bestseller Lists – What’s the Deal?” at http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2018/01/amazon-ranking-and-bestseller-lists.html.

See “Traditional Publishing vs Self-Publishing: A 2020 Vision” at https://www.thebookdesigner.com/2019/06/traditional-publishing-vs-self-publishing-a-2020-vision/.

See “How to Waste Money When Self-Publishing a Book” at https://annerallen.com/2019/07/self-publishing-money-wasters/.

See “From Writer Beware’s Files: The Seven Most Prolific Vanity Publishers (Plus Two Honorable Mentions)” at http://www.victoriastrauss.com/2019/07/12/from-writer-bewares-files-the-seven-most-prolific-vanity-publishers-plus-two-honorable-mentions-2/.

See “The Tao of Writing a Novel” at http://www.hughhowey.com/the-tao-of-writing-a-novel/. Wow. Just wow. Don’t miss this.

For fun, see Michael J. Sullivan’s “Plotholes” at http://riyria.blogspot.com/p/plotholes.html.

Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 830 (Journal)
Total words for the day: 830

Writing of ()

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

Total fiction words for the month……… 7399
Total fiction words for the year………… 358737
Total nonfiction words for the month… 23480
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 207680
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 566417

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