In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Topic: Absorbing Story
* The novel
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
a brief conversation between bestselling authors John Gilstrap and Jeffrey Deaver
John Gilstrap: “What are you doing right that I’m doing wrong?”
[Jeffrey Deaver] answered without pause, “Last time I counted, I was sixteen books ahead of you.”
Yeah, okay. Fine. Perspective.
Then he went on to say, “You know you have to keep writing. Stopping isn’t an option.”
“What if I can’t sell anything?” I whined.
“Nobody says you have to do it fulltime.”
Topic: Absorbing Story (A Cautionary Tale)
Writing is not just a matter of buying and reading all the right how-to books. Much more than that, it’s a matter of trusting what we already know. It’s a matter of trusting all the Story we’ve absorbed during our lives.
Interesting too that absorbing story isn’t a matter of choice. It’s something we all do in almost every waking moment.
Telling stories is natural to human beings. If you don’t believe me, listen to yourself the next time you come home from a shopping trip because some idiot cut you off in traffic. Listen to yourself as you explain to your significant other why you’re upset.
Or listen to yourself when you spot a particularly lovely flower or cloud formation and run to tell your favorite other about it. Know what you’re doing? You’re telling a story, that’s what you’re doing.
And wonder of wonders, you don’t have to run it past your neighbors first to see whether they think you should change parts of it. You just tell the story.
But let’s backtrack a couple (or three or several) decades. Do you remember?
Do you realize you were telling stories long before you even knew there was such a thing as an alphabet?
But let me ease your mind and put this in perspective: that includes EVERYONE, even little Willie Shakespeare, young Ernie Hemingway, little Stevie King and any other human being you’ve ever heard of (or not).
And even after they were introduced to the alphabet, at some point little Willie S and Ernie H and Stevie K had to learn (consciously) how to draw two longer lines at just the right angle, then span them with a shorter one to create the capital letter A. And once they learned it, they forgot about it. They never had to concentrate on how to construct a capital letter A again.
Or to put a period at the end of declarative sentence. Or a question mark after an interrogative. Or to capitalize the first letter of the first word of a sentence. Or even to put the words in the right order so they made sense.
And so their journey started. Just as yours and mine did.
And a little later, they started Absorbing Story. They listened to tall tales from their rowdy uncles, listened to the friends in elementary and junior high and high school who said sometimes truly stupid things they thought would make them seem more impressive. Oh, and they read (and absorbed Story) from books, assigned or not.
And in the case of Hemingway (later) and King and you and me, they watched films and television shows. (Some listened to radio dramas and later watched films and television.) And today, some also play interactive video games, role-play games, etc. And without even realizing they’re doing so, they’re absorbing Story.
And all of what they absorbed went into their conscious mind and resided there. And what they absorbed that they particularly liked also became part of their subconscious. It came out creatively in dreams and re-tellings around the water cooler or over a stock tank or a branding iron or an assembly line.
And some of them became writers and the Story they absorbed came out in short stories and novellas and novels. Anf for those who learn it’s all right to trust themselves and shove aside all the “can’ts” it continues to do so.
You are not alone, my friends, and you are neither dense nor stupid. You’ve been absorbing story your entire life. Trust that, and tell a few.
The novel continues racing toward the end. It might end today. It will almost certainly end either today or tomorrow. How do I know?
It’s not because I go for a certain length. And it’s not because I don’t “allow” a story to exceed a certain word count. It’s because my westerns generally like to end at between 40,000 and 55,000 words.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Stay In The Fight” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/06/stay-in-the-fight.html.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 770 words
Writing of Wes Crowley, Texas Ranger (novel)
Words brought forward………………………………………… 31,122
Day 1…… 0773 words. Total words to date…… 31895
Day 2…… 2162 words. Total words to date…… 34057
Day 3…… 2642 words. Total words to date…… 36699
Day 4…… 3021 words. Total words to date…… 39720
Day 5…… 2716 words. Total words to date…… 42436
Day 6…… 3935 words. Total words to date…… 46371
Total fiction words for June……… 3935
Total fiction words for the year………… 458424
Total nonfiction words for June… 1080
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 107310
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 565734
Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 9
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 62
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.