The Journal: A Few Things

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* On Construction and Pronoun Agreement
* Ideas Again
* Update on My Silliness
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

“So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.” Kurt Vonnegut ​

“You can do many things by yourself. You have freedom to create things. I think that’s the fascination of computers.” Chang Yiming, founder of ByteDance and TikTok

“Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.” John Irving

On Construction and Pronoun Agreement

Yeah. Boring, right?

Does this sentence bother you at all? If so, how would you fix it?

“The idea was to help the average person express themselves by making technology more accessible.”

The sentence was in an article I was reading. I immediately and automatically “fixed” it mentally by changing “the average person” to “average people.” Only then was I able to continue reading the article.

English is a living language, so it has to change. However, any changes should be hard won. They shouldn’t result from people accepting a new spelling or construction just to appease someone or because it’s easier than teaching what has been accepted as correct in the past. (“Till” as a substitute for “’til” springs to mind.) And it shouldn’t make writers or speakers sound ignorant, as they do when they refer to “the average person” (singular) as “themselves” (plural).

Ideas Again

A writer emailed to say he was having trouble coming up with ideas, “even after DWS’s Story Ideas course.”

I wrote back that I’m not sure how I can help. Really, the whole thing boils down to your ability or inability to trust yourself. Pretty much period.

If you can trust yourself, the whole world is open to you. You can pick a character, give him a problem, drop him into a setting and write an opening. If the opening takes off, you go with it. If it doesn’t, you write a different opening. Shrug.

And what difference does it make? It’s just a story. Nothing earth shaking. Just a story. And you’ve known how to tell stories since before you even knew there was an alphabet. So tell a story.

But if you can’t Trust the process—if you can’t bring yourself to trust your creative subconscious to do what it does naturally, tell stories—then you can always revert to the time-honored way of NOT telling a story.
Instead of writing a story, you can think about it, talk about it with other writers, create character sketches and timelines, erect “signposts,” and brainstorm each major turning point in the story to be sure you have a solid handle on What Happens Next. Then you can draw up an outline so you won’t go astray from what your (and everyone else’s) critical mind is telling you to do. Because God forbid you actually make writing enjoyable.

If I could teach writers one thing, it would be to practice, repeatedly, trusting their subconscious creative mind while silencing their conscious, critical mind.

Wow. Try to have fun out there, folks.

Update on My Silliness

Apparently my “I’m Back” post was a bit premature. I still have a way to go before I’m fully back on this end. And just think — if I didn’t trust my creative subconscious, I’d be driving myself crazy trying to force things right now.

Talk with you again when I can.

Of Interest

See “Forget Everything You Think You Know About Time” at http://nautil.us/blog/-forget-everything-you-think-you-know-about-time.

See “Tiny Creatures, Episode 6: #Writetip Deconstruction” at https://www.suecoletta.com/tiny-creatures-episode-6-writetip-deconstruction/.

The Numbers

Fiction words yesterday…………………… XXXX
Nonfiction words today…………… 630 (Journal)

Writing of (novel)

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

Total fiction words for the month……… XXXXX
Total fiction words for the year………… 309655
Total nonfiction words for the month… 1890
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 133050
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 442705

Calendar Year 2020 Novels to Date…………………… 5
Calendar Year 2020 Novellas to Date……………… X
Calendar Year 2020 Short Stories to Date… 12
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 50
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 208
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31