In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* The Impetus For This Post
* The Novel Wrapped
* The Numbers
My Quote of the Day
“By their very nature, you can’t ‘craft’ spontaneity and surprise. Those can occur only in an authentic story that unfolds as you’re writing it.” H
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” Robert Frost
The Impetus For This Post
was an article I received in my inbox. I read the article out of curiosity, despite the lead-in, which read “Here’s how to craft the unpredictable organically.”
My brain sustained a whiplash.
Um… You CAN’T ‘craft the unpredictable’. If you can ‘craft’ it, so can the reader. So by the very nature of crafting something, ‘crafting the unpredictable’ makes it predictable.
One sentence in the article reads, “the best surprises are those that are carefully set up so they don’t feel forced.”
No. Again, if you ‘carefully set up’ anything in a story, you ARE forcing it, so you can’t then make it feel as if it isn’t forced. Because it is.
I suspect the article continued in the same vein, but I didn’t continue with it. By then I was limping, so I opted out.
That’s when I wrote the My Quote of the Day above. Then I looked up ‘writers on surprise.’ The Frost quote came from that.
Google also presented this “AI Overview” about Ray Bradbury:
Ray Bradbury believed that surprise is essential to the creative process, serving as the core of intuitive, passionate writing. He argued that a writer should not know where a story is going in advance; instead, the writing process should be an act of discovery and self-surprise.
Key aspects of his views on surprise include
- Joy and Discovery: Bradbury frequently stated that writing should not be work, but a joy and a celebration. The element of surprise is what makes the process exciting and instantaneous. He found that all his books and stories, including Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles, were surprises to him.
- Intuitive Writing: He advocated for “intuitive writing” over self-conscious intellectual planning, which he believed led to lying and a lack of passion. His famous advice was to put a sign by your typewriter that reads, “DON’T THINK!” Thinking, for him, was a corrective process after the initial creation, not the center of it.
- Word Association: To achieve this surprise, he recommended free association, typing whatever words came to mind without planning. This allowed his subconscious, or “true self,” to emerge and let characters and their fears and hopes take over the narrative.
- Plot as Footprints: For Bradbury, plot was secondary to character and action. He famously compared plot to “footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” The writer observes the plot after the fact, rather than engineering it beforehand.
- Engaging the Reader: By surprising yourself as the writer, you are more likely to create an exciting experience for the reader. The spontaneous nature of the writing infuses the story with energy and honesty.
In essence, Bradbury’s philosophy required writers to embrace not knowing what comes next to tap into their true creative potential and find out what they “didn’t even know they knew.”
I’ve written tons of stuff on this topic. It is the essence of what I and Dean Wesley Smith call “writing into the dark.” In other words, writing without knowing (or caring) where the story’s going.
My personal take is that a writer should simply run through the story with the characters as the story unfolds. What could be easier or more natural? But the writer is a passive observer, not an active participant.
The writer doesn’t influence what happens in the story or the characters’ reactions. (Just as you can’t influence what happens in your own life or anyone’s reactions but your own.) The writer’s only task is to observe what happens and the characters’ reactions to what happens as the story unfolds, then write it down.
That is eminently easier than ‘crafting’ (or building or constructing or ‘making up’) anything.
The Novel Wrapped
Welp, the novel wrapped on Christmas Eve without me realizing it. I took Christmas day off, and returned to the novel yesterday.
But as it turned out, yesterday I only did some cycling and cut a little over 1300 words. Then I ran a spell check and sent the thing to Russ for a first-read. He had it back to me this morning.
I’ll publish it today, and it will go live on January 3, extending my current streak of an every two week release to 7 novels in 14 weeks. Great way to end the year.
Talk with you again soon.
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 790
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 790
Writing of Blackwell Ops 53: Jack Striker | The Next Level
Day 1…… 2035 words. To date………… 2035
Day 2…… 2217 words. To date………… 4252
Day 3…… 3751 words. To date………… 8003
Day 4…… 2218 words. To date………… 10221
Day 5…… 2181 words. To date………… 12402
Day 6…… 1673 words. To date………… 14075
Day 7…… 1972 words. To date………… 16047
Day 8…… 2081 words. To date………… 18128
Day 9…… 2694 words. To date………… 20822
Day 10…. 2712 words. To date………… 23534
Day 11…. 1581 words. To date………… 25115
Day 12…. 1155 words. To date………… 26270
Day 13…. 1951 words. To date………… 28221
Day 14…. 4108 words. To date………… 32329
Day 15…. -1329 words. To date……….. 31000 (done)
Fiction for December……………………… 31000
Fiction for 2025…………………………… 785647
Nonfiction for December.………………… 25700
Nonfiction for 2025………………..……… 290830
2025 consumable words………………… 1068908
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 19
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 36
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29