The Daily Journal, Tuesday, June 4

In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* I learned today
* A value too good to pass up
* In honor of a promise
* Daily diary
* Of Interest
* The numbers

Quote of the Day

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.” Sylvia Plath

Harvey’s addendum: “Yes. And ‘A writer is the worst judge of his own work’ is as valid for work you think is horrible as it is for work you think is good. So don’t prejudge for your readers. Follow Heinlein’s Rule 4, publish it and let the readers decide whether it stinks.”
***

I learned today, through Phillip McCollum’s interview (see “Of Interest”) about yet another distribution platform.

Publish Drive seems at first glance similar to Draft2Digital. I haven’t looked into it deeply yet (but will), but if you’d like to check it out, click https://www.publishdrive.com/.
***

A Value Too Good to Pass Up

If you design your own covers (and for that matter, if you do the layout of the paper edition of your own books), look into Affinity Publisher.

For years, I’ve touted Serif PagePlus for cover design. Now the same company, under their new Affinity brand, is about to release Affinity Publisher. I ordered my copy yesterday.

Both Serif PagePlus and Affinity Publisher are viable, very inexpensive, and user-friendly alternatives to Adobe products.

Affinity Publisher costs only $44.99. (Compare that to Adobe’s price for their full-service software.) Because I was in the beta program, I was able to preorder it yesterday for $34.99.

You can STILL download the FREE beta at https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/publisher/.
***

In honor of a promise to (at least) one reader who enjoys reading about more day-to-day things, I’ll be including more of those in the daily diary segment of this Journal. Those of you who don’t care for that sort of thing can skim or skip it.
***

Rolled out late at 4. Ugh. Only an hour to start my day. Time flies when you’re groggy and have things to do. Anyway, rolling out late disturbed my usual routine.

Got back to the house to let the babies out at 5, fed the horses about 5:30, and to my dismay, didn’t see my two bunnies this morning. Two little rabbits, one cottontail and one jackrabbit, have been visiting lately, probably to nibble on alfalfa in the hay barn.

The jack would fit in your two hands side by side, and the cottontail could snuggle up in one hand. Not that they will or have time. They each have their morning routines too. Theirs, I assume, does not include coffee.

I ordered and received a signal splitter for the hard-wired internet in the Hovel so I can answer email, view lectures, etc. on my business computer while still being able to do spot research on my writing ‘puter. And so Dropbox will sync on both computers.

I worked on setting that up for about a half-hour, filled with anticipation and expectations.

However, the splitter does not work. One computer gets the signal fine and the other gets zilch point squat. I’ll continue working the problem and report here just in case you’re faced with a similar conundrum.

From around 7 to 8, I redesigned the logo for the top of this Journal to add a little color and make it more descriptive, all while still not dipping too far down the page. I might do more later, but for now I like it.

A break at 8, and to the novel when I get back.

Nope, when I got back I went back to the drawing board with my logo for the top of the Journal. It’s a lot different now, and better (IMHO). Check it out at https://hestanbrough.com.

Finally to the novel (mea culpa) at 10:15.

Wow. I wrote very little on the novel up to 12:30 (and without a break). I found a glitch in the timeline and had to cycle back and fix it. Now for a break, and then back to it.

1:45 (after watching Phillip McCollum’s interview and doing some other stuff), back to the novel.

About 2:20 I ran out of steam. I let the day slip away from me and got nowhere close to my word-count goal. But the good thing is, it resets tomorrow morning.

Talk with you again then.

Of Interest

See “Write Now Show Interview” at https://phillipmccollum.com/write-now-show-interview/. This is a pretty good interview (Thanks, Phillip) and as an added bonus, it includes a brief clip of Ray Bradbury.

See “The Secret to Being a Successful Writer” at http://dyingwords.net/the-secret-to-being-a-successful-writer/.

See “The #1 Mistake New Self-Publishers Make That Leaves Them Vulnerable to Publishing Scams” at https://annerallen.com/2019/06/1-mistake-vulnerable-publishing-scams/. Read it. Believe it.

See The Passive Guy’s take on the above entry at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/the-1-mistake-new-self-publishers-make-that-leaves-them-vulnerable-to-publishing-scams/.

See Duke Southard’s “Dialogue- A Short-cut?” (and join the discussion) at http://prowriterswriting.com/dialogue-a-cop-out/.

Strictly as a cautionary tale (you’ll see what I mean), see “First Page Critique: When Is It Time To Let A Story Idea Die?” at https://killzoneblog.com/2019/06/first-page-critique-when-is-ittime-to-let-a-story-idea-die.html. You all know my take. If you don’t, read my comment after the post. How does she not wonder how many copies of her “bad” book would’ve sold had she let readers decide?

And from the OMG Department, see “Where to Find Trigger Warnings for Books” (No, I’m not kidding) at https://bookriot.com/2019/05/30/trigger-warnings-for-books/.

Fiction Words: 1538
Nonfiction Words: 870 (Journal)
Total words for the day: 2408

Writing of In the Cantina at Noon (novel)

Day 20… 1890 words. Total words to date…… 36451
Day 21… 2961 words. Total words to date…… 39412
Day 22… 1192 words. Total words to date…… 40604
Day 23… 1718 words. Total words to date…… 42322
Day 24… 2313 words. Total words to date…… 44635
Day 25… 1017 words. Total words to date…… 45652
Day 26… 3328 words. Total words to date…… 48980
Day 27… 1538 words. Total words to date…… 50518

Total fiction words for the month……… 5883
Total fiction words for the year………… 311988
Total nonfiction words for the month… 6450
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 162010
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 473998

Calendar Year 2019 Novels to Date…………………… 6
Calendar Year 2019 Novellas to Date……………… X
Calendar Year 2019 Short Stories to Date… 1
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 43
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 7
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 194
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31

4 thoughts on “The Daily Journal, Tuesday, June 4”

  1. Harvey, thanks for sharing the video! I tried to “preach” a lot of what you and Dean talk about, so hopefully that came through.

    Also, I didn’t realize you were unaware of PublishDrive or I would have definitely shared that with you a while back. Glad you found something new to check out.

    • You’re welcome. It was a good interview, and it was kind of neat getting to “know” you a little.

  2. I just downloaded The Wes Crowley Saga from Smashwords. Thank you for this great opportunity to get the whole saga (so far)! I can’t wait to get started. 🙂

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